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Members of the Transatlantic Writers' Group analyze the evolving dynamics of transatlantic cooperation as the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its third year. The security environment in Europe has irrevocably shifted, with repercussions on the European Union, NATO, and the future of Ukraine's trajectory towards European integration. Tough questions abound–with few clear answers.How has the Russian invasion of Ukraine impacted the European Union? The second anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine finds the European Union more committed to security and defense, but also at a time of immense flux and uncertainty. By opening accession negotiations with Ukraine, the EU enlargement process takes on new geopolitical dimensions–much in line with the goals of von der Leyen's geopolitical Commission rhetoric and Borrell's vision of a geopolitical EU. However, all this is happening at the cusp of significant political changes both inside and outside the EU. In addition to the European Parliament elections, changes are coming to the Commission and the European Council leadership. These shifts are expected to take place as Hungary, the "problem child" of the EU, assumes the rotating Council presidency in July. In the meantime, the US will be going through its election cycle, where a repeat of the 2020 candidates' configuration appears very probable.A commitment to becoming a geopolitical EU is essential in the face of new security threats–in particular as new networks of malign actors, namely Russia, Iran, and North Korea work together in unprecedented ways–but this will be a difficult road to walk. It requires a strong EU leadership and a clear vision for the future that gives center stage to the security and defense of each member state–current and future. It is also time to consider how this can be achieved. What will reality look like at next year's anniversary of Russia's most recent brutal attack on Ukraine's sovereignty? How has the war impacted EU enlargement?In December 2023, accession talks began for Ukraine to become a member of the European Union. Ukraine initially applied for EU membership in February 2022 and was swiftly granted candidate status as a show of good faith while Ukraine fought a war for its very survival. Although the pace of Ukraine's EU candidacy is laudable, it has been met with skepticism in the Western Balkans, where progress has been slow, seriously questioning the credibility of the enlargement process. The EU promised future membership for the Western Balkan countries at the Thessaloniki Summit in 2003. The promise seemed highly credible bolstered by the EU's significant expansion a year later, welcoming 10 new countries and in 2007, Romania and Bulgaria. Afterwards, the appetite for enlargement started to diminish (Croatia being the last country to join in 2013) and was further exacerbated by a series of crises, including the migrant crisis, Brexit, the unlawful Russian annexation of Crimea, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The EU entered a phase of enlargement fatigue, and consequently, the accession process for the six Western Balkan countries encountered significant challenges, leaving these countries in a protracted state of anticipation with no urgency from the EU to enlarge further. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked a pivotal moment, pushing the EU to reassess its enlargement policy. Enlargement was back on the table for the first time in a decade. Once again, the EU found itself compelled to take action, not out of a desire to be proactive but in response to the direct threat posed by Russia. In November 2023, the European Commission (EC) recommended opening EU membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova, but there was little to offer for the Western Balkan countries. The Western Balkans, while happy for the Ukrainian and Moldovan people, wondered whether they were still being seriously considered for EU membership or if they would be left in limbo. This highlighted the complex interplay between geopolitical events and the EU's enlargement considerations.The prospects of Ukraine's integration into the EU appear to be driven more by geopolitical factors than by actual implementation of policy reforms. This poses a risk to the overall credibility of the EU enlargement process. Furthermore, there is a possibility that Ukraine may find itself caught in a situation akin to the Western Balkans, where countries face prolonged waiting periods with uncertain outcomes. In the end, Ukraine continues to pursue and prioritize reforms to align with the EU in pursuit of membership, even as it fights for survival. Is the EU able to step up as a security actor to support Ukraine?European countries have allocated an unprecedented amount of military support to Ukraine over the last two years—the latest data by Kiel Institute even shows EU countries have now surpassed the United States when it comes to committed military aid. Germany, the Nordic and Eastern European countries have been leading in these efforts. However, the strategy of only building national defense budgets has exposed Europe's defense procurement and production limitations. As most of the military equipment now comes from the United States, Europe is seeking to overcome fragmentation and scale-up defense production to continue supporting Ukraine's military objectives. Several senior European officials have therefore started looking for answers at the EU level.Efforts to deepen EU defense cooperation are not new but have been amplified since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There have been some significant developments already prior, such as the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the European Defense Fund (EDF) and the European Peace Facility (EPF), however with limited results. In the last two years, the EU has built upon that. The European Peace Facility was just topped off with additional 5 billion euros and on February 27, Internal Market Commissioner Breton is expected to unveil the highly expected European Defense Industry Strategy (EDIS). Most recently, Charles Michel stated the EU could invest over 600 billion euros in defense industries over the next 10 years. While greater European defense capabilities might not be tangible yet, a political will seems to be developing to invest more and invest smarter into a common European defense, including procurement taking place on the EU level. In a recent visit to Sweden, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the EU to step up its capabilities, saying "when it is about designing our architecture of security - we have to be the one to decide."The EU has been working intensely on initiatives and strategies to build up its defense production capacities. These however are tools that require extensive investment and time to render results. While these steps will likely strengthen Europe's defense capabilities in the long run, the question of short-term military support for Ukraine still looms large.The recent announcement by Joseph Borrell, that the highly ambitious Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP) will not deliver the needed 1 million ammunition rounds to Ukraine by March shows there is still much work ahead. Europe is not yet ready to fill a potential gap left by the United States, but is nevertheless on track to be a more capable and stronger supporter of Ukraine.Will Ukraine join NATO?Although NATO has confirmed the Euro-Atlantic future of Ukraine, the actual progress has been notably minimal. This can be attributed to Ukraine's ongoing war and concern of greater escalation, especially on the part of the United States and Germany. As NATO approaches its 75th anniversary and with the Washington Summit a unique opportunity for bold moves, NATO should recognize a mere declaration of support will not suffice and should instead offer to begin Ukraine's accession process.In June 2020, Ukraine was granted the Enhanced Opportunities Partner (EOP) status due to successes in reforming the defense and security sector of Ukraine since 2014. After the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland decided to apply for NATO membership. From a Ukrainian perspective, the EOP status lost its credibility and importance for Ukraine. At the Madrid NATO summit in June 2022, a new Strategic Concept was adopted, where Russia was mentioned as the main security threat for the Euro-Atlantic area. Also in Madrid, NATO Trust Funds that have been launched since 2014 were combined and strengthened in the Comprehensive Assistance Package. On 30 September 2022, after sham Russian "referendums" in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, Ukraine's political leadership prepared an application for accelerated accession to NATO.NATO provides Ukraine with non-lethal support and plays a coordination role (hosting of the US-led Ukraine Defence Contact Group meetings). During the Vilnius summit in July 2023, the NATO-Ukraine commission, formed in 1997 with the signing of the Charter on a Distinctive Partnership between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Ukraine, was transformed into the NATO-Ukraine Council. It's one more step in deepening the political dialogue and opportunity of attending the North Atlantic Council by Ukraine. As the war in Ukraine persists, NATO member states remain committed to offering commitments and bolstering support for Ukraine. The "as long as it takes" phrase has become a slogan that encapsulates their unwavering support and dedication to Ukraine. Recognizing that beyond military, financial, and humanitarian aid, political backing is crucial for sustaining morale and advancing transatlantic ambitions among the Ukrainian people, and that the West continues to emphasize its solidarity. The UK set the example of security commitment for G7 and NATO countries by signing the security agreement with Ukraine January 12. The real security guarantees Ukraine could get only after joining NATO. The latter depends on the political positions of Allies (particularly the USA and Germany) and the reform of the security and defense sector of Ukraine by NATO standards with civil control of the army, defense procurement, operations planning, and army management. If public support for Ukraine starts to wane, however, Ukraine will face a reality check. The sustained backing it is counting on from its Western partners – including through security agreements – also needs support from the citizens of those countries. Clearly, this is where both Ukraine and Western governments need to ramp up engagement with the public, and show why defense of Ukraine affects broader European and transatlantic security. What does a post-conflict Ukraine reconstruction effort look like? A post-war Ukraine reconstruction effort seeks to overhaul the country's society and economy through infrastructural and institutional modernization. This process will likely be comprehensive and prolonged. Reconstruction will need to focus on a wide range of issues covering different layers of the country. Governance is an area incentivized by possible future EU membership, where government corruption is still a legitimate question in the country, although Russian disinformation will need to be effectively combatted. National and local systems would also need support, utilizing resources bolstered through international donors, such as a joint US-EU collaboration effort for Ukraine to succeed. Finance will be one of the biggest issues in post-war Ukraine, with reconstruction costs estimated to be around $349 billion and steadily increasing, with some 10-year plans proposing sending $750 billion over several years, encompassing hundreds of projects. To help finance some of these projects, Ukraine, the EU, Canada, and others proposed utilizing frozen Russian assets. Addressing the divergent needs of groups throughout Ukrainian society will be needed through a multi-stakeholder process. This can be achieved through ensuring broad support in the private and public sectors. Reconstruction will likely take decades. Efforts to de-mine the areas currently under Russian occupation will also likely take decades to make clear for human habitation. Resources and services will also be needed for families affected by the ongoing war. Drawing historical lessons from the Balkans Wars in the 1990s could also be useful in charting Ukraine's future in a post-conflict environment. For the future of Ukraine, responsible governance must take hold in areas needing the most support to allow reconstruction to have a lasting impact, mainly in the eastern and southern oblasts where the fighting has been the most destructive. However, If Russia maintains de-facto control of the illegally annexed and occupied territories (Crimea, parts of Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Luhansk oblasts), Western reconstruction assistance will focus on regions Ukraine controls.Can transatlantic support for Ukraine hold amid the heightened tensions in the Middle East? The unwavering military support for Ukraine in European capitals has shown signs of weakening. The recent declaration by the new Prime Minister of Slovakia rejecting military aid for Ukraine, carries a significant political weight in the context of the collective European response to Russia's aggression, even though Slovakia's impact on the overall military aid to Ukraine is relatively limited. Furthermore, Hungary has previously obstructed vital funds destined for the European Peace Facility. Consequently, maintaining unified military support for Ukraine is proving increasingly difficult. The conflict in the Middle East adds another layer of complexity. Theconflict in October 2023 unequivocally drew attention away from Ukraine. The United States and its allies must now strike a balance between fulfilling its promises to Ukraine whilst deterring further escalation in the Middle East. On January 22, 2024, the US Department of Defense's deputy press secretary highlighted Washington's growing reliance on its European allies to compensate for the shortfalls in US lethal aid to Ukraine. This has not gone unnoticed in Kyiv, as President Zelensky continues to advocate for his country's urgent need for continued munitions to maintain their war effort.Furthermore, Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea have elicited direct military action by the US and UK. Rejecting the Houthi claim that attacks are in direct response to Israel's invasion of Gaza, both countries perceive them as part of wider regional tensions. Despite being the only Western powers to conduct airstrikes in Yemen, the US and UK face growing interest from several EU member states in contributing to enhanced regional maritime security. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has recently called for an expansion of the European maritime mission to the Red Sea.Middle East tensions, US and EU political debates, and the increased European presence in the Red Sea pose serious challenges to the allied approach for ensuring Ukrainian security. As attention shifts towards the Middle East, there's a growing concern that the urgency of addressing Ukraine's defense may lose prominence on the global political agenda.What will 2024 and beyond look like for Ukraine?The impact of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on transatlantic security remains no less salient as the fight enters its third year. Ukraine has been fighting against Russian aggression for a decade now, since Russia first invaded Crimea in 2014. Wavering support in some capitals–especially as a new conflict began in the Middle East last fall and widens to the Red Sea–will hopefully be a short-term side effect and not an enduring trend. Ukraine needs the continued support of transatlantic partners to win its war with Russia. Kyiv cannot afford the nation's defense to become a political talking point, where essential aid is constrained by domestic political rhetoric. As demonstrated by the response to last year's counter offensive, future aid risks becoming increasingly contingent on Ukraine's performance on the battlefield. This dynamic will only benefit Russia, which is counting on outlasting international support for Ukraine. Pertinent questions are being asked, such as what will the end of the war look like, what is the path for Ukraine's future in the EU and NATO, and how does Ukraine rebuild after a devastating Russian invasion that hasn't abated since 2014? NATO's future credibility and effectiveness as an instrument of collective defense hangs in the balance. 2024 is a critical year: a year when capabilities for Ukraine matter more than ever, a year when elections put security in the spotlight, a year when NATO marks 75 years as an effective Alliance. The decisions NATO leaders make at the July Summit will shape security – for the US, Europe, and Ukraine – for years to come. Inaction is also an action.

Members of the Transatlantic Writers' Group analyze the evolving dynamics of transatlantic cooperation as the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine enters its third year. The security environment in Europe has irrevocably shifted, with repercussions on the European Union, NATO, and the future of Ukraine's trajectory towards European integration. Tough questions abound–with few clear answers.How has the Russian invasion of Ukraine impacted the European Union? The second anniversary of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine finds the European Union more committed to security and defense, but also at a time of immense flux and uncertainty. By opening accession negotiations with Ukraine, the EU enlargement process takes on new geopolitical dimensions–much in line with the goals of von der Leyen's geopolitical Commission rhetoric and Borrell's vision of a geopolitical EU. However, all this is happening at the cusp of significant political changes both inside and outside the EU. In addition to the European Parliament elections, changes are coming to the Commission and the European Council leadership. These shifts are expected to take place as Hungary, the "problem child" of the EU, assumes the rotating Council presidency in July. In the meantime, the US will be going through its election cycle, where a repeat of the 2020 candidates' configuration appears very probable.A commitment to becoming a geopolitical EU is essential in the face of new security threats–in particular as new networks of malign actors, namely Russia, Iran, and North Korea work together in unprecedented ways–but this will be a difficult road to walk. It requires a strong EU leadership and a clear vision for the future that gives center stage to the security and defense of each member state–current and future. It is also time to consider how this can be achieved. What will reality look like at next year's anniversary of Russia's most recent brutal attack on Ukraine's sovereignty? How has the war impacted EU enlargement?In December 2023, accession talks began for Ukraine to become a member of the European Union. Ukraine initially applied for EU membership in February 2022 and was swiftly granted candidate status as a show of good faith while Ukraine fought a war for its very survival. Although the pace of Ukraine's EU candidacy is laudable, it has been met with skepticism in the Western Balkans, where progress has been slow, seriously questioning the credibility of the enlargement process. The EU promised future membership for the Western Balkan countries at the Thessaloniki Summit in 2003. The promise seemed highly credible bolstered by the EU's significant expansion a year later, welcoming 10 new countries and in 2007, Romania and Bulgaria. Afterwards, the appetite for enlargement started to diminish (Croatia being the last country to join in 2013) and was further exacerbated by a series of crises, including the migrant crisis, Brexit, the unlawful Russian annexation of Crimea, and the COVID-19 pandemic. The EU entered a phase of enlargement fatigue, and consequently, the accession process for the six Western Balkan countries encountered significant challenges, leaving these countries in a protracted state of anticipation with no urgency from the EU to enlarge further. Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022 marked a pivotal moment, pushing the EU to reassess its enlargement policy. Enlargement was back on the table for the first time in a decade. Once again, the EU found itself compelled to take action, not out of a desire to be proactive but in response to the direct threat posed by Russia. In November 2023, the European Commission (EC) recommended opening EU membership talks with Ukraine and Moldova, but there was little to offer for the Western Balkan countries. The Western Balkans, while happy for the Ukrainian and Moldovan people, wondered whether they were still being seriously considered for EU membership or if they would be left in limbo. This highlighted the complex interplay between geopolitical events and the EU's enlargement considerations.The prospects of Ukraine's integration into the EU appear to be driven more by geopolitical factors than by actual implementation of policy reforms. This poses a risk to the overall credibility of the EU enlargement process. Furthermore, there is a possibility that Ukraine may find itself caught in a situation akin to the Western Balkans, where countries face prolonged waiting periods with uncertain outcomes. In the end, Ukraine continues to pursue and prioritize reforms to align with the EU in pursuit of membership, even as it fights for survival. Is the EU able to step up as a security actor to support Ukraine?European countries have allocated an unprecedented amount of military support to Ukraine over the last two years—the latest data by Kiel Institute even shows EU countries have now surpassed the United States when it comes to committed military aid. Germany, the Nordic and Eastern European countries have been leading in these efforts. However, the strategy of only building national defense budgets has exposed Europe's defense procurement and production limitations. As most of the military equipment now comes from the United States, Europe is seeking to overcome fragmentation and scale-up defense production to continue supporting Ukraine's military objectives. Several senior European officials have therefore started looking for answers at the EU level.Efforts to deepen EU defense cooperation are not new but have been amplified since the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There have been some significant developments already prior, such as the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the European Defense Fund (EDF) and the European Peace Facility (EPF), however with limited results. In the last two years, the EU has built upon that. The European Peace Facility was just topped off with additional 5 billion euros and on February 27, Internal Market Commissioner Breton is expected to unveil the highly expected European Defense Industry Strategy (EDIS). Most recently, Charles Michel stated the EU could invest over 600 billion euros in defense industries over the next 10 years. While greater European defense capabilities might not be tangible yet, a political will seems to be developing to invest more and invest smarter into a common European defense, including procurement taking place on the EU level. In a recent visit to Sweden, French President Emmanuel Macron called for the EU to step up its capabilities, saying "when it is about designing our architecture of security - we have to be the one to decide."The EU has been working intensely on initiatives and strategies to build up its defense production capacities. These however are tools that require extensive investment and time to render results. While these steps will likely strengthen Europe's defense capabilities in the long run, the question of short-term military support for Ukraine still looms large.The recent announcement by Joseph Borrell, that the highly ambitious Act in Support of Ammunition Production (ASAP) will not deliver the needed 1 million ammunition rounds to Ukraine by March shows there is still much work ahead. Europe is not yet ready to fill a potential gap left by the United States, but is nevertheless on track to be a more capable and stronger supporter of Ukraine.Will Ukraine join NATO?Although NATO has confirmed the Euro-Atlantic future of Ukraine, the actual progress has been notably minimal. This can be attributed to Ukraine's ongoing war and concern of greater escalation, especially on the part of the United States and Germany. As NATO approaches its 75th anniversary and with the Washington Summit a unique opportunity for bold moves, NATO should recognize a mere declaration of support will not suffice and should instead offer to begin Ukraine's accession process.In June 2020, Ukraine was granted the Enhanced Opportunities Partner (EOP) status due to successes in reforming the defense and security sector of Ukraine since 2014. After the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Sweden and Finland decided to apply for NATO membership. From a Ukrainian perspective, the EOP status lost its credibility and importance for Ukraine. At the Madrid NATO summit in June 2022, a new Strategic Concept was adopted, where Russia was mentioned as the main security threat for the Euro-Atlantic area. Also in Madrid, NATO Trust Funds that have been launched since 2014 were combined and strengthened in the Comprehensive Assistance Package. On 30 September 2022, after sham Russian "referendums" in the temporarily occupied territories of Ukraine, Ukraine's political leadership prepared an application for accelerated accession to NATO.NATO provides Ukraine with non-lethal support and plays a coordination role (hosting of the US-led Ukraine Defence Contact Group meetings). During the Vilnius summit in July 2023, the NATO-Ukraine commission, formed in 1997 with the signing of the Charter on a Distinctive Partnership between the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Ukraine, was transformed into the NATO-Ukraine Council. It's one more step in deepening the political dialogue and opportunity of attending the North Atlantic Council by Ukraine. As the war in Ukraine persists, NATO member states remain committed to offering commitments and bolstering support for Ukraine. The "as long as it takes" phrase has become a slogan that encapsulates their unwavering support and dedication to Ukraine. Recognizing that beyond military, financial, and humanitarian aid, political backing is crucial for sustaining morale and advancing transatlantic ambitions among the Ukrainian people, and that the West continues to emphasize its solidarity. The UK set the example of security commitment for G7 and NATO countries by signing the security agreement with Ukraine January 12. The real security guarantees Ukraine could get only after joining NATO. The latter depends on the political positions of Allies (particularly the USA and Germany) and the reform of the security and defense sector of Ukraine by NATO standards with civil control of the army, defense procurement, operations planning, and army management. If public support for Ukraine starts to wane, however, Ukraine will face a reality check. The sustained backing it is counting on from its Western partners – including through security agreements – also needs support from the citizens of those countries. Clearly, this is where both Ukraine and Western governments need to ramp up engagement with the public, and show why defense of Ukraine affects broader European and transatlantic security. What does a post-conflict Ukraine reconstruction effort look like? A post-war Ukraine reconstruction effort seeks to overhaul the country's society and economy through infrastructural and institutional modernization. This process will likely be comprehensive and prolonged. Reconstruction will need to focus on a wide range of issues covering different layers of the country. Governance is an area incentivized by possible future EU membership, where government corruption is still a legitimate question in the country, although Russian disinformation will need to be effectively combatted. National and local systems would also need support, utilizing resources bolstered through international donors, such as a joint US-EU collaboration effort for Ukraine to succeed. Finance will be one of the biggest issues in post-war Ukraine, with reconstruction costs estimated to be around $349 billion and steadily increasing, with some 10-year plans proposing sending $750 billion over several years, encompassing hundreds of projects. To help finance some of these projects, Ukraine, the EU, Canada, and others proposed utilizing frozen Russian assets. Addressing the divergent needs of groups throughout Ukrainian society will be needed through a multi-stakeholder process. This can be achieved through ensuring broad support in the private and public sectors. Reconstruction will likely take decades. Efforts to de-mine the areas currently under Russian occupation will also likely take decades to make clear for human habitation. Resources and services will also be needed for families affected by the ongoing war. Drawing historical lessons from the Balkans Wars in the 1990s could also be useful in charting Ukraine's future in a post-conflict environment. For the future of Ukraine, responsible governance must take hold in areas needing the most support to allow reconstruction to have a lasting impact, mainly in the eastern and southern oblasts where the fighting has been the most destructive. However, If Russia maintains de-facto control of the illegally annexed and occupied territories (Crimea, parts of Donetsk, Kherson, Zaporizhia, and Luhansk oblasts), Western reconstruction assistance will focus on regions Ukraine controls.Can transatlantic support for Ukraine hold amid the heightened tensions in the Middle East? The unwavering military support for Ukraine in European capitals has shown signs of weakening. The recent declaration by the new Prime Minister of Slovakia rejecting military aid for Ukraine, carries a significant political weight in the context of the collective European response to Russia's aggression, even though Slovakia's impact on the overall military aid to Ukraine is relatively limited. Furthermore, Hungary has previously obstructed vital funds destined for the European Peace Facility. Consequently, maintaining unified military support for Ukraine is proving increasingly difficult. The conflict in the Middle East adds another layer of complexity. Theconflict in October 2023 unequivocally drew attention away from Ukraine. The United States and its allies must now strike a balance between fulfilling its promises to Ukraine whilst deterring further escalation in the Middle East. On January 22, 2024, the US Department of Defense's deputy press secretary highlighted Washington's growing reliance on its European allies to compensate for the shortfalls in US lethal aid to Ukraine. This has not gone unnoticed in Kyiv, as President Zelensky continues to advocate for his country's urgent need for continued munitions to maintain their war effort.Furthermore, Houthi attacks on commercial shipping in the Red Sea have elicited direct military action by the US and UK. Rejecting the Houthi claim that attacks are in direct response to Israel's invasion of Gaza, both countries perceive them as part of wider regional tensions. Despite being the only Western powers to conduct airstrikes in Yemen, the US and UK face growing interest from several EU member states in contributing to enhanced regional maritime security. Italian Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has recently called for an expansion of the European maritime mission to the Red Sea.Middle East tensions, US and EU political debates, and the increased European presence in the Red Sea pose serious challenges to the allied approach for ensuring Ukrainian security. As attention shifts towards the Middle East, there's a growing concern that the urgency of addressing Ukraine's defense may lose prominence on the global political agenda.What will 2024 and beyond look like for Ukraine?The impact of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine on transatlantic security remains no less salient as the fight enters its third year. Ukraine has been fighting against Russian aggression for a decade now, since Russia first invaded Crimea in 2014. Wavering support in some capitals–especially as a new conflict began in the Middle East last fall and widens to the Red Sea–will hopefully be a short-term side effect and not an enduring trend. Ukraine needs the continued support of transatlantic partners to win its war with Russia. Kyiv cannot afford the nation's defense to become a political talking point, where essential aid is constrained by domestic political rhetoric. As demonstrated by the response to last year's counter offensive, future aid risks becoming increasingly contingent on Ukraine's performance on the battlefield. This dynamic will only benefit Russia, which is counting on outlasting international support for Ukraine. Pertinent questions are being asked, such as what will the end of the war look like, what is the path for Ukraine's future in the EU and NATO, and how does Ukraine rebuild after a devastating Russian invasion that hasn't abated since 2014? NATO's future credibility and effectiveness as an instrument of collective defense hangs in the balance. 2024 is a critical year: a year when capabilities for Ukraine matter more than ever, a year when elections put security in the spotlight, a year when NATO marks 75 years as an effective Alliance. The decisions NATO leaders make at the July Summit will shape security – for the US, Europe, and Ukraine – for years to come. Inaction is also an action.

On Saturday, an alleged Israeli airstrike killed five senior members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps in Damascus. On the same day, an Iraqi Shi'a militia affiliated with Iran launched a salvo of ballistic missiles at Al-Asad base in Iraq, housing U.S. forces, resulting in injuries to U.S. personnel. Normally Iraqi militias use drones or rockets, not the ballistic missiles preferred by the Islamic Republic. These attacks occur at an inflection point for Iran.From Jan. 15 to Jan. 16, the Islamic Republic of Iran conducted military strikes in Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan, primarily in retaliation for an attack within its borders on Jan. 3. The Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and its branch in Afghanistan, claimed responsibility for the inciting explosions, which killed close to 90 people in Kerman, Iran, in one of the deadliest terrorist strikes in the Islamic Republic since 1979.Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, vowed the "terrorist attack" would be met with a "harsh response." Yet Iran targeted alleged bases of Kurdish and Baluch separatists in Iraq and Pakistan, respectively, and ISIS remnants in Syria, not Afghanistan. This demonstrates that Tehran feels emboldened to strike any group it deems a threat, using the Jan. 3 attack as a cover. Iran previously showed more restraint responding to domestic terror attacks from 2017 to 2020.An analysis of the string of events that led to Iran's recent retaliation demonstrates that a regional war is erupting in the Middle East after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attacks, even beyond the recent U.S. and UK strikes in Yemen. While the U.S. has yet to acknowledge this fact, the history of terrorist attacks within Iran demonstrates why it believes the fighting is linked to other events and sheds light on how Tehran will lash out.When terrorist attacks occur in Iran, they rarely generate media coverage, showing an unfortunate indifference to Iranian lives. However, Iran too wages its own war on terrorism. An examination of past attacks and how Iran responded demonstrates that the Islamic Republic's "harsh response" — its own counter-terrorism strategy — is an attempt to establish deterrence, as the U.S. and Israel seek to do the same in the region.The spiral of violence in January 2024On Dec. 25, 2023, an Israeli strike killed Iranian general Seyed Razi Mousavi in Damascus. At the same time, the U.S. targeted the Iraqi militia Kataib Hizballah, which cooperates with the Islamic Republic, in retaliation for allegedly launching drones at U.S. forces in Erbil.On Jan. 1, 2024, the U.S. sunk three attacking speedboats in the Red Sea, killing 10 Houthis. On Jan. 2, an Israeli drone strike killed Hamas's deputy leader Saleh al-Arouri in Beirut. On Jan. 3, the ISIS attack in Iran occurred. On Jan. 4, the U.S. assassinated "Abu Taqwa," a mid-level leader of the Iraqi militia Harakat al-Nujaba in a drone strike in Baghdad, for his role in attacks on American targets in the region, allegedly at the behest of the Islamic Republic. Then the U.S. and UK launched air strikes on Jan. 11 and 17th on Houthi targets all over Yemen, a militia allied with Iran, followed three days later with the Israeli attack in Damascus. The Islamic Republic will see the timing of these attacks as intrinsically linked. The ISIS terrorist attacks occurred near the tomb of General Qassem Soleimani, in his hometown, targeting mourners who had congregated there for the fourth anniversary of his assassination. Soleimani, who headed the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' (IRGC) Quds Force, was killed in the early hours of Jan. 3, 2020, by a U.S. drone strike. There had been speculation about the various actors who may have conducted the attack. From the Islamic Republic's perspective, its enemies are ISIS and its branch in Afghanistan; Arab, Kurdish, and Baluchi separatists; the Iranian exile Mojahedin-e Khalq (MeK) Organization; as well as Israel and/or the U.S. Iran might very well blame all of those actors for working in unison. The attack in Kerman bore the hallmarks of an ISIS operation and was claimed by the terrorist group. Ethnic separatists usually chose Iranian military targets. Israel tends to conduct targeted assassinations of Iranian scientists, or recently an Iranian general in Syria. But Islamic State's attacks are indiscriminate, and Soleimani did organize the Iraqi militias to combat the terrorist group in Iraq, giving ISIS a reason to retaliate.Between exiles, ethnic rebellions, and ISISAfter 1979, the nascent Islamic Republic had to deal with two problems in its western Kurdistan Province, which has a significant Kurdish population, and its southern Khuzestan province, which has a significant Arab population. Both areas proved problematic as the Iranian state sought to overcome ethnic differences between Persian nationalism and Kurdish and Arab aspirations by reconciling them under the banner of an Islamic Republic.There were a few bouts of violence in the early 1980s, particularly with the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDP-I), but the provinces remained quiet until 2003, when the Bush administration was allegedly responsible for stoking Iranian ethnic rebellions during its War on Terror. An ethnic Sunni Baluch rebellion erupted in addition to dissent in Kurdistan, Khuzestan, and among Iran's ethnic Azerbaijani population, which is larger than the population of the republic of Azerbaijan itself.Al-Qaida never struck in Iran, but ISIS, with its virulent anti-Shi'i ideology, attacked the majority Shi'a nation. In June 2017, four ISIS terrorists launched a brazen assault on Iran's parliament, killing 18.Iran's ballistic counter-terrorism strategyIn retaliation, on 18 June, 2017, the IRGC launched six domestically-produced Zolfaghar ballistic missiles, with a range of over 400 miles, against Islamic State targets in Syria's eastern province of Deir Ezzor.While the target may have been ISIS, the strike sent a signal to Riyadh in the aftermath of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's statement that Saudi Arabia would take its "battle" with the Islamic Republic inside of Iranian territory, made at the height of the Saudi-Iranian cold war in the Middle East. The missiles, after all, also had the range to strike Riyadh.The IRGC again launched missiles in early September 2018 against the KDP-I, exiled in bases in Iraq, in retaliation for their alleged attacks on Iranian military forces. In the most recent attack in January, the IRGC launched a dozen ballistic missiles and suicide drones at targets in northern Iraq, claiming it targeted a Mossad base there that was used to organize the Jan. 3 Kerman bombings, killing at least four people. In reality, Iran most likely sought to deter the KDP-I from future attacks.Back in 2018, ISIS attacked an Iranian military parade on Sept. 22 in Ahvaz ("Ahwaz" in Arabic). The al-Ahwaz National Resistance, an umbrella movement for Arab separatist groups, also claimed responsibility for that attack. However, the Ahvaz group had never conducted such a brazen attack before, preferring to sabotage Iran's pipeline facilities, usually at night. ISIS, on the other hand, had attacked Iran's parliament in 2017 in broad daylight.Furthermore, for reasons of domestic consumption, it was more convenient that ISIS was the culprit for the 2018 Ahvaz attack. If Tehran were to blame the Ahvaz group, it would serve as an admission of the government's failure to address the depressed conditions in the Khuzestan province as well as in Kurdistan and Baluchistan — conditions that have led to grievances and pushed some locals to adopt terrorism. Second, the Ahvaz group did not have any military bases outside of Iran to retaliate against.Iran retaliated with ballistic missiles to strike the ISIS-held town of Hajin in eastern Syria. When it lost all of its territory in the east of Syria, ISIS allegedly kept some networks alive in the rebel-held Idlib. Even though the Jan. 3 attack was claimed by the Islamic State-Khorasan Province (ISKP) the IRGC justified attacking Syria instead of Afghanistan by claiming that ISKP terrorists receive training in Idlib from ISIS and are then transferred to Afghanistan by the U.S. In reality, an attack on Afghan soil would have disrupted already tense relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan.In the restive Sistan-Baluchestan province, bordering Pakistan, Iranian military forces were targeted twice in domestic terrorist attacks in 2019. The first hit a base of the Basij, the paramilitary force affiliated with the Revolutionary Guards, coinciding with the Islamic Republic's celebration of the 40th anniversary of the revolution that brought down the shah. Another attack followed, killing 20 Revolutionary Guards in a suicide bomb operation. Both were claimed by the Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), formed in 2012 to fight on behalf of Baluchi Sunnis, who complained of discrimination by the Shi'a government. The Islamic Republic did not respond to those attacks since this Baluch group operates clandestinely within the Sistan-Baluchistan province and out of the Baluchistan province in Pakistan. At that point, Iran did not want to violate the sovereignty of its neighbor. However, last week it did retaliate for a different set of attacks in mid-December, when the Baluch group attacked an Iranian police station in the town of Rask, killing at least 11 officers.The year 2020 witnessed two major losses for Iran. After Soleimani's death in January 2020, Iran launched 22 Fateh ballistic missiles at two Iraqi bases housing American forces. In December 2020, Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in his car by a sophisticated machine gun contraption controlled remotely. Israel and its alleged ally the MeK rarely take credit for the string of assassinations that have targeted Iran's nuclear scientists, with Iran issuing condemnations, but little more. The fact that Iranian allies in Lebanon, the Palestinian territories, Syria, and Yemen have struck Israel or its interests since Oct. 7 serves as an indirect retaliation in their regional conflict.The Islamic Republic has sought to mollify domestic audiences by demonstrating that it retaliated for recent attacks on Iranian soil and will consider its mission accomplished. Further retaliation would jeopardize its gains. Iran has already won a regional conflict by reviving its Hamas-Hezbollah-Houthi "Axis of Resistance" since October. Yet the people of Iran endured a loss.Nevertheless, the recent events have demonstrated the interconnected and interdependent nature of the Middle East, and how a set of attacks in Iran are related to the ongoing tensions in the Eastern Mediterranean and Red Sea.

Fifty years ago this week, Egypt attacked Israeli forces in the Israeli-occupied Sinai, with a simultaneous Syrian attack in the occupied Golan Heights, to begin what became known as the Yom Kippur War. The war and its diplomatic aftermath both exhibited and cemented some ways of viewing the U.S. role in the Middle East that are reflected in policy issues today.President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger viewed the Arab-Israeli conflict, as they viewed most of their foreign policy, primarily through a Cold War lens. At the level of great power relations, such a view could yield successes such as the opening to China, which counted as a success partly as a way of outflanking the Soviet Union. But imposing the Cold War template on local conflicts could lead to unhelpful misinterpretations of what such a conflict was largely about.An example had occurred two years earlier in 1971, when restiveness of Bengalis in what was then the eastern portion of Pakistan, followed by a Pakistani military crackdown and a flow of refugees into India, caused a South Asian crisis and a war between India and Pakistan. Most observers, including in the U.S. national security bureaucracy, viewed the crisis in terms of humanitarian needs and the satisfying of Bengali aspirations for self-determination through creation of what became the state of Bangladesh while keeping the Indo-Pakistani conflict from escalating further. Nixon and Kissinger instead saw the crisis as a Cold War proxy conflict, with the USSR supposedly instigating a move by the Indian government of Indira Gandhi to crush Pakistan.That interpretation was almost certainly a misinterpretation of the nature of the conflict and of Indian objectives. But it was this interpretation that drove U.S. policy, which included a saber-rattling show of force by a nuclear-armed carrier task force in the Bay of Bengal. Among the ill consequences of the episode were a cementing of the USSR's position as the dominant external power on the subcontinent through its support of India — with Moscow scoring additional points as a champion of Bangladeshi independence — and a tilt of opinion in New Delhi toward developing its own nuclear weapons.By Cold War standards, the crisis surrounding the Yom Kippur War was much more of a U.S. success. An airlift of weapons from the United States helped Israel to ultimately prevail militarily over the Soviet-supplied Egyptians and Syrians. Kissinger was the impresario of subsequent disengagement agreements between Israel and Egypt, shutting out the Soviets. Not least, events related to the war and its aftermath led Egyptian President Anwar Sadat to abrogate Egypt's friendship treaty with the Soviet Union in 1976 and to become more a partner of Washington than of Moscow.The Cold War framework persists in some present-day American visions of the U.S. role in the Middle East — although with China sometimes now seen as the major great power adversary — in ways that exhibit shortcomings of that framework. Promoters of the Biden administration's effort to broker full diplomatic relations between Israel and Saudi Arabia, in the absence of any other explanation of how this effort supposedly advances U.S. interests, contend that a normalization agreement would limit Chinese influence in the Persian Gulf region.Such a contention continues a Cold War type of zero-sum thinking that mistakenly assumes there is a fixed amount of dealing that Middle Eastern states have with outside powers, and that doing more business with one power necessarily means doing less with another. In fact, there is no good reason to believe that even a Saudi Arabia that had exchanged embassies with Israel and been rewarded by the United States for doing so would lose the strong economic and other reasons it has to maintain extensive relations with China. Israel itself is an instructive example. The decades-long U.S. support to Israel, including $158 billion in military and economic assistance, has not kept Israel from building extensive ties with both China and Russia and trimming its policies to maintain good relations with those powers, such as on issues involving the war in Ukraine.To the extent that sepia-tinged memories of the Yom Kippur War move away from Cold War mentalities and focus on what Arabs and Israelis were doing, those memories tend to cement the image of a beleaguered Israel valiantly defending itself against aggressive and hostile neighbors eager to push the Jewish state into the sea at the first opportunity. This image has underlain those many billions of dollars in U.S. military aid to Israel. And it is true that it was two of those Arab neighbors, Egypt and Syria, that launched the war of October 1973.Less prominent in forming lasting and influential images is the fact that Egyptian and Syrian forces were attacking on land that Israel had forcibly seized in a war that Israel started by attacking Egypt on June 5, 1967. The immediate military objective of Egypt and Syria in 1973 was thus to regain land that had been part of those two countries until Israel captured it through force of arms six years earlier.Israel also had fired the first shots in another earlier war against Egypt, in 1956. It later would initiate other hostilities in the region, including an invasion of Lebanon and other actions that collectively constitute more use of military force outside a country's own territory than any other Middle Eastern state has exhibited. Today, ever since Saudi Arabia suspended its air war against Yemen, the most active campaign of cross-border military attacks in the region is the Israeli aerial assault on targets in Syria. Keeping that campaign of attacks unimpeded is one of Israel's reasons for maintaining good relations with Russia.Half a century after the Yom Kippur War, Israel is far from being a beleaguered nation and instead is the most militarily powerful state in the Middle East, with little hesitation to throw its military weight around. But the image of the plucky little state under threat from aggressive neighbors continues to have influence. The political and diplomatic aftermath of the 1973 war is another part of the war's legacy. Although at the time of the cease-fire, Israeli forces were winning and Egyptian forces were losing, the Egyptian military did well enough in the early days of the war to regain some of the honor it had lost in 1967 with its swift defeat by Israel. That gave Sadat the political room to take his peace-making trip to Jerusalem in 1977. That in turn led to the U.S.-brokered Camp David Accords in 1978, one of the signal events in what is still euphemistically called the Arab-Israeli "peace process."It is fitting that the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War almost coincides with the 30th anniversary of the Oslo Accords, another landmark in the same "peace process," because the political aftermath of the former set a pattern that the latter would also exhibit. That pattern is one of Israel pocketing whatever peace agreements it can gain with Arab neighbors while making indeterminate noises about Palestinian self-determination, which is continually kicked down the road and never realized.The first part of the Camp David Accords included specific commitments about an Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty. The second part consisted of vaguer language about eventual resolution of the "Palestinian problem." There was to be a five-year transitional mechanism in which Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza would be given some autonomy, with negotiations on the final status of those territories to begin no later than the third year of the transitional period. A shortcoming of the Accords was that implementation of the first part (Egypt and Israel did sign a peace treaty the following year) was not made conditional on implementation of the second part.Fifteen years after Camp David, the provisions regarding the Palestinians finally seemed to be getting implemented, with the creation in the Oslo Accords of the Palestinian Authority. But the five-year transitional period came and went long ago, and the Palestinians are as far as ever from self-determination. The "transitional" Palestinian Authority is still around, functioning mainly as a security auxiliary to the Israeli occupation and widely discredited among the Palestinian people. "What we have today," observes Daniel Levy, president of the U.S./Middle East Project "is the language of peace in the service of illegal actions, disenfranchisement, and apartheid."There are too many variables to spin out a convincing alternative history regarding what would have happened had Nixon and Kissinger not stepped into the 1973 war with a surge of military assistance to Israel. But Sadat's words and actions both before and after the war made clear that his objective was not to push Israel into the sea but rather to make peace with it, provided that Egyptian territory was restored.Maybe if Israelis had become less conditioned to count on the United States to provide unqualified protection from any difficult situations — even ones of their own making, such as their previous conquests of other states' territory — the subsequent history regarding the "Palestinian problem" would have been different. The U.S. handling of the Yom Kippur War, however much it might be chalked up as a U.S. win on the Cold War scorecard, was a major episode in that conditioning.The actual history has been one of an ever-stronger Israel becoming increasingly self-assured about kicking the Palestinian can ever farther down an endless road. Policies of later U.S. administrations have furthered that process. The Trump administration's policies of showering Israel with gifts and brokering supposed "peace" agreements with Arab countries that were not even at war with Israel convinced Israelis more than ever that they could enjoy such fruits while continuing to push farther out of reach anything that looked like Palestinian self-determination. The Trump policies were an extreme case of tendencies that had roots in U.S. policies in the 1970s, starting with that victory-ensuring infusion of U.S. munitions during the Yom Kippur War. The Israeli response is embodied in the current extreme right-wing Israeli government, which hardly even bothers to make indeterminate noises on the subject anymore and makes obvious that its policy — if not a new Nakba and expulsion of Palestinians from their homeland — is indefinite apartheid.This Israeli policy means indefinitely living by the sword, which is a tragedy mostly for the Palestinians but also for Israel itself, for its patron the United States, and for the cause of true peace in the Middle East.

Film, curated exhibition + curated events (Nocturnal Creatures, Refugee Tales, Text Messages, Anti-university game play) On Loop: Civil Rites (2017, 28mins) Thank the following institutions and individuals who have lent campaigning materials from their collections: Holly Antrum, Andrew Cooper, Anton Califano, Aysen Dennis, Anita Gray, Tina Grace, Dan Jones, David Herd, Cee-J Hutchinson, London Action Resource Centre Archive, Alessio Lunghi, Lindis Percy, Noor Afshan Mirza, Anna Pincus, Refugee Tales, AnnRobinson, Juliet Jaques, NinaScott, Emma Sangster, Stanley Schtinter, Shiri Shalmi, Refugee Tales, Berna Vardar, Class War, Cathy Ward and those who wish to remain anonymous --- The collection of banners and posters from Greenham Common are dedicated to Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp co- founder Helen John who died in 2017. Black Women Will Not Be Intimidated, 1980–81; Take a Pill Mrs Brown, 1977 12 Women's Day March, 1975; Posters from See Red Women's Workshop (1974–90). The organisation ran collective poster making workshops in support of the women's liberation movement, countering negative images of women in advertising and the media. Their first commission was for International Women's Day in 1975 and they subsequently supported campaigns raging from healthcare politics to racial equality. Precarity PingPong, 2004; Poster for Precarity Ping Pong, a series of events organised by Greenpepper Magazine, Amsterdam and Mute Magazine, London, which explored issues of labour and precarity. Social Housing Not Social Cleansing, 2015; Poster made by artist Nina Scott for housing campaigning group Focus E15 Posters for The Women's Strike Assembly, a coalition of autonomous feminist groups organising around issues of paid and reproductive labour, trans and sex workers rights, gender violence and access to services. Sex / Work Strike, 2018, Women's Strike, 2018, There's No Liberation Without Trans Liberation, 2018, Women's Strike, 2018 Flyer for Peace News Issue 2443: Gender and Militarism, 2001; Poster for International Women's Day published in Peace News, 2012; Peace News is a community organised newspaper, established in 1936, that promotes peace and justice causes. A 2012 issue included a poster to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the women-led 'Bread and Roses' strike, in which 25,000 textile workers in the town of Lawrence, Massachusetts, USA, protested for fairer wages and better living conditions. Leaflet for JENGbA,2017; JENGbA (Joint Enterprise: Not Guilty by Association) campaigns on behalf of prisoners and their families against convictions brought under controversial joint enterprise laws. Landlord Gangster,c.2015; We Want Secure Homes Now for Everyone, c. 2015; Posters gathered by Andrea Luka Zimmerman during housing protests Advance to Mayfair, 2016; Posters used in protests against the sale and redevelopment of social housing made by Class War, an anarchist newspaper and activist group set up in 1983. We Love our Home, which is why we support the Ayelsbury Occupation, 2015; Ayelsbury Occupation poster by Andrew Cooper, andrewcooper-unseen.org GentrificationWatch, 2015; This Area is Under Community Protection: Stop Evictions, c. 2015; Anti-Gentrification posters from the collection of Aysen Dennis. A feminist and anarchist, Dennis founded a campaign in 2000 to ght against the redevelopment of the South London Aylsebury Estate and the displacement of her community. Carnival Against Capital, 1999; The Carnival Against Capital, held on 18 June 1999, was an international day of protest timed to coincide with the 25th G8summit in Cologne, Germany. NO, 2003; Campaigning materials for Stop the War Coalition. Founded in September 2001 in the weeks following 9/11 and George W. Bush announcement of the 'war on terror', Stop the War Coalition has campaigned to prevent and end the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere. Artist, writer and activist David Gentleman designed a range of graphics featuring a red blood spatter. No War for Oil! c. 2004 Gin For Everyone: Plan C London, 2016; Poster designed for anti-capitalist organisation Plan C. The pink cocktail refers to the drinks served during Plan C London's monthly meetings, a gesture of decadence and luxury that counters the perceived frugality of other leftist groups Greenham Women Against Cruise: Take President Reagan to Court in the USA, 1983; Thousands of Women will Reclaim GreenhamCommon,1983; Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp was a peace camp established in 1981 to protest at nuclear weapons being sited at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire, England Nothing to Lose but our Chains, 2017; Baby grow worn by baby Gabriel. The clothing was printed by the South London group of Sisters Uncut, who campaign on behalf of domestic violence survivors. Gabriel and his mother were housed as a result of Sisters Uncut meetings with the council. This is Privatised Space, 2016; Balloon printed with anti-capitalist message. Balloons were released by artist and activist Richard DeDominici at locations throughout Newcastle upon Tyne as a playful protest action. Found in London. AdSpaceHackPack, 2015; Toolkit for removing and replacing commercial advertising, designed by anti-capitalist collective Special Patrol Group. --- From LARC (London Action Resource Center) archive: This Election Use Your Cross Wisely, 2010 (LARC) Bring on The Cuts, 2010–15 (LARC) Welcome to WhitechApel: An Invitation., Unknown date; Campaigning materials from the Whitechapel Anarchist Group MayDay,2003; MayDay,2000; MayDayActionGuide,2003; Flyers for London May Day protests Reclaim the what??, 1991–2003; Reclaim the streets, 1991–2003; Posters used by Reclaim the Streets, a collective that promotes the community ownership of public spaces, founded in 1991. Please obstruct privatisation, c. 2007 We are more powerful than they can possibly imagine, 2000s Fracking is coming to the UK!!! Together we can stop it, 2017; Flyer for environmental campaigners Frack Off Storm the Banks!, 2009; Anti-capitalist poster for protests that accompanied the 2009 G20 summit held in London Who Killed Altab Ali, Never Forget Altab Ali, Bangladeshi Altab Ali was 24 years old when he was killed by members of the National Front in a racist attack on 4 May 1978. Since then, commemorations have been held annually on this day in addition to a wide range of campaigning activities that honour his memory and promote anti-racist causes. Banner by Dan Jones --- More banners: Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group Quilt, 2014; Quilt made as the result of a community sewing project with the Gatwick Detainees Welfare Group. School children, detained and formerly detained asylum seekers and volunteers contributed patchwork panels featuring images of journey and friendship. The project was organised by Refugee Tales, an organisation promoting the rights of refugees Out of Order, 2018; Banner printed on an upside-down US flag by Lindis Percy, co-founder of the Campaign for the Accountability of American Bases. In 2001 Percy was initially ned after conducting a protest at a U.S. Air Force station in Norfolk, East Anglia. She subsequently brought a landmark case in the UK High Court, which granted legal authority to use and 'deface' the U.S. flag. Thank you Schtinter. Battersea CND,1985; Banner made by Battersea's CND (Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) Group and used at Greenham Common Women's Peace Camp, a peace camp established in 1981 to protest at nuclear weapons being sited at RAF Greenham Common in Berkshire, England. Stairs Right Wall SexWorkisWork, 2018; Banner for The Women's Strike Assembly, a coalition of autonomous feminist groups organising around issues of paid and reproductive labour, trans and sex workers rights, gender violence and access to services. Stairs Left Wall JusticeForCleaners,2017; Banner made by United Voices of the World, an independent member- led trade union that organises for precarious workers, mainly in service industries. This banner was used as part of a successful campaign at the London School of Economics where cleaners, many of whom were low paid migrant workers, fought to be employed in-house rather than through a private contractor. Stairs Middle Wall LIARS, 2016; Banner used at the March for Europe on 2nd July 2016, shortly after the Brexit referendum. The slogan 'liars' was printed in response to pledges made during the referendum campaign. --- EVENTS: 9 July 2018 Are Rites Your Responsibility? Gallery visit and game play. A visit to artist and cultural activist Andrea Luka Zimmerman's screening room and installation (including key texts from 1968 and London protest banners from across the decades), part of the London Open 2018 at the Whitechapel Gallery. The central work is Andrea's 2017 film Civil Rites, an exploration of radical Newcastle and the political and social legacy of Martin Luther King's visit in 1967. The film is 28 minutes long. Game play: Part of the exhibition is the 1980s game 'Roots and Bootstraps' developed by feminist and anti-racist activist Pat Garrett (also founding member of the 1980s queer punk band The Frigging Little Bits) exploring class privilege. The game board is hand-drawn, and its rules and moves are designed to prompt discussion about social mobility, opportunity and allegiances. The game is based on first hand experiences and this play hopes to make a current version of it for 2018. Andrea Luka Zimmerman will talk about how the Civil Rites project came together, and one of the activist groups lending a banner may speak about their current campaign. --- 11 July 2018 Refugee Tales - Whitechapel Gallery 3- 3.30pm On the final day of its 2018 walk, the Refugee Tales project, which walks in solidarity with refugees, asylum seekers and detainees, paused at the gallery to recite articles from The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, marking its 70th anniversary. This special happening coincides with Andrea Luka Zimmerman's presentation in the exhibition of Civil Rites (2018). The film takes Martin Luther King's honorary doctorate acceptance speech at the University of Newcastle in 1967 as the point of departure for a timely meditation on contemporary social justice movements. Continuing its call for an end to indefinite detention, Refugee Tales 2018 runs from 7-11 July. --- 21 July 2018 Nocturnal Creatures - Whitechapel Gallery 8-10pm A shared reading that echoes Luka Zimmerman's film Civil Rights, exploring how poverty, racism and war continue to haunt our lives. Readings by Aysen Dennis, Evan Ifekoya, So Mayer, Liberty Anthony Sadler, Daniella Shreir and Andrea Luka Zimmerman.

"I want to talk to you right now about a fundamental threat to American democracy. I do not mean our political and civil liberties. They will endure. The threat is nearly invisible in ordinary ways. It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will. We can see this crisis in… the loss of a unity of purpose for our Nation. The erosion of our confidence in the future is threatening to destroy the social and the political fabric of America"President Jimmy Carter, 1979What was supposed to be a summer of recovery and rebuilding, has instead become a summer of gloom, division and bigotry. The prospects of a double-dip recession still loom high for Americans in the light of a revised GDP report that puts annual growth rate for the second quarter at an anemic 1.6%, not 2.4% as predicted earlier.As with all economic downturns, fear and anxiety about an uncertain future translate into intolerance directed toward "the others". Two weeks ago it was the Arizona anti-immigration law and the anti-gay ban, this past week it was the so called "Ground Zero Mosque" controversy. The underlying angst is thus surfacing in the form of aggressive anti-immigrant, homophobic and Islamophobic sentiments. Most Americans (61%) are against this "Córdoba House" project, which is not exactly a plan for a mosque but for a Muslim Community Center, modeled after the Jewish Community Centers and the YMCA. Its grounds are located two blocks away from Ground Zero. Interestingly, the project was made public by the New York Times as a local lower Manhattan issue in 2009, and went unnoticed. It only exploded into the headlines recently, when public figures such as Sarah Palin, Glenn Beck and Newt Gingrich leapt at the opportunity of using it to further stoke the flames of division and xenophobia. While the Lower Manhattan community advisory board, several Jewish leaders and Mayor Bloomberg support the project, the Jewish Anti-Defamation League opposes it, arguing that its proximity to Ground Zero would cause unnecessary pain for the families of victims of 9-11. This argument has merit and should therefore be the focus of the debate, but it isn't. Instead, Gingrich compared the project to putting a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust Museum, and Palin called it a "stab in the heart of the families of 9-11".Daisy Kahn, the wife of the Imam in charge of the project, appeared recently on a Sunday talk show together with Manhattan's JCC director Rabbi Joy Levitt to defend the project. Kahn explained that historically in the United States, as members of different religions and creeds assimilate to the general culture, their practice, attitudes and activities become Americanized: that is the context within which the Córdoba Project should be understood: as a place where Muslims could meet, exercise, bring their children to Day Care and yes, pray. Indeed, contrary to the public image prevalent today, Muslims in the US are, according to Christiane Amanpour ," the most assimilated of all Muslims in the Western World." The United States also has a strong Interfaith Dialogue movement which supports the project.President Obama weighed into the controversy within the first 24 hours, saying Muslims were protected by the First Amendment's Freedom of Religion and had a right to build the center. After being chastised by the usual suspects (the same that insist Obama himself is a Muslim and have doubts about his citizenship), the President later qualified his first statement by adding he had "commented on theright but not on the wisdom" of the project. Clearly, that is what is at issue here: Muslims, like all other religious groups in America, do have the Constitutional right to congregate and worship as they please, but in the light of the deep wounds of 9-11, the symbolic aspect of the location tends to overshadow other valid considerations. However, as everything in today's political toxic environment, it instantly became more fodder for demagogues and added more virulence to the political discourse. By correctly pointing out the discrepancy, Obama was derided as dithering as and insincere.Opposition to the Córdoba House is not an isolated incident that can be explained by its proximity to 9-11, which gives the outrage some validation. There are similar projects that have been put on hold due to protests as far as Wisconsin and California, and in the last few days there was a mosque burnt down in Tennessee, and a stabbing of a Muslim cab driver in New York. Anti-Muslim sentiment is conspicuously strong throughout the country, strong enough to be compared to the Swiss controversy over construction of new minarets. Even if the Mosque issue blows over in a month like other arguments have in the past (think Dubai Ports World brouhaha in 2005, for example) each of these bitter controversies plants seeds of discord that are used by demagogical purposes, mainly to delegitimize the government. People's anxiety about the economy is fertile ground for all kinds of phobias to thrive, whether directed against the Latinos moving into white neighborhoods, gay marriage in their town halls, or mosques being built nearby. Or against the first Black President, whose middle name happens to be Hussein. Angst and pessimism are so widespread that not even what would otherwise be considered good news has the power to cheer Americans up.The official end of the war in Iraq came and went practically unnoticed by a population unsure whether America "won or lost" there. After 7 years of fighting an asymmetrical war that has cost, at a minimum, 5,000 American lives, 150,000 Iraqi lives and 700 billion dollars, the United States is withdrawing its combat troops, leaving behind 50,000 troops in support roles and hoping that the Iraqi forces will be able to defend the population from the sectarian violence that is certain to ensue. The parliamentary elections in March delivered no clear winners, and neither Shiite Prime Minister Al-Maliki nor his rival Sunni former Prime Minister Alawi have been able to form a government coalition. In addition, the power and resource distribution struggle between the central government and the regions is still unsettled, and Iran is likely to step into the power vacuum left by the Americans and meddle in its neighbor's politics for years to come. The counterinsurgency strategy in Afghanistan is not delivering any positive results either, and the American relationship with the Karzai government is at best uneasy. Besides, to paraphrase Frank Rich's recent op-ed titled "How Fox (TV) betrayed Petreaeus", how can you win Muslims hearts and minds in Kandahar if you are at war against Islam at home?No wonder Americans are not celebrating. Instead, they are turning inwards and becoming more isolationists, xenophobic and protectionist. And there is no leadership to pull us through these difficult times. The President is in his bunker, trying to change the topic to Katrina or to Middle East Peace talks (a relatively safe topic, if you think that in probably a hundred years it will still be the main headline of the New York Times). The Republican Party has been hijacked by the Tea Party Movement of Sarah Palin and talk-radio host and Fox news commentator Glenn Beck, who this past weekend held a "Restoring our Honor" march on Washington. From a podium at the Lincoln Memorial, on exactly the 47th the anniversary of Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech, Beck told a mostly white crowd of 87,000 that "Today, America is beginning to turn back to God." He spoke about "restoring the honor to America" and "reclaiming" the civil rights movement, which has been so "distorted". When asked whether he had chosen that date for his rally on Washington to coincide with King's anniversary, Beck responded it was not by intention but "by divine providence".This cynical usurpation of the Black leader's banner by Beck is just one example of how he will go to extremes to maintain his radio and TV ratings. In spite of his theatrical rants and stage hysterics, he is an able manipulator of white anger and racial anxiety. This sad picture of America besot by anxiety about deficits, unemployment and higher taxes, and divided by bigotry begs the question of who benefits. In an election year, the question may sound naïve, but it isn't. Republicans are increasingly worried about the "wacko wing" of the party that has run amok and will be impossible to rein in. Tea Party candidates are defeating incumbents in Republican primaries all over the country. The time is running out for serious Republicans to stand up, stop the nonsense and impose some restraint on its rank and file, while at the same time distance themselves from the most extreme Tea Party rants. They cannot reasonably devote themselves full-time to maligning the President and Democrats in Congress. They need to present a plan for economic growth, jobs and national reconciliation, to show they care about recovery and about governing. By opening the door to Tea Party candidates to win in November, they are in fact giving the President a chance at re-election. At the same time, Obama should move aggressively to the center of the political spectrum, moderate the ambition of his reforms and adopt an agenda of a balanced budget and an extended period for tax cuts. In this way he could win over the Independents, who will most certainly be appalled at the McCarthyist-like atmosphere on Capitol Hill after November, and will vote for him again in 2012, over a Palin, a Huckabee or a Gingrich. This coming year represents a fork in the road for the President: even if the economy recovers in a visible, sustainable way, Obama will have to choose between pragmatism and ideology, between becoming another Bill Clinton or another Jimmy Carter. Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science and Geography Director, ODU Model United Nations Program Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia

It is an honor and a privilege to have been asked to deliver this lecture by Judge Brower.

Welcome, everyone; it is a pleasure to see you as always. This is a very special inaugural event and one that I am very excited about because as we all know, the history of Goler T. Butcher is very special. This award has been awarded since 1997 to a distinguished person of American or other nationality for outstanding contributions to the development or effective realization of international human rights, and as we also know, it was named for Goler Teal Butcher, a remarkable person, prominent African American scholar, and professor of international law at Howard University School of Law, who served as the assistant administrator for Africa at the U.S. Agency for International Development in the Carter administration, and was a leading advocate for ending global hunger. We are here very much to honor the legacy.

Thanks. When I first received the invitation to speak on this panel and saw the cover of the Queering Atrocity Prevention report, and also considered the work that was done by OutRight and Human Rights Watch in the Afghanistan report, there were many things that excited me about this work, despite its horrendous content. I am going to talk about two in particular. The first is something that is a call or reaffirmation that I see in both papers for our legal policy and programmatic approaches, to take a more critical queer and feminist conception of gender and apply that to whether it is our frameworks of analysis or to the legal obligations that exist for states to prevent and to punish mass atrocities. This, of course, goes beyond just the adding in of LGBT people or, as has happened over the past twenty years, just adding women into our international frameworks or our policy frameworks as well, but really understanding how gender as a social and relational dynamic, how that impacts behavior and expectations of behavior, how that can drive human rights abuses, how it can drive atrocities, how it is the root cause of them in many cases, and how we need to consider how different policies impact differently gendered beings at the response stage as well. That was one of the first things that I am hoping that this paper brings, that it resurges this conversation as much as possible, whether it is scholarship or within the diplomatic community, where I was partly involved in my last work, and to see it become more widespread.

This brief contribution contains some reflections on the relevance of the "what about me?" question in proceedings on compensation and maritime delimitation. The focus is on disputes at the International Court of Justice (ICJ or Court). My argument is that, as things currently stand at the ICJ, the Court is ill-equipped to address the "what about me?" question and that, as a result, ICJ proceedings remain very much state-centric. This view likely is not surprising because the Court was conceived, since its origins in the 1920s, as an interstate judicial organ. Other dispute settlement institutions have developed since then to bring dispute settlement closer to individuals, such as regional human rights courts and arbitral tribunals in the investor-state context. However, this situation does not mean that the ICJ should not take into account individuals in deciding disputes submitted to its jurisdiction. What this situation does mean is that one would need to rethink some procedural aspects of ICJ dispute settlement, which I will discuss in relation to compensation, and parts of the ICJ's jurisprudence, which I will discuss in relation to maritime delimitation.

The World Health Organization's (WHO) Constitution affirms, in its preamble, a fundamental and non-discriminatory right to health and health care. In doing so, it echoes a number of widely ratified treaties and other international legal instruments with a strong claim to having the status of customary international law, including the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR), the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the ILO Convention on Indigenous and Tribal peoples in Independent Countries, and the Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners. Most recently, the Institut de Droit affirmed that same fundamental right in Article 4 of its September 2021 Resolution on Epidemics, Pandemics, and International Law.

Establishing the circumstances pursuant to which parties to an armed conflict are required to provide reparations or other compensation for harm inflicted in the course of hostilities is an enduring and seemingly intractable challenge in the field of public international law. With the recent full-scale invasion of Ukraine by Russia and the ensuing harm to civilian persons and property being inflicted daily on an almost unimaginable scale as a result of the ongoing fighting, the issue of recompense for damage inflicted in the course of armed conflict has become infused with a renewed sense of urgency. My contribution to the Remedies and Reparations for Individuals Under International Law panel explores the topic that I refer to as "belligerent liability"—that is, reparations or other compensation required to be distributed by states for harm to civilian persons or property caused during armed conflict—from both a conceptual and applied approach.