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Jennifer Huddleston and Gent Salihu


In previous years, debates about online speech at a state level had largely focused on issues such as concerns about anti‐​conservative bias or online radicalization. More recently, however, many states have instead focused on the impact of social media platforms and the internet on kids and teens.
While many of the proponents of these bills may have good intentions, these proposals have significant consequences for parents, children, and all internet users when it comes to privacy and speech. States that have enacted such legislation have faced legal challenges on First Amendment grounds and cases are currently pending in the courts.
In general, there have been four categories of legislation at a state level: age‐​appropriate design codes, age‐​verification and internet access restrictions, content‐​specific age‐​verification laws, and digital literacy proposals. With many state legislatures recessing this summer, there is an opportunity to analyze what the emerging patchwork of such laws looks like, the potential consequences of these actions, and what — if any — positive policies have happened.
Age‐​Appropriate Design Codes and Age Verification for Online Activity in the US
Signed into law in 2023, the California Age‐​Appropriate Design Code Act is the first of its kind in the United States. The law obliges businesses to conduct risk assessments of their data management practices and to estimate the age of child users with a higher degree of certainty than existing laws, controlling their access to certain content. While such a law is well intended, it has raised serious concerns about privacy and free speech and is currently being challenged in court. Other states are considering bills that require age verification for using social media.
Such proposals originate in European countries, such as the UK, which is considering its own Online Safety Bill to prevent young people from harmful content but also raises serious concerns around the censorship of lawful speech, privacy, and encryption. On speech, such initiatives threaten the right to anonymous speech. On privacy, kids and adults are likely to be harmed by invasive, yet currently unsafe methods of age‐​verification technologies in an online ecosystem where at least 80% of businesses claim to have been hacked at least once. On encryption, some have advocated introducing backdoors in end‐​to‐​end encryption to catch malicious actors that harm kids while overlooking the importance of encrypted channels for kids to safely call out abusers.
This legislative session, several U.S. states have contemplated bills that would require additional steps to verify who may have a user account on social media or other websites, each with their unique approaches. But many share common concerns. For example, a cluster of states have sought to mandate explicit parental consent for minors creating or operating a social media account, like Pennsylvania, Ohio, Connecticut, and Louisiana. Pennsylvania, for example, has proposed legislation stating that a minor cannot have a social media account unless explicit written consent is granted by a parent or guardian. Ohio and Connecticut have followed a similar path requiring parental consent for children under 16 using social media. Wisconsin considered a bill recently to require social media companies to verify the age of users and require parental consent for children to create accounts. More than 60 bills were introduced in 2023 and at least nine states considered age verification, age‐​appropriate design codes, or other restrictions on young people's internet usage. Most of these proposals failed; however, there are a few significant age verification bills that were still pending or enacted as of July.
The Governor of Louisiana signed the Secure Online Child Interaction and Age Limitation Act (SB162) into law on June 28. This law not only enforces parental consent for minors, but expressly requires companies to verify the age of all Louisiana account holders. As will be discussed below, this is often the case with age‐​verification laws more generally. Similarly, Arkansas passed the Social Media Safety Act, requiring children under 18 to obtain parental consent for creating a social media account. Utah went a step further by banning access to social media after 10:30 pm for all children under 18 unless parents modify the settings.
Consequences of Age‐​Appropriate Design Codes
The implementation of overly broad policies raises significant privacy concerns, not only for young users but for everyone. The process of accurately determining the age of an underage social media user inherently necessitates determining the age of all users. In a context where social media companies may be held accountable for errors in age determination, the request for sensitive information such as proof of ID becomes a requirement for all users. This poses immediate questions regarding the type of identification data to be collected and how companies might utilize this information before the age verification process is complete.
On a practical level, social media platforms cannot solely depend on their internal capabilities for age verification, thus necessitating reliance on third‐​party vendors. This reliance presents a further question: who possesses the necessary infrastructure to manage such data collection? Currently, MindGeek, the parent company of PornHub, stands as one of the dominant international market players in age verification. Many conservatives may question such a company or the social media platforms they are concerned about having the IDs or biometrics of young users. For example, the Arkansas Social Media Safety Act relies on third‐​party companies to verify users' personal information.
Options that do not require the collection of sensitive documents — like government IDs or birth certificates — are likely to rely on biometrics. In such cases, not only are there concerns about the potential risk of this information falling into the hands of malevolent actors, but also questions of the accuracy of such technology in cases, such as distinguishing the difference in a 17 ½‑year‐​old and an 18‐​year‐​old. These are critical considerations for legislators as they advance bills aiming to replace parental oversight with governmental control, a shift that may also generate unforeseen consequences and risks.
We must also consider the potential repercussions on youth when their freedom of speech, expression, and peer association are curtailed due to the absence of social media. How can we balance the disparities between parents who restrict their children's access to social media and those who permit it? In today's digital age, children often forgo playing in neighborhood streets and optinstead for virtual interaction.
Social media platforms have empowered young people to voice their opinions on political matters and vital issues such as climate change. Without the communication channels provided by social media, the reach and organization of initiatives like Greta Thunberg's "Fridays for Future" would have been significantly reduced. It's crucial to consider the potential loss of such influential platforms which serve not only as a stage for youthful expression, but also a catalyst for activism. Introducing bills that impose broad restrictions on access to social media is likely to also obstruct these beneficial aspects stemming from social media usage.
Additionally, these restrictions would make it difficult — if not impossible — for users of all ages to engage in anonymous speech as well as access communication and lawful speech. The only way to verify users under a certain age — such as 16 or 18 — is to also verify users over that age. This means all users would be forced to provide sensitive information like passports, driver's licenses, or biometrics in order to participate in online discussions. This information would have to be tied to a user's account, meaning it would be impossible for users to retain true anonymity. This sets up a honeypot of sensitive personal information for malicious hackers.
Topic‐​Based Age‐​Appropriate Design Codes or Age‐​Verification
Some states have introduced age‐​verification legislation that targets specific content. Currently, these proposals have been limited to pornographic material and websites. For websites exclusively dealing with pornography, the task of flagging them is relatively straightforward. However, challenges arise when attempting to regulate more malleable platforms that do not primarily host adult content.
Louisiana was the first state to take such an approach with a law that requires age verification for access to platforms if pornographic content comprises more than one‐​third of the overall content. However, such thresholds can often be arbitrary and could impact more general‐​use websites that may be attempting to remove such content. For example, platforms like Twitter and BlueSky allow adult nudity, and other "sensitive media content" are permissible with certain restrictions. The platforms likely engage in significant content moderation and flagging of such content; however, the exact percentage of such content on a website may vary.
Lawmakers must also take into account how such laws could impact smaller platforms. A new platform with fewer users could have only a small amount of adult content but cross an arbitrarily set threshold based on the percentage of content. Small websites that see a sudden increase in users might also struggle to keep up with moderation for a time and end up over thresholds — even if such content violates their official terms.
Pragmatically, these laws may not be as effective at achieving their goal as policymakers may hope. As of July 1st, Virginia is the most recent state to enact a law that requires age verification for websites showcasing adult content. However, given that consumers have privacy concerns over sharing their sensitive personal data, they tend to bypass these protective measures, raising concerns over their effectiveness. For instance, since the enactment of the law, Google Trends data indicates that Virginia leads the US in searches for virtual private networks (VPNs), a tool that allows individuals to access such sites without disclosing sensitive information to these adult‐​content websites. Utah also saw an uptick in VPN searches when it introduced its age verification law (SB287). It's worth noting that bypass methods aren't exclusive to adults.. A study on the enforcement of similar laws in the United Kingdom revealed that 23% of minors say that they can bypass blocking measures. In addition to relying on VPNs to bypass age verification, users may also visit more obscure adult content sites that are less likely to follow safety protocols.
The ease with which these measures can be circumvented suggests that these government laws may put people's sensitive data at risk and infringe upon young people's rights to access various speech forums, all without providing effective ways to reap their intended benefits. Rather than enacting laws that may not achieve their intended effects, focus should be shifted toward actionable measures like public awareness and education. The state‐​level patchwork approach to handling people's sensitive data underscores the urgent need for a comprehensive federal privacy bill.
A Better Alternative: State Bills Promoting Digital Literacy
The concerns about young people online are quite varied and an important reason why the best solutions are likely left to parents and trusted adults in a child's life, rather than a government one‐​size‐​fits‐​all approach. One positive set of legislative proposals that has emerged over this last session are those that focus on the education of young people through improved digital literacy curriculum. This approach will empower young people to use technology in beneficial ways while also advising them what to do should they encounter harmful or concerning content.
As discussed in more detail in a recent policy brief, many states already have an element of digital literacy in their K‑12 curriculum; however, such standards typically pre‐​date the rise of the internet and social media. This year, Florida passed a law that would include social media digital literacy in the curriculum. States including Alabama, Virginia, and Missouri also considered such laws.
An education‐​focused approach will empower young people to make good decisions around their own technology use. Ideally, such a curriculum should be balanced or neutral in its approach to explaining the risks and benefits of social media or other online activities. States should not be too prescriptive in their approach or allow individual schools to make decisions that reflect specific values or issues encountered by their students. They should give way to parental notification and responsiveness when it comes to discussions around such issues. Civil society and industry have provided a great number of responses to support parental choice and controls. If policymakers are to be involved, the focus should be on education and empowerment rather than restriction and regulation.
Conclusion
2023 has seen an increase in policy proposals seeking to regulate the internet access of young people, but this carries consequences for all internet users. Such actions will likely face challenges in court on First Amendment grounds as seen with the Arkansas and California laws. As with users of any age, children and teens' use of and experience with technology can be both positive and negative. A wide array of tools exists to empower parents and young people to deal with concerns, including exposure to certain content or time spent on social media. If policymakers seek to do anything in this area, the focus should be on empowering and educating children and parents on how to use the internet in positive ways and what to do if they have concerns, not through heavy‐​handed regulation that both fails to improve online safety and takes away its beneficial uses.

The short-lived popularity boost of the Osama bin Laden operation having all but faded, President Obama for the first time appears vulnerable and could be defeated in the 2012 election. Indeed, many are starting to wonder if he will be a one-term president like Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. As congressional leaders continue to meet with Vice President Joe Biden to negotiate a reduction of the federal budget and to avoid a potential default on government debt, the economic recovery seems to be stalling: reports released last week show unemployment rose again to 9.1 % and job growth slowed down, and manufacturing and retail sales are also down from last quarter.The only good news for the President is that the Republican field of candidates, while still fluid, is very weak so far, and the Republican Party leadership divided and ineffective. Hefty potential candidates such as Jeb Bush (undoubtedly the strongest intellect in the GOP today) and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie have eschewed confronting the formidable President-candidate in 2012 and seem to be lying in wait for 2016, when they expect the field to be wide open.The first serious national presidential debate for the Republican candidacy took place on Monday, June 13. Mitt Romney, former governor of Massachusetts and the author of a health plan there which critics contend is very similar to Obama's, emerged as the solid front-runner and Michelle Bachman, an Evangelical Congresswoman from Minnesota and a Tea Party favorite, as the one who can challenge him. She is a former tax lawyer and a mother of five, who also apparently has found time to raise 23 foster kids. She is often compared to Sarah Palin, but most agree that she has more substance, understands how the government and can articulate ideas. She portrays herself as the anti-establishment figure, although she has been in Congress for a while and is at present the Chair of the House Intelligence Committee. Similarly to Palin, she considers the federal government an "elitist conspiracy" against middle-America and has invoked the War Powers Resolution to force Obama to request Congress authorization to continue operations in Libya. Tim Pawlenty, former governor of Minnesota, also an Evangelical with Tea Party following, was expected to be a serious challenger, but missed an opportunity to confront Romney on his health care plan for Massachusetts, which he had severely criticized the day before on national TV, stating it was very similar to Obama's, and going as far as calling Romney a "co-conspirator in Obama care." This lack of courage to confront the front-runner personally has made him a distant third in the primary race. Romney, on the other hand, was very well-prepared, confident in his own image of the businessman/CEO who can fix the jobs problem. The rest of the Republican candidates were a motley crew, starting with Herman Cain, an African-American businessman, owner of a pizza chain and talk show host, followed by Ron Paul, a radical libertarian that in spite of his quirky ways is quite endearing in his candid contempt for government, and Newt Gingrich, whose entire campaign staff had just resigned due to his lack of discipline and inability to run a serious campaign. All candidates focused more on bashing Obama than each other, since it is early in the race and there will be time enough for that this coming fall. Rick Santorum, another fiscal and social conservative (but in this case Catholic) and former Senator for Pennsylvania, completes the second-tier line-up of Republican candidates.But the Republican field has not firmed up yet, and there could be some surprise Republican candidates entering the race, as the President appears more vulnerable. In fact, only yesterday John Huntsman, a new intriguing figure who has been Obama's ambassador to China, joined the fray announcing his candidacy from Liberty Island, next to the Statue of Liberty, in the same spot where Ronald Reagan announced his in 1980. Huntsman, former governor of Utah, is a billionaire, a moderate and a Mormon, just like Romney. Both will skip Iowa, the first test for candidates, and one dominated by Evangelical "value" voters. Both are well-spoken, good looking family men with no rough edges. Unlike Romney, he has very little name recognition at the national level, and spent years as a missionary in China, where he learnt to speak Mandarin fluently. What he brings to the race is his expertise in that country, the main holder of American's debt, and therefore, the one that worries Americans the most. He has framed this primary contest as one between "renewal and decline". He speaks in a very quiet, civil tone and he introduced himself to the public through a stream of unusual videos, one for example that shows the candidate himself, in motocross attire from heads to toe, riding his motorbike across the Utah desert, as dreamy country music plays in the background. The White House is said to be concerned about his candidacy, not only because of moderation, his capacity and his presidential demeanor but also because he has been an insider of this administration and may use information thus acquired against the President. He could become a formidable opponent, a Republican mirror image of the President.Another prospective candidate, who, if he decides to run, could throw all calculations into disarray, is Rick Perry, the Governor of Texas. He is an attractive candidate for the party establishment and has two very strong qualities: first, he is a social conservative who could supersede Bachman and Pawlenty in drawing the Tea Party vote; second, he has been a successful governor who can boast about his job creation record in Texas (40% of all new jobs during the recovery were created in Texas). He is still testing the waters, and similarly to Huntsman, may perhaps use 2012 as a platform that can propel him into the 2016 election. Although he has not announced his candidacy, observers point to his convening of a "National Day of Prayer" for early August as a sign that he may run. He would be a formidable contester, since he can speak both the language of the Tea Party as well as the national language of this 2012 election, which is the economy and jobs.In comparing the Republican Party today with the one of ten years ago, one cannot help but notice the big shift that has occurred, and in doing so, perhaps be less dismissive of Ron Paul's philosophical influence on the party rank and file. The truth is the libertarian streak has made important inroads inside the party, and voters are now serious about not only fiscal conservatism and smaller government, but also a retrenchment of America's role in the world. This was apparent during last week's debate and the public conversations that followed in the airwaves throughout the week. Most of the candidates blasted Obama for intervening in Libya and called for an early withdrawal from Afghanistan. Michelle Bachman invoked the War Powers Resolution, passed in 1973 during Watergate, which obligates the President to seek the approval of Congress 60 days after the beginning of hostilities. The Republican Party has traditionally been the home of National Security "hawks", and the last strong isolationist mood in the party dates to the 1920s. While an isolationist wing emerged again right before Gen. Eisenhower became president, after that it was represented by a very small group, led in the last twenty years or so by Pat Buchanan. Today, a war-weary and budget- conscious American public is in favor of withdrawal from Afghanistan by a wide majority (73% of all Americans, 59% among Republicans), in spite of the fact that most had understood that to be a "war of necessity" as opposed to Iraq, a war of choice. If we count American military presence in Iraq, Libya, Yemen and the tribal areas of Pakistan, today the US is involved in five different conflicts, and spending billions of dollars a month on them, most of which are considered wars of choice. Today, President Obama is in fact a victim of his own success: bin Laden is dead, so Americans want out of Afghanistan. This is echoed loudly enough by his opponents. The President is thus under pressure to bring the troops home not only by libertarians but also by extreme Right candidates (Bachman) and even by mainstream candidates like Huntsman and Romney.After the debate, Republican Senators John Mc Cain and Lindsay Graham and Defense Secretary Gates took to the airwaves to admonish the candidates on this issue, accusing them of choosing politics over policy in matters of national security. Mc Cain went so far as to say that Reagan would not recognize his own party: "This is not the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan, who was always willing to stand up for freedom all over the world". He insisted that Khadafy was crumbling and that US logistical support, intelligence and refueling capabilities had to be continued to finish him off. He went even further and picked the opportunity to criticize Obama for not using America's own airpower, and instead "leading from behind". This was a theme that Bachman had also used in her speech, somewhat incoherently, since she vilified Obama for allowing the French to lead the operation in Libya while at the same time invoking the War Powers Resolution and demanding US withdrawal, since there were no apparent US interests involved there. Mc Cain in his own interview with Christiane Amanpour, later refuted Bachman's claim by stating that Khadafi had consistently supported terrorism, was responsible for the bombing of Pan Am 103 and was about to massacre his own people at Benghazi when NATO intervened and stopped him. "Our interests are our values" and "Sometimes leadership entails sacrifice," he added.To Romney's equivocal reference to the "Afghanis (sic) war of Independence" (an expression that per se brings serious doubts to his basic knowledge of geopolitics) Senator Lindsay Graham also in his own interview, later retorted: "This is not a war of Afghan independence, from my point of view" (of course, it isn't, it's a civil war!). He continued: "This is the center of gravity against the war on terror, radical Islam. It is in our national security interest to make sure that the Taliban never come back". He warned them not to try to position themselves to "the Left" of President Obama on this issue" and he hinted that that decision would lose them the nomination.Among the wide array of opinions, only Tim Pawlenty heeded the party line that the advice of military commanders and the situation on the ground would be the main determinant of troop withdrawals under his watch. Outgoing Defense Secretary Robert Gates criticized the "declinists" who put the short term expediency politics ahead of long-term national security interests. He added that examining the bottom line only is short-sighted, since intervention is not about sheer cost, it is about the cost of failure of early withdrawals, such as Afghanistan in 1989. Earlier, on his last trip as defense secretary, Gates had bluntly told NATO members meeting in Brussels that the military weakness of most members and their lack of will to share risks and costs of NATO operations were putting severe strains on the organization and particularly on the United States. Indeed, less than a third of NATO members are taking part in the Libyan operation, although NATO is a consensus- based organization and therefore, all members voted to approve it.According Secretary Gates, the need to cut spending and radically reduce the budget has become an obsession and sparked a new current of isolationism that now insidiously divides the traditionally hawkish Republican Party. This, he told a Newsweek interviewer, is one of the main reasons that have led to his resignation, after serving two administrations and becoming the epitome of bipartisanship. His unwillingness to plan for more withdrawals and find other ways to reduce the bloated defense budget has been criticized both from the Left and the Right. He complains about how both "Congress budget hawks and defense hawks" constantly interfere with his work. He ends by saying he refuses to be part of a nation that is forced to scale back its military power so much that it can no longer lead. His frustration is apparent; his resignation paved the way for Obama's announcement of troop withdrawal, a few days later.This last week, the presidential politics of war became clearer. Feeling the pressure of Republicans attacking him from his "left flank", President Obama told a war-weary nation that he plans to start withdrawing troops by December this year, ending the surge by the summer of 2012 and bringing home most of the rest by 2014. Although there is a widespread sense that Obama has gotten so involved in the daily details of the war that would prefer to stay on and see his counterinsurgency policy through, he has quickly readjusted to the realities at home and accelerated the withdrawal timeline that his generals had recommended. With his earlier decisions of aggressively pursuing the war on terror, signing off on drone killing missions, and having bin Laden killed inside Pakistan, he successfully beat the image of a Dovish President, weak in National Security. This past Wednesday, with the words, "It is time to do nation-building at home", he acknowledged the public's concerns about the waste of American power, blood and treasure abroad while the country is still suffering from the recession, and quickly moved back to center.This is the spirit of the times. It requires a new type of leadership, one that is strong enough to face down enemies, yet flexible enough to accommodate to the new and constantly shifting realities, to accept a revised status of the nation and to lead it into new era in its history. Time will show whether such leader is among the Republicans new line-up or whether he is already in the White House.Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science and Geography Director, ODU Model United Nations Program Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia

"This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning…I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal…"And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true."Martin Luther King Jr." I have a dream speech" (March on Washington, August 28, 1963)On Wednesday August 27th, at the Pepsi Center in Denver, Colorado, before a crowd of 20,000, Barack Obama became the first biracial man to be officially nominated as presidential candidate by a major party. When the turn came for the delegates from the state of New York to vote, Obama had received 1,549 and Hillary Rodham-Clinton 231. Hillary then made a motion to suspend the roll call vote and select him by acclamation:"With eyes firmly fixed on the future in the spirit of unity, with the goal of victory, with faith in our party and country, let's declare together in one voice, right here and right now, that Barack Obama is our candidate and he will be our president."The night before, Hillary had made a gracious and persuasive speech in support of Obama, calling on her supporters to vote for the man that would bring health care to all Americans and restore the country's standing in the world, thus tacitly acknowledging that their platforms are one and the same. She had also reminded the audience that the (presidential) "glass ceiling now had 18 million cracks", a reference at the number of votes she received and a reminder of how close women had come this time around to win the Presidency, a white male domain until now. That was her way to give comfort to her female supporters, some of which have avowed to vote for McCain in the Fall. Then on Wednesday night it came up to Bill Clinton to put the proverbial final nail in the coffin of the bitter conflict that had bitterly divided the party up to then. He did it with a masterful, authoritative speech, in which he reassured the audience that Obama was just as ready for the Presidency as he himself had been in 1992. The clarity of his ideas and the perfect delivery reminded us all of why he will go down as one of the greatest Presidents in this country's History.Already by Wednesday night there was a sense of fulfillment and relief, since the unification of the Democratic Party was perceived by most Democrats as the Convention's main objective. The party had been divided since the 1970s, when the moderate, blue collar workers and Southerners became disgruntled with McGovern's socially liberal platform and voted for Nixon. Ten years later they would become known as the Reagan democrats, and the label would stick. Bill Clinton was able to bring them all back to the fold by focused policies and his ability to connect both with white and black blue-collar workers. But in the last eight years the divisions have reappeared, as it became plain during the primary: Obama appeals strongly to the black community and to white college educated youth but has been unable to extend that appeal to older women and white workers. That is why Hillary got 18 million votes. That is also why Obama's choice of Vice President is a solid one. Senator Joseph Biden, with his Catholic, blue-collar background, his toughness and his 30 years of experience in the Senate, and his wisdom and knowledge of foreign affairs, has added weight and credibility to the ticket. The expectation is that this formula will reunite the fractured party once again.This has been a historic Convention in more ways than one: the first African-American to win the nomination, the first woman to come so close to winning it, the passing of the torch to a new generation of Americans by Ted Kennedy, the brilliant speech by Bill Clinton which by all measures restores his stature within the party. But more than anything else, this Convention is historic because, as Clinton said, Barack Obama is "the twenty first century incarnation of the American Dream", and a reaffirmation of Ted Kennedy's proclamation on the first day of the Convention, that "the Dream Lives on" in Obama.The climax came on Thursday night with Obama's long awaited acceptance speech at the closing of the Convention. It was a carefully choreographed affair, overlaid with symbolism. Delivered before a crowd of 75,000 at the INVESCO open-air stadium at Mile High, against a background evoking the pillars of the Lincoln Memorial, it was watched by a TV audience of around 40 million and ended with fireworks across the Colorado sky. Barack Obama is also the first candidate since John F Kennedy to choose an open-to-the public venue to deliver his acceptance speech. There were some risks to this venue, from security to climactic. But more than anything else, his greatest challenge on this historic night was to communicate to his huge audience and the American nation at large, that he is not just a great orator but that he understands their woes and has the fortitude to fight for them; that he is ready to battle ahead and bring about the change he so brilliantly articulates in his speeches, and that this young man standing before them, half preacher, half professor, is also a practical politician, able to back his ideas with concrete and feasible plans. As Richard Haas says in his latest article on the Foreign Affairs Journal, the next president must confront "the reality of the country's expectations" and he must do so by "identifying meaningful yet achievable goals and lay them out before the nation…and then achieve them through leadership skills that will be tested by pressures unimaginable to anyone who has not held he job." Obama passed this difficult test on the first two requirements. The third is awaiting him, if elected in November.By most accounts, the speech was an overwhelming success. Obama presented a complete blueprint on how he will govern if elected. He first listed all the issues Americans are dissatisfied with, starting with the economy and ending with Iraq. He then outlined his specific policies to solve these problems. He subsequently gave examples of how McCain is closely aligned with George W. Bush's failed policies, thus demolishing his opponent's claims of independence from the incumbent. Finally, he presented himself as open-minded and pragmatic, willing to find middle ground on the so-called culture wars issues (gays, guns, abortion) that are frequently framed as false choices to elicit emotions, not rationality, from the part of the voters. He re-introduced himself to the public as a common man, with personal accounts of his childhood as son of a single mother, who raised him with the help of her parents and at times had to use food stamps to take care of him; of his admiration for his grandfather, a WWII veteran who went to college on the GI bill and taught him hard work, pride and love of country. Looking straight into the cameras, he humanized his message and connected with people. He was able to turn the tables on John McCain, who he presented as elitist, out of touch and thus, less trustworthy. His move to the middle ground on cultural issues ("We can withhold the Second Amendment and still get AK 47s out of the hands of criminals") and his calls for greater civic and parental responsibility ("Government cannot replace parents in educating their children…") gave consistency to his claim of post-partisanship.By asserting that America is the best hope for the world, he rejected the notion that only Republicans are patriotic ("Democrats can own that, too."). He also defied the fallacy that Democrats are weak on foreign policy ("We are the party of FDR and JFK, so don't tell us Democrats that we cannot defend the country…and restore the moral standing for all who fight for freedom."). And he did all this not so much with the soaring rhetoric of his earlier speeches, but with a tone of strength and defiance. He took the fight to John Mc Cain, promising to debate him not on petty issues but on who has the "judgment and the temperament" to be Commander-in-Chief. He thereby injected the question of McCain's short temper into the Fall campaign. The speech ended with an evocation of Martin Luther King's I have a dream speech delivered on this same day forty-five years ago at the Lincoln Memorial, and a pledge to once more "March forward together."Memories of the Democratic National Conventions and the momentum created by this brilliant speech were not, however, destined to linger for long in the American psyche. They were shattered by two events, one man-made, one natural. On Friday, August 29th, John McCain made an announcement that caused quite a stir in the media and public alike. He chose as his Vice president Mrs. Sarah Palin, the little-known first-term female governor of Alaska, a no exceptions pro-lifer who believes that Creationism should be taught in the schools alongside Evolution, and whose thin political résumé is startling to most observers. After they recovered from the initial shock, some pundits were able to articulate the intriguing yet-to be-answered question: was this the brilliant decision of a crafty tactician or the insane choice of an impulsive, overly ambitious politician? Is this a masterful stroke or a risky gamble? Only time will tell.That same day, Mrs. Palin had to share the limelight with Gustav, an impervious hurricane that was making its way toward the Gulf Coast at vertiginous speed and strength. Plans for the Republican National Convention to start on Monday had to be scrapped, while McCain and Palin made their way to Mississippi, turning this into an opportunity to distance themselves early on from Bush's fiasco during hurricane Katrina two years ago. Most Convention events were suspended for Monday and Tuesday and replaced by a bare-bones schedule of committee meetings, while the crucial events (vice-presidential speech and nomination vote) start this Wednesday and culminate Thursday with McCain's acceptance speech. This could turn out to be a blessing in disguise for Republicans. Courtesy of Gustav, now downgraded to a grade one hurricane, speeches by Bush and Cheney were cancelled. The President, who hastily made his way to New Orleans, may still speak for a short time via satellite on Wednesday, which will give him an opportunity to amend the terrible legacy of Katrina by replacing those images in the minds of the public with a much improved disaster relief response to Gustav.Palin is expected to give a good speech at the Convention. As a young political reformer who has fought corruption in her home state, she has energized the campaign. As a social conservative with deep convictions against abortion she has galvanized the conservative Evangelical base of the party. She is attractive and warm, and connects easily with the public, one of the few advantages of her political experience in Alaska, a sparsely populated state that requires extensive face-to-face contact with voters. An active hunter and life-long member of the NRA, she may be able to connect with the kind of independent blue-collar and rural voters that Obama has not been able to appeal to. But Palin has never been under the extreme national scrutiny that the next few months will bring, nor has she had to answer any unscripted questions about a wide variety of topics from the often vicious national press. Mc Cain picked her over men with extensive experience in economic matters (Mitt Romney) and in homeland security (Tom Ridge), both of whom had been extensively vetted. His choice of Palin as running mate is even more surprising if we consider that his main campaign theme against Obama was the latter's lack of executive experience. In contrast with Palin, Obama has had his trial-by-fire in the primary debates and through 18 months of campaigning. He has run against formidable candidates in the Primary, has been repeatedly tested by the media, and has emerged as the choice of Democratic voters. Palin, on the other hand, has one year of executive experience and a gaping lack of foreign policy knowledge. She is the choice of one man, John McCain, who has only met her twice. What will be the public's perception of Palin's credibility and readiness to step in as President should something happen to McCain? Did McCain, always the maverick, abdicate in his duty to the people by not choosing someone manifestly ready for the presidency? We may have some answers to these questions in a week or two.For those that expect Hillary's women to flock to the Republican side just because of McCain's Vice-presidential pick, think again. If there is one principle those women activists care about is the protection of the Roe v Wade Supreme Court decision, so they would be loath to vote for a strongly anti-abortion candidate such as Palin. Nevertheless, Obama does need to worry about the white blue-collar workers' vote. He has been consistently ahead in the polls but the margin has narrowed somewhat. He is now 6 percentage points ahead in the polls (47% to 41%) but so far has been unable to break the 50% barrier. Given the byzantine workings of the Electoral College in a presidential election, even a sliver of independents and Reagan democrats here and there (especially in Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan) can win this election for McCain. The long-awaited Autumn of Freedom would then become for many, the Winter of Discontent.Senior Lecturer, Department of Political Science and Geography Director, ODU Model United Nations Program Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia

Mass protests are roiling the Republic of Georgia as tens of thousands have taken to the streets against a proposed bill by the Georgian government on "foreign influence" that has worsened tension in an already polarized Georgian society. That bill was passed Tuesday after turmoil in which punches were actually thrown between lawmakers on the parliament floor.Under this law, now before the Georgian parliament, NGOs, media organizations, and trade unions that receive more than 20% of their income from foreign sources would have to register as "organizations serving the interest of a foreign power" and would be monitored by the Justice Ministry.The Biden administration weighed in over the weekend, with national security adviser Jake Sullivan saying Saturday's protests showed that "the Georgian people are making their views known.""Undeterred by intimidation tactics, tens of thousands of peaceful protestors turned out in rainy Tbilisi today to demand Georgian Dream withdraw the legislation," he said in a statement posted on X.The Georgian parliament tabled an almost identical bill last year but withdrew it under domestic and international pressure. However, the ruling Georgian Dream party stressed that this withdrawal was only temporary. A very large proportion of Georgian NGOs get most of their financial support from Western grants (often from organizations funded directly or indirectly by the European Union, the U.S., and other Western states). And while officially apolitical, many of these groups are also aligned with the political opposition to the present government of the Georgian Dream Party — which of course explains the government's desire to limit their influence.This law, and the ongoing protests, are also part of the intensifying cold war between Russia and the West, as well as Georgia's increasingly precarious place in this struggle. On the one hand, the Georgian government — in power for the past 12 years — has actively pursued EU and (less determinedly) NATO membership. In December 2023, the EU granted Georgia candidate status. A large majority of the Georgian population favors integration with the EU and, to a lesser extent, NATO (goals that are enshrined in the country's revised 2018 constitution). The government has condemned the Russian invasion of Ukraine and provided humanitarian aid to the Ukrainians. However, the opposition has alleged that the government is little more than a stooge of Moscow, covertly opposed to Georgia's Western path. They have dubbed the NGO law a "Russian law," and President Salome Zourabichvili (a French-born former government ally who now sides with the opposition) has accused the government of "sabotaging our path (to Europe) and our future."For its part, the Georgian government and many ordinary Georgians vividly remember the Georgian-Russian war of 2008, when a battle over the separatist territory of South Ossetia led to Georgia's crushing defeat. It is also remembered that despite profuse statements of friendship, support and partnership, the U.S. refused to intervene to save Georgia. The government has therefore been determined to avoid being drawn into new conflict with Russia. Remembering this, opposition members do not actually call for Georgia to join the war against Russia, though they accuse the government of siding with the Kremlin. This appears to reflect the strong feelings of most ordinary Georgians, who are deeply opposed to a new conflict.Georgia has not adopted most of the Western sanctions against Moscow, and as a result has greatly benefited from a surge in trade with Russia. Tbilisi has also sought to expand its economic options from its largely binary West-Russia format through increased trade and investment ties with Turkey, in addition to a newly-established strategic partnership with Beijing in 2023. Meanwhile, like populist parties across Europe and North America, the Georgian government has also channeled the hostility of conservative sections of Georgian society to the EU's cultural agenda, especially concerning LGBTQ issues.In 2012, the billionaire Bidzina Ivanishvili, who led the original Georgian Dream-Democratic Georgia coalition to victory and has remained the party's financial backer and éminence grise ever since, declared that the party would "drop Cold War rhetoric" against Russia while doing a "better job of defusing the real causes of the explosive situation" in the region. Ivanishvili, who made his fortune in Russia in the 1990s before transferring it to the West and Georgia, stressed Georgian Dream's commitment "to becoming an integral part of European and Atlantic institutions," but also emphasized the need to be "realistic about Georgia's possibilities" and "abandon saber-rattling" against Russia. These objectives have characterized the party policy up until the present.Not surprisingly, Western NGOs and governments have been strongly critical of the NGO law, which they see as "incompatible with Georgia's European path" and evidence both of growing authoritarianism and of Moscow's influence. In response, Georgian Dream has become strongly critical of Western interference in Georgia, which (rightly or wrongly) they now see as focused on supporting the Georgian opposition to overthrow the government through street power. Ivanishvili has accused a "global party of war" of seeking to use Georgians as their "cannon fodder" by drawing them into a catastrophic new conflict with Moscow: "The financing of NGOs, which presents itself as help for us, is in reality for strengthening (foreign) intelligence agencies, and for bringing them to power."In these fraught circumstances, anyone who wishes to see Georgia prosper on the path to the EU should have an interest in reducing the tension. The West is correct to criticize the NGO law (though we should remember that most Americans would consider it absolutely intolerable if foreign institutions, especially ones linked to foreign states, played the leading part in funding de facto political groups within the U.S.).However, Western governments and NGOs should be very careful not to allow condemnation of the law and sympathy for protests against it to become support for efforts actually aimed at overthrowing the elected Georgian government. Any such strategy would betray the West's own commitment to democracy, and would tend to encourage any government around the world that faced Western criticism to adopt increasingly authoritarian means to suppress dissent. Elections in Georgia are scheduled for October, and the West should of course do its utmost to ensure that they are free and fair. We need to remember that Georgia is indeed in a precarious position, both in security terms and economically, and that it is only prudent to exercise caution in its approaches to Russia — which is near, while the EU and US are far. We should also remember that the only legitimate way to change an elected government is through elections, and we should try to ensure that a majority of Georgians have the chance to express their opinion — not ours — of their government in October. Finally, in the generation after independence from the Soviet Union, Georgia was repeatedly racked by civil strife (in the 1990s, tipping over into civil war). This did not help Georgia's European path — and will not do so if it is repeated in future.

With NATO's 75th anniversary summit drawing near, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told the Munich Security Conference in February that Germany would this year meet NATO's 2% of GDP target for defense spending and would sustain this level "through the 2020s and 2030s."But Bastian Giegerich, the head of the London-based International Institute for Security Studies, has said that reversing the effects across Europe of more than 20 years of underfunding of defense capabilities will take at least a decade of substantially increased defense spending. He's not alone in thinking this way, and for good reason. Germany's 2024 budget allocates 51.8 billion euros for defense, by itself short of the 2% of GDP NATO benchmark. Germany seems on course, however, to meet the target by drawing down the 100 billion euro emergency fund announced by Scholz in his famous Zeitenwende (epochal change) speech to the Bundestag in February 2022. Disbursements from this fund are projected to keep Germany's defense spending at or above the 2% of GDP mark through 2028, after which Germany plans to fund defense through the regular budget process. Achieving this will require an increase of approximately 30 billion euros over the 2024 defense outlay. An increase of this magnitude to defense spending from the regular budget process will require overcoming very serious obstacles. Germany has well established limits on the fiscal deficit, which will create politically destabilizing distributional conflict when other spending priorities are forced to adjust to make room for a bigger defense budget.. This constraint will be even more binding if the economy, expected to grow at only 0.2% this year, remains weak. Fiscal probity is baked into German political culture and shored up by formal legal constraints. The "debt brake" written into the constitution in 2009 holds the federal budget deficit to 0.35% in any budget year. The opposition Christian Democratic (CDU/CSU) party, which, according to current polling trends, seems likely to return to power in the 2025 elections, is wary of any attempt to circumvent or reform the debt brake, which legally can be suspended only by invoking "emergency" conditions, as was done to fund pandemic spending, and to unlock 100 billion euros for defense spending in 2022. Last November, Germany's Constitutional Court ruled against the government's plan to repurpose 60 billion euros of unspent COVID funding to pay for green energy transition programs. The ruling coalition had to scramble to fill the hole in its budget, exposing the vulnerability of Germany's fiscal policy to distributional constraints. Farmers took protests onto the streets of Berlin to demand restoration of their diesel fuel subsidy. This kind of social tension is likely to follow any attempt to shift massive resources to the defense sector by cutting other programs. The green energy transition remains a priority for the coalition's two main parties — the Social Democrats (SPD) and the Greens — even though both are fully convinced of the need to boost defense spending. The fiscally conservative Free Democrats (FDP) and their leader, Finance Minister Christian Lindner, adamantly oppose reforming the debt brake or raising taxes. The only obvious way to square this circle would be to consider the continuing war in Ukraine an emergency and thereby unlock another 100 billion euros. This is obviously not an ideal way to finance a program of rearmament that might take decades, and such a maneuver might not survive scrutiny by the Constitutional Court in any case. It is becoming evident that, even with the provision of emergency funding, the defense industrial base can expand only gradually, and weapons procurement processes are limited by the time needed to manufacture new weapons and equipment, whether from Germany, elsewhere in Europe or the United States. For example, the 18 Leopard 2 battle tanks ordered to replace those supplied to Ukraine will arrive two years from now at the earliest. Meanwhile, Ukrainian president Zelensky recently assailed Germany for not delivering the Taurus missiles; he claimed Berlin decided the missiles were necessary for defending Germany instead.Social Constraints: Leadership and Public AttitudesThe German military was underfunded for years before February 2022, because the political leadership absorbed the liberal triumphalism of the 1989 democratic revolutions in Central and Eastern Europe and believed history pointed to global convergence on the liberal democratic model.Efforts to expand military recruitment began after the 2014 Russian takeover of Crimea, but has failed to attract new recruits in sufficient numbers. The number of troops remains stuck at 180,000. Some are now calling for reinstituting mandatory military service.The most effective and vocal advocate for Germany's rearmament is Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, an SDP politician widely touted as a possible successor to Scholz. Pistorius has said that the Bundeswehr must be made "kriegstüchtig" (war ready) and warned that Russia might attack a NATO member within the coming 8-10 years.These statements, very much against the grain of Germany's antecedent anti-militarist political culture, have not dented Pistorius' popularity. German elites and, to a lesser extent, the broader society seem to be moving toward greater acceptance of the need for national rearmament.The European Vision: Too Many Cooks?The European Commission has advanced its own plans to coordinate the financing of rearmament across Europe, favoring and fostering synergies among European defense-industrial firms. In principle, this initiative should pose no problem for Germany since Scholz, a committed European, has repeatedly stated that the EU is the framework for Germany foreign and security policy.Nevertheless, the Commission risks competing with member nations for available resources for equipment and weapons acquisition. Most member countries, including Germany and France, conceive of defense cooperation in a multilateral pan-European context, but would insist that member nations remain in the driver's seat.Emmanuel Macron's exhaustive vision for Europe— the "Sorbonne II" speech of April 26 — dealt extensively with the European imperative to develop a more capable conventional deterrent, albeit within NATO.His framing of the issue was the stark warning that "Our Europe can die," but he did not endorse any pooling of national sovereignty on defense policy. On the contrary, he pledged personally to convene "all partners" to develop a "new defense paradigm" for the "credible defense of the European continent."This is an intergovernmental framework rather than one featuring a leading role for the European Commission.Why the Path Ahead is DifficultBastian Giegerich of IISS says that for Germany "the mental shift, the societal resilience" needed to underpin rearmament "has not happened." This is true, but it is not only a matter of changing hearts and minds. Germany's limitations are embodied in its institutional framework and very resistant to change, given the perceived challenges from the populist right, the climate policy imperative, its generous social safety net, the fragmented party system, the self-imposed but broadly popular fiscal constraints, and complex coordination problems with key partners (above all France) and the European Commission. This transformation, even if embraced without reservation by Scholz or his successors, is a vastly complex and fraught agenda.

Last year's Hamas-led incursion into southern Israel and the subsequent Israeli war on Gaza, which has killed roughly 35,000 Palestinians, have impacted relationships within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) — members appear to be moving closer together. As the Gaza war expands into Lebanon, Yemen, the Red Sea, and elsewhere, and while Iran and Israel's hostilities brought the region into uncharted waters earlier this month, the monarchies on the Arabian Peninsula are strengthening ties within the larger Gulf Arab family.In a historical context, this makes complete sense. To understand why, it is useful to first go back to the chaotic period of the late 1970s and early 1980s.For the Persian Gulf's Arab monarchies, 1979 was a terrifying year. To varying degrees, the Western-backed Gulf Arab leaders saw both Iran's Islamic revolution and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan as dangerous developments. By 1981, the six conservative Gulf Arab states — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) — came together to bolster their collective security by establishing the GCC.Over the decades, the GCC states have put their ideological and geopolitical differences aside in the interest of growing Gulf Arab unity, particularly during periods of increased instability. Cases include the 1990/91 Kuwaiti crisis, the 2010/11 Arab Spring uprisings, the meteoric rise of Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in mid-2014, and the Taliban's return to power in 2021. By the same token, at times of greater stability in the region and fewer threats to the Gulf Arab monarchies, internal divisions and differences between the GCC members have tended to elevate to the surface.It was no coincidence that the first GCC crisis broke out in March 2014. At that time, the revolutionary tide of the Arab Spring had largely dissipated and the counter-revolutionary Gulf Arab states — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Bahrain — felt the need to pressure Qatar into abandoning the pro-revolutionary and Islamist-friendly policies that shaped Doha's approach to many of the 2010/11 uprisings which shook the Arab world. Yet, that GCC spat ended later that year after ISIL had usurped large portions of Iraq and Syria. Then, the second GCC crisis, which was an outcome of basically the exact same issues that led to the first GCC crisis, erupted in mid-2017 when ISIL was significantly less powerful.Although the Gulf Arab states — unlike Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria — do not share land borders with Israel-Palestine, all six GCC members are extremely worried about the situation in Gaza and its ramifications for the wider region, including the Persian Gulf. Among the Gulf Arab monarchies, there is much common cause and shared concerns about further regionalization of the Gaza war. These concerns have led to Gulf Arab officials becoming increasingly frustrated with U.S. leadership in the region and the Biden administration's refusal to pressure Israel into agreeing to a ceasefire."[The] war in Gaza has unified GCC [states] in terms of moral, political, and diplomatic solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinians," said Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, a Dubai-based Emirati political scientist, in an interview with RS. "Israel has become a killer machine in Gaza for the past 200 days and this is to nobody's liking in the Arab Gulf states," he added.There are important domestic ramifications to consider too. Officials in the Gulf Arab monarchies fear the potential for the Palestinian cause to mobilize and/or radicalize their own citizens in ways that could upset the status quo in GCC states and the wider region. Palestine-related protests in Egypt and Jordan have potential to fuel significant unrest in those two countries, whose stability is vitally important to the Gulf Arabs.Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince and Prime Minister Mohammed bin Salman (MbS) recently spoke by phone with the president of the UAE Mohammed bin Zayed (MbZ) and the emir of Qatar Sheikh Tamim. In these two conversations, the Gulf Arab leaders discussed the heightening of regional tensions and threats to stability and security in the Middle East. MbS, MbZ, and Emir Tamim all agreed on the need to mitigate security risks and take measures to prevent the region's crises from spiraling out of control.On April 22, Oman's Sultan Haitham paid his first visit to the UAE since he became his country's head of state in January 2020. While in Abu Dhabi, Sultan Haitham and MbZ discussed a host of issues at the bilateral, regional, and global levels. During Sultan Haitham's visit, companies from Oman and the UAE signed $35.12 billion worth of deals in various sectors such as transport and energy. The Omanis and Emiratis are focused on advancing their countries' economic integration through various projects and initiatives, most notably the Etihad Rail which links Oman's Sohar port to Abu Dhabi.The GCC states have come a long way in terms of mending fences since the historic al-Ula summit of January 2021 officially ended the Emirati- and Saudi-led blockade of Qatar. Indeed, it was not long ago when a phone call between MbS and Emir Tamim, or between MbZ and the Qatari emir, would have created many headlines given the extent to which Saudi-Qatari and Emirati-Qatari relations had deteriorated. "The Gaza war has brought Qatar and the UAE closer," Abdulla told RS.These past rifts within the GCC were not only about Qatar. The UAE and Oman were having their share of problems in bilateral affairs throughout Sultan Qaboos's final decade on the throne. Yet, Sultan Haitham's recent visit to the UAE underscored how the leadership in both Muscat and Abu Dhabi are focused on both playing their diplomatic cards to try to bring regional crises under control while also pushing ahead with their economic transformations at home through ambitious visions aimed at eliminating their economic dependence on hydrocarbons.In all GCC states, there is an understanding that more discussions between their leaders and growing levels of inter-GCC cooperation across a host of domains is necessary to achieve progress on both fronts. The Gulf Arab monarchies realize that this is not a time for internal divisions and friction between the different royal families to prevent the six GCC members from reaching their potential through greater Gulf Arab unity.GCC states have strengthened their relationships with each other since October 7 because "there needed to be coordination given that Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE are playing leadership roles in this conflict," said Aziz Alghashian, a fellow with the Sectarianism, Proxies & De-sectarianisation project at Lancaster University.Nonetheless, while the GCC members are bolstering their cooperation as Israel's war on Gaza rages, some experts believe that competition between the Gulf Arab states vis-à-vis Gaza might emerge after the dust settles and the post-war phase begins in the Palestinian enclave."There is potential that it could be turbulent in the future once there is a real process of addressing the day after in Gaza and that could [relate to] aspects of burden sharing [and] aspects of competition," Alghashian said. "So, there is that to look out for in the future. Maybe it's speculative for now, but I don't think we should count it out."

"European leaders' biggest concern is Trump's potential return to the White House in 2025... plans for a 'dormant NATO' and advocating a shift from burden-sharing to 'burden-shifting,'" groaned an essay from the European Council on Foreign Relations, as NATO started to gear up for its 75th anniversary with Brussels painted blue, in reflection of the sanctity of the alliance, which President Biden has called sacred. One would be forgiven to notice the religious instinct behind something that is supposed to be an amoral alignment based purely on interest. "NATO 's shield against aggression 'will permit us to get on with the real business of government... of achieving a fuller and happier life for all our citizens,'" says Secretary Blinken. Atlanticist think tanks agreed. Incidentally, at the same time, NATO is planning to move executive decision making out of American political chaos, to Europe. Politico reported that officials hope to move the Ukraine Defense Contact Group "into the alliance's control, according to three European officials and a U.S. official with knowledge of the internal deliberations." The hope is "to finalize the move at the NATO leaders' summit in Washington in July," Politico wrote, adding that it would be better to institutionalize the process, in case Trump wins again. "With NATO's supreme allied commander, General Chris Cavoli, in charge, such a step could protect the structure from any political change that may result after the November elections," reported Bloomberg.But why should talks of "burden shifting" be a "concern?" Why will NATO have to "institutionalize" decision making regarding humanity's greatest questions of war and peace, and then make it undemocratic? These are not idle questions; the very future of NATO hinges on them. Everyone, from President John F. Kennedy onwards, has talked about "burden sharing." It hasn't worked, because thus far there was no actual policy guideline about achieving burden shifting in certain domains. This shouldn't be a concern, as burden shifting is purely a moderate compromise. Burden shifting in certain domains is a strategy in order to achieve burden sharing, which is the aim. Only those who want to free-ride should be concerned about burden shifting. Likewise the issue of institutionalizing is the original curse of NATO. Unless NATO assumes a supranational political role instead of a defense alliance — which has been, and is, a valid worry of conservatives — one is skeptical of how any institutionalizing will work, much less guard against democratic mandates. Consider a hypothetical. NATO established a command and coordination where Americans are working. A government back home wins election saying they would put a stop to all that. The NATO leadership proceeds to refuse civilian oversight, Congress or Presidential order and continues as is.Getting NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe to decide on matters of war and peace, instead of the elected President or the Congress, will in reality mean that NATO bureaucracy (and American forces operating under the said NATO bureaucracy) will continue working despite changes to the civilian leadership back home and despite a democratic mandate to the contrary. That's a worldview, I suppose. But it is no different than military leadership in Pakistan or Egypt. One either believes in democracy and civilian leadership, or one doesn't. One cannot, however, tout a system of governance of and by unelected military bureaucrats, and then claim that it is for an alliance to ostensibly defend democracy.Contrary to some, I don't think NATO should be disbanded completely, nor do I think it is even possible to do that. Realists are not utopians. And NATO was a decent alliance, for as long as it was doing what it is supposed to do. In that light, the strategy of a future Dormant NATO is predicated on three assumptions. One, as I wrote, the "NATO bureaucracy is increasingly a barrier in the path of reduced American commitment. It is self-sustaining and prone to push missions that are beyond NATO's core role and, at times, opposed to the domestic interests of the United States." Two, there is no "Europe" as a coherent political identity, in the sense that there is no common European interest. Interests and threat perceptions are based on primarily geography, offensive power, offensive intention, and proximity. Both NATO and the European Union exist as artificial constructs, maintained by American martial prowess. Without American military power, the chances of the EU collapsing under its own contradiction are relatively high. This also gives America a unique leverage to shape and reshape Europe to its advantage, and not get taken for a ride. Three, the expansion of NATO has led to a "curtailing" of American power. This third point is counterintuitive but crucial. As I wrote, "the larger the alliance, the bigger the constraint on the hegemon. Expanding an alliance would, in turn, consolidate the liberal-internationalist orthodoxy and multiply an imperial, self-sustaining and expanding bureaucracy, making it more difficult for a hegemon like the U.S. to act on its own interests as opposed to the interests of the group. The bigger the alliance and the worse Russo-American relations are, the better the deal for protectorate states." To put simply, the tail now has more power than the dog. One can argue that our "liberal internationalist" friends also believe in all these assumptions. They believe that democratic passions are opposed to their grand plan of social engineering through military power, which is why they want to take the power out of the hands of messy electoral processes. They absolutely believe that the European Union is an artificial construct, and a potential future trade rival to America, which is arguably why they want to ensure its survival and are worried about an American retrenchment. They have swallowed their own worldview that members of alliances are all equal, and it is not asymmetric, and there are no hegemons and protectorates.A Dormant NATO will put a stop to all further expansions, all out of area operations, and would focus strictly on military defense of those within the club. A Dormant NATO framework will delegate all further European military burden, from infantry to logistics, armor, to artillery, in the hands of European states, for them to pay and man the posts, under an overarching American nuclear umbrella. The Cold War style of garrisoning was obsolete by the 1990s, as understood by the troop drawdown from a total of around 300,000 to around 70,000 over a span of half a decade. For a country that is reaching its Weimarian fiscal cliff, and increasingly looking like a late stage Soviet Union — with a bloated national security bureaucracy on autopilot with no democratic control, anti-meritocratic academia, broken manufacturing base, and foreign interventions and overstretch based on promoting a craven secular theocracy at home and abroad — the time to reform NATO and redistribute a fiscal burden was yesterday. Dormant NATO is therefore the moderate compromise. It is time to let the 75 year old entity sleep more.

Last week brought us the news that Dr. Craig Steven Wright, an eccentric Australian who has long claimed to be Bitcoin's pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto, was bench-slapped by the High Court, where Mr. Justice Mellor ruled at the conclusion of the proceedings that Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, not the author of the Bitcoin white paper, not the author of its software and, by extension, not the creator of Bitcoin.This bench ruling comes after years of litigation and weeks of hearings around the question of the provenance of the Bitcoin white paper and software. Full details of the court's findings on these points will be provided in a written judgment at a later date so I refrain from offering my own conclusions on the evidence, or an assessment of correctness of the ruling, here.As is public knowledge, I was one of the first lawyers – if not the first lawyer – to represent a client on the business end of Wright's years-long litigation campaign, when, in 2019, a Twitter user I know was the first crypto community member to receive legal threats from Wright's lawyers for claiming that Wright was not Satoshi, the very conclusion Mr. Justice Mellor also reached today. A short time later, an acquaintance of mine, Peter McCormack, dared to say the same thing. Peter was promptly sued by Wright in England. Wright won his case against Peter, albeit winning only nominal damages of £1 due to certain deficiencies in Wright's case.In my view, Wright's legal team chose to bring these claims in England for one reason, and one reason only: England is, and long has been, the easiest place in the English-speaking world to win a defamation action, because in England, the playing field is tilted so to the advantage of a claimant that even weak claims can win.This is not a new problem, and its roots go deep. Defamation is an ancient tort with its origins in the landed aristocracy seeking to protect their names and reputations from lesser men. The Anglo-Saxon tort of scandalum magnatum, a "fake news" tort for defaming great men of the realm (and thus not a tort capable of being inflicted on lesser men), was used as early as the 13th century. In later years, various other torts like seditious libel were used to punish political dissent – even where that dissent should be substantially true – and the imposition of these ancient rules in the Thirteen Colonies, most famously in the John Peter Zenger trial of 1735, served as focal points around which a new, young nation, the United States of America, began to develop its fledgling judicial system which led, eventually, to its free speech doctrine embodied today by First Amendment jurisprudence.In the modern formulation, defamation is the publication of a statement of fact to a third party, which is false, which is likely to cause serious harm to their reputation. In this respect it differs little from the tort in the United States. However, in England, the history of the tort – protecting the powerful from the powerless – has never been fully written out of its bones, because the burden of proof in a defamation action rests not with the claimant but with the defense. Not with the Saxon noble with the ear of the King, but with the humble pamphleteer who dared to speak out about his abuses. Not with the Member of Parliament accused of some lecherous or disreputable conduct, but the journalist who reported on it. Not with a person claiming to be Bitcoin's creator, offering nothing approaching definitive proof that he or she is (being a transaction or message signed with one of Satoshi's private keys), and armed with institutional financial backing, but the humble Twitter user who simply observed what appeared to be true, based on a cold assessment of the facts, and dared to repeat what he thought was true in writing. Put simply, at any time, in any defamation claim, the deck is always stacked against speakers and favors those who are most likely to be spoken about.On a practical level, this means that it is conceivable that a future plaintiff in England seeking to conceal certain truths or propound certain falsehoods, but with knowledge of the totality of the circumstances concerning that conduct, confidence that he or she can control those variables, and possessing the resources to reasonably predict that he or she will be able to use lawfare to intimidate others from discussing it, can stifle freedom of speech by using the threat of defamation litigation and, in some cases, being less than forthright with the courts. We need not look back to the Saxons to find a proven example of this: see, e.g., Jeffrey Archer, Baron Archer and former Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, who famously won a defamation case against the Star newspaper over a visit to a prostitute whose life was ruined by the case in the late 1980s, only to be sent to prison a decade and a half later, when his testimony was discovered to have been false.The point is not that Archer lied, or that he was punished for a lie. The point is that his initial case was so weak that he should never have won a civil action in the first place, or assumed that victory was possible, but the structure of English defamation law made a victory possible if not inevitable, thus incentivizing Archer to bring it anyway. Requiring a defendant to prove the truth of his statement, particularly where seeking to prove a negative, can be nearly impossible. It is far fairer and in the interests of justice to require a claimant, who starts the dispute, seeks the remedy, possesses direct knowledge of all of relevant facts about his past conduct, and is the party asking the state to intercede on his or her behalf with the full might of its power, to prove the truth under these circumstances.I offer no view on the truth or falsity of Wright's statements or evidence in this case. That is a matter for the High Court to address in its fuller ruling. What I do know is that the question of the truth of his claims should have been addressed years ago in Wright v. McCormack, but it was not dealt with because the burden of proof was on the defense and the cost of going through the exercise COPA - a coalition of very well-funded corporations - just went through was likely too much for an individual defendant like Peter to bear. In future, it is possible to make England a fairer place for speakers and help the English marketplace of ideas be a home for the truth. Ask claimants in a defamation action to bear the burden of proving their case. It's a simple change. Parliament should make it.

 A controversy broke out on social media this weekend: Taylor Lorenz interviewed the (or one of the) truly horrible people behind the far right Libs of Tiktok account.  It raised questions of whether one should platform the truly awful.  I have been thinking of platforming such for awhile  now, so I am using this as an opportunity to think through my stance (which is not at all based on a strong standing of the legalities of all of this).Let's start with the basics that people get so very confused about:No one is entitled to a platform, everyone is entitled to free speech.To be clear, when we talk about free speech, we need to be clear that the 1st amendment in the US (and probably the Charter of Rights and Freedoms in Canada) only restricts governments from restricting people's right to engage in free speech.  Clubs and, yes, businesses can restrict the speech of their members/employees in ways that the state cannot. Free speech does have some restrictions--the classic is you can't yell fire as a prank in a crowded theater as that is dangerous.  Inciting violence is also not so free, although your mileage may vary on what counts as incitement.  Is "Free Palestine" incitement? I don't think so.  Now, that whole platform is not the same thing as free speech thing. One is not obligated to give time/space/bandwidth/whatever to anyone (in ye olde days, US tv stations had to give equal time, and when it went away, that gave room for Fox and its ilk).  Universities, for example, don't have to provide stages and fora and audiences to far right speakers or even not so far right speakers.  Or far left ones. In an op-ed, I argued that the Conservative Party of Canada should not provide a prominent speaking position to a far-right retired general as that would politicize the Canadian armed forces.*  Of course, the supposedly cancelled retired general then used his perch at the National Post, a right wing newspaper, to argue that I was trying to deny him free speech.  Nope, I didn't say he couldn't rant in public, I was just arguing it was a bad idea for the CPC to amplify him.  He is entitled to say what he wants, he is not entitled to having his speech amplified.  There is a distinction here, and he is smart enough to get it, even if wants to play coy about how a dual citizen might dare to question him.So, the question is rarely whether to deny someone free expression (although when it comes to jury tampering or inciting violence, gag orders on the Trump family seem to be not only fair but wise), but rather who to platform and under what conditions.  Obviously, the starting point is the intention of the potential actor that might be platforming someone.  The example of the CPC: they wanted to attack the government and found a handy tool that might make it look like they presenting mainstream military views that contradict the government.  Yeah, tis bad faith bullshit, but they had that intent so they didn't care what the downstream effects will be on the military.The example of this weekend is a lot different: it is not just giving space for a hater to speak at length, but providing a critical interview where the interviewer pushes back and gets the hater to be revealed as shallow, incoherent, virulently racist and xenophobic.  To be honest, I haven't watched the entire thing because, well, yuck.  I am online enough (understatement) to know what Libs of Tiktok have been doing--inciting violence against Black Americans first and now LGBTQ+ folks. That the account deliberately names individuals so that its followers can then threaten those people.  Truly, truly awful.  But folks who are not so online may not be aware of this, so a WashPo reporter doing an extended interview with the source of all this hate is a good way to expose what's going on.  People can disagree about whether we need to hear from the source directly, but this is not platforming in the sense of giving someone a megaphone and letting them spread their views.  Recently, the governor of Oklahoma gave this far right white nationalist a position on the state's library advisory council.  That is giving someone a platform.  And then a non-binary kid gets killed, and the governor then acts all shocked.  Anyhow, sometimes these decisions are tricky because we want to expose awful people, but we don't want to provide awful people with greater audiences.  Folks might argue that we need the marketplace of ideas to sort this out, but like most markets and most invocations of the market metaphor, it really doesn't work like the metaphor. Ideas do not win or lose based on the quality of their debaters or the quality of the ideas themselves.  They win or lose based on what people do and who has the power.  That a far right white supremacist owns and controls twitter is a real problem that cannot be sorted out by everyone sharing their competing ideas online.  Musk is platforming far right racist and xenophobic stuff, and he is blocking stuff that is critical.  Suspending Navalny's wife a day or two after his death is a real tell.  Ultimately, journalists and organizations have to be prudent about who they give platforms and who they do not.  Again, no one is entitled to the front page or the editorial page or the university's biggest stage. Every decision to give someone a platform is just that a decision, which should be based on the benefits and the costs.  Academic freedom suggests giving space to a wide range of views, but there is no need to bring back that which has been thoroughly discredited--like flat earthers or those who buy into eugenic stuff or bell curves and IQ tests or antivaxxers.And, yes, we live in a time where Democracy is under threat. Which is a bigger danger: giving anti-democratic forces the megaphone or denying them platforms and then having those forces try to make those institutions feel bad for being hypocritical?  The bad faith actors want to use our values against ourselves.  It can be tricky about how to respond but respond we must.  So, that's my incoherent rambling on this topic.  You are required to read it, to respond, or to share it via social media.* I realize that folks can argue whether Maisonneuve is right wing or far right, but my coding rule these days if one uses "woke" disparagingly and essentially slurs those who are not cis straight folks, they are far right. If right wing folks want to say that is not fair, that those are mainstream views of the right, well, they are telling on themselves about where they are. 

Traditionally, the most important platforms for political analysis on television in the United States have been the Sunday morning news talk shows on the major networks—NBC, CBS, ABC, and Fox. The staple feature of the talk show format is the interviews with guests, who include newsmakers, prominent individuals, and current and former officials, followed by news roundtables or panels featuring officials, journalists and experts. How they discuss the issues of the day reflects the priorities and biases of the political elite, which risks leaving audiences uninformed and unexposed to a range of views in the world. When it comes to Gaza, these shows illustrate just how one-sided and detached are America's leading policymakers and media. The shows' names are most familiar to middle-aged and older Americans: Meet the Press (NBC), Face the Nation (CBS), This Week (ABC) and Fox News Sunday (FOX). These shows are not as dominant as they once were, but they still command relatively high ratings, ranging from the 908,000 viewers of Fox News Sunday to the 2.78 million viewers of Meet the Press in September, 2023. This writer carried out an analysis of the shows' guests and their remarks during the three months immediately following the Hamas attacks of October 7. The database Nexus Uni and the programs' websites provided transcripts from the episodes from October 8 to January 14. After removing episodes that did not discuss Gaza beyond a brief mention, there were 51 transcripts to analyze. In these transcripts, there were 140 guests, defined as "outside" or invited interviewees and panelists (removing from the analysis those guests employed by the networks as reporters or analysts as well as interviewees in the edited packages). Data were collected on these 140 guests regarding their national affiliation, employer, and job title, and their remarks were ranked on a scale from pro-Israeli to neutral to pro-Palestinian. Finally, the frequency of particular key words was gauged — such as "hostages," "occupation," and "ceasefire," among others.FindingsThe overwhelming majority of guests—120 out of 140—were American. Most notably, not one of the American guests were of Palestinian heritage or even Arab-American. Three American guests were of South Asian Muslim heritage, but only two of them expressed pro-Palestinian views. The third works for a conservative think tank and was far more sympathetic to Israel in his comments than the other two. Israelis made up the second most common nationality, 10 total guest appearances, representing only 7 percent of the total (see chart 1). Only one program, CBS's Face the Nation, had any Arab nationals as guests, but they were relatively well represented on that show, making up 11 percent of all the guests who appeared. Notably, only one Palestinian national was a guest. Hussam Zomlot, the head of the Palestinian Mission to the United Kingdom was on Face the Nation in November, 2023.The views expressed by American interviewees and panelists were overwhelmingly pro-Israel. These guests were more than twice as likely to sympathize with Israel than with the Palestinians. As chart 2 shows, there was some variation worth noting. Fox News Sunday was an outlier with a whopping 96 percent of guests expressing pro-Israel views; there was not a single pro-Palestinian view expressed.
On the other programs between 60 and 65 percent of guests expressed pro-Israel views. In sum, pro-Israeli views were almost five times as frequent as pro-Palestinian on all the aired programs.
One systematic problem with these shows is that they overrepresent the views of a narrow band of the political elite in the United States. Eighty-two percent of guests (115 out of 140) on the Sunday news shows analyzed for this article were current or former US government officials. Given the lopsided nature of U.S. foreign policy as resolutely pro-Israel, it is expected that framing in these talk shows would disproportionately reflect that position, even though Israeli guests were a small percentage of those who appeared.Bias in FramingDue to the biases in U.S. foreign policy and the paucity of Palestinian and Arab perspectives, the key contexts that identify deep problems with Israeli policies were nearly absent. For example, "occupation" was mentioned only 15 times in the 51 hour-long programs analyzed, and it was mostly the Arab guests who did so. By contrast, guests uttered the word "hostages" 529 times, a ratio of 35 mentions to one mention of "occupation." The Israeli hostages in Gaza were brought up ten times per program on average. Hamas and other groups declared that they took hostages in part to secure the release of Palestinian prisoners, many of whom Israel holds without charge. Yet, Palestinian prisoners were mentioned only 17 times. Israel's holding of Palestinian prisoners is of course a function of its military occupation. One surprising finding was how few guests talked about "Palestinians" at all. As a baseline, guests mentioned Israel 2,282 times. Hamas was brought up half as frequently (1,108 times). Yet, Palestine or Palestinians — who have borne the brunt of Israel's war on Gaza — merited only 456 mentions, less than half as often as Hamas. This signifies a preferred framing of the war as a conflict between Israel and Hamas, which distracts from Israel's systematic punishment of Palestinian civilians. Another framing pattern concerns how to end the Gaza crisis. Despite "ceasefire" being the prevailing demand of a vibrant U.S. protest movement, including a growing number of U.S. lawmakers and many world leaders, it was hardly discussed. "Ceasefire" was brought up only 94 times on all the shows. More than half of these mentions were on Fox News Sunday, where guests roundly opposed the idea. Even more scarce than "ceasefire" was the term "genocide," which was uttered by guests just 23 times. And only once was it applied to Israel's conduct in Gaza, despite its widespread consideration by scholars, international lawyers and governments, in relation to Israel's siege and bombardments of Gaza. Notably, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found South Africa's complaint of genocide plausible in at January ruling.The lone appearance of "genocide" in relation to Gaza came when when the host of one show read a social media post by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) regarding the ICJ case. But the overwhelming majority — 20 of the mentions total — repeated the erroneous claim that American university campus protest slogans are calls for genocide against Jews. ConclusionGiven the strongly pro-Israel tilt in U.S. foreign policy, many will not find these results surprising. This study documents the extent to which that bias manifested and it is overwhelming. That the Sunday news shows on ABC, NBC, and FOX failed to include a single Palestinian guest (while CBS only had one) is an astounding failure. Yet, no data point should be as worrisome as the fact that officials in the Biden administration and Democratic lawmakers were among the main producers of pro-Israel messaging that did not take into account — at all — realities on the ground in Gaza or potential war crimes, if not genocide, being committed in Gaza today.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban agreed to a funding plan for Ukraine on Thursday, allowing the European Union to clear the final hurdle on its $54 billion aid package that will run through 2027. Orban, who had pushed for an annual review of the fund so that he would have the opportunity to veto additional aid each year, had been the sole holdout on the package since it was introduced last December.. It is unclear what, if any, material concessions Orban received before agreeing to the new package. The Financial Times earlier this week reported that Brussels had itself drawn up a plan to "sabotage" Budapest's economy if it vetoed the aid package. "All 27 leaders agreed on an additional €50 billion support package for Ukraine within the EU budget. This locks in steadfast, long-term, predictable funding for #Ukraine," Charles Michel, the president of the European Council, wrote on the social media platform X. "EU is taking leadership & responsibility in support for Ukraine; we know what is at stake." Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky agreed, saying it was "very important" that the funding plan had been agreed to unanimously. "Continued EU financial support for Ukraine will strengthen long-term economic and financial stability, which is no less important than military assistance and sanctions pressure on Russia," Zelensky wrote on X. This development comes at a precarious time for Ukraine, as the stalling of aid from Europe and the United States had left it on the verge of an economic crisis. While the support from Brussels is welcome news, new aid from Washington remains tied up in Congress. "The only way to preserve macroeconomic stability is support from the United States," Ukraine's finance minister, Serhiy Marchenko told the New York Times this week. The fate of President Joe Biden's national security supplemental request, which contains $60 billion for Kyiv remains unclear. Negotiations regarding the border security policy that is included in the bill have been ongoing for weeks. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said on Thursday that the text of the bill is expected to be finalized by Sunday, and that the legislation will be brought to a vote no later than next Wednesday. Whether or not it makes its way through the Senate, the bill faces even longer odds in the Republican-led House.NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg traveled to Washington this week to try to convince notable skeptics of continuing aid to Ukraine. He met with Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) and gave a speech at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Stoltenberg struck a positive tone about his visit, saying that he was optimistic that Washington would pass another tranche of aid."I expect that the United States will find a way to support Ukraine, because this is in U.S. national security interests to ensure that President Putin doesn't win and that Ukraine prevails," Stoltenberg told NBC News' Andrea Mitchell on Wednesday. He also released a joint statement with Johnson saying that they had "addressed the importance of sending a clear, decisive message to President Putin that he will not win his war of aggression in Ukraine."But, as RS's Connor Echols explained this week, the secretary general's efforts are up against serious roadblocks. "[Stoltenberg's arguments are] unlikely to satisfy concerns from budget hawks and restrainers, who fear the possibility of open-ended conflict with sky-high cost," Echols wrote. "But, as Ukraine's military capacity continues to degrade, only time will tell if Stoltenberg's last-ditch effort proved persuasive."In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:— The U.S. and Germany are pushing back at an attempt from other NATO members — namely Poland and the Baltic countries — to formally invite Ukraine to join the alliance during an upcoming summit this July, according to Foreign Policy. "[P]roponents of this view believe that bringing Ukraine into NATO sooner rather than later will be cheaper in the long run than the current Western strategy of funneling arms and munitions to Ukraine in perpetuity while keeping NATO membership on the back burner," according to the report. "Letting Ukraine into NATO too soon, however, particularly as large swaths of its territory are still occupied by Russian forces, could trigger a full-scale NATO-Russia conflict, given the 31-member alliance's bedrock collective defense clause that calls for all NATO countries to defend any one country that has been attacked. — Former NATO Supreme Allied Commander James Stavridis said that there may be a window for negotiations between Russia and Ukraine at the end of 2024, as both sides continue to suffer from war fatigue. "I think toward the end of this year, probably after the U.S. elections, we've got a moment for potential negotiation," Stravridis said, according to The Hill. He also laid out the broad parameters of what such a deal could look like, saying that the conflict will end "like the Korean War, meaning that Russia will probably still have control of some portion of Ukraine, Crimea, the land bridge to Russia. "On the other hand, I see Ukraine coming into NATO," he continued "I think the outline of that deal will probably become more clear as this year goes on."— Russia and Ukraine completed another round of prisoner exchanges on Wednesday. The exact figures were disputed, with the Russian defense ministry saying that each side had released 195 prisoners, while Ukraine's Coordination Headquarters for the Treatment of Prisoners of War said that it had received 207 prisoners . This was the first prisoner exchange since a plane carrying a reported 65 Ukrainian POWs crashed while heading to a similar swap last week. Moscow accused Kyiv of shooting down the plane, calling it "a terrorist act." Ukraine has neither confirmed nor denied responsibility. —The Washington Post is confirming earlier reports that Zelensky is planning to fire top military commander Valery Zaluzhny at some point in the near future. "Zaluzhny's popularity — both within the military and among ordinary citizens — makes his removal a political gamble for Zelensky. It also poses strategic risks at a time when Russia has intensified its attacks and Western security assistance for Kyiv has slowed," according to the Post report. "The general has built strong rapport with his Western counterparts and has often been able to advocate directly for certain materiel and seek counsel on battlefield strategy." However, friction between the two men has continued to grow following last summer's failed counteroffensive and ongoing disagreements over how many more soldiers Kyiv will need to mobilize this year.U.S. State Department news:In a Wednesday press briefing, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller denied reports that Washington was working behind the scenes to delay Ukraine's path to joining NATO."Those reports are incorrect," Miller said. "You've heard the President himself as well as the Secretary say it a number of times, that Ukraine will be a member of NATO."

As of this writing, the United States and UK have carried out nine rounds of strikes against Houthi targets in Yemen, and Washington is mulling a response to the drone attack that killed three American soldiers in Jordan on Sunday. All of this has increased fears of further escalation in the Middle East and sparked a debate in Congress over the legality and strategic rationale of the U.S. response. Last week, four Senators — Mike Lee (R-Utah), Tim Kaine (D-Va.), Todd Young (R-Ind.), and Chris Murphy (D-Conn.) — sent a letter to the president, telling him that under the Constitution, the Congress must deliberate and vote on whether to take the nation to war. Biden did not go to Congress for approval before launching the airstrikes in Yemen."We strongly condemn the repeated Houthi attacks against international cargo ships and U.S. military assets protecting those ships in the Red Sea," the letter reads. However, "while the Houthis and their backers, namely Iran, bear the responsibility for escalation, unless there is a need to repel a sudden attack the Constitution requires that the United States not engage in military action absent a favorable vote of Congress."The missive also lays out a series of questions for Biden to ensure that the American response to the situation in the Red Sea is "strategic and authorized," including whether the strikes fall into the administration's understanding of "self-defense," under which legal authorization the administration carried out the strikes, and on what date U.S. forces were "introduced into hostilities" in Yemen. Why is any of this important? RS asked Senator Lee about the letter, his response to the Jordan attacks, his concerns over a wider war with Iran, and whether other colleagues in Congress feel the same urgency to hold the administration to account.RS: Do you expect President Biden to come before Congress for authorization if the administration plans to respond to the drone attacks in Jordan?Sen. Lee: I do not know if President Biden will voluntarily ask Congress for authorization to retaliate following the drone attacks in Jordan, but he should. He is within his rights to conduct defensive strikes in cases of immediate threats to the United States and its military, but as we have already seen, the Biden administration already interprets this prerogative far too broadly in other areas of the Middle East. It is possible that retaliation is indeed the right move, but we cannot allow President Biden to sleepwalk America into an undeclared war with Iran in the process. RS: You recently sent a letter to President Biden urging him to go to Congress before pursuing further offensive U.S. military action against the Houthis. Why does the president have to go to Congress to authorize these strikes? Are there any plans to pursue a legislative vehicle that would authorize the use of force?
Sen. Lee: Every military decision made by the executive branch must be within the bounds of what the Constitution allows and consistent with the War Powers Resolution. The Constitution deliberately vested the power to make war with Congress, in Article I — keeping this power with the branch closest to the people who will bear the costs. Absent specific authority from Congress, the President reserves the power to defend the U.S. and its forces from imminent attacks. The Biden administration's pattern of engaging in offensive airstrikes without authorization and calling such actions defensive is a warped understanding of the interactions between the legislative and executive branch powers in war making. RS: The letter had four signatories, two from each party. Do you see potential for more bipartisan buy-in on this issue? If not, why not?
Sen. Lee: I have found great success in working with a serious group of members from both sides of the aisle in this space. The 2019 passage of the Yemen War Powers Resolution, which passed both chambers, was made possible by a bipartisan coalition. When the focus is kept on reasserting and restoring the role of Congress in the decision to declare war, a coalition of this kind can make history.RS: There are recent conflicting reports that the Biden administration is considering a withdrawal of troops from Syria. In the past, you have supported efforts to withdraw. Would you support a withdrawal of troops from Syria today?Sen. Lee: The first-order issue I had when U.S. troops were introduced into Syria remains the same today. Congress has never provided authorization for use of military force in Syria, nor has any administration provided a specific mission for U.S. presence that includes clear objectives and timelines on engagement. Strategic errors of this magnitude are how the United States ends up in endless wars, and it is exactly why the decision to make war was intentionally vested in the legislative branch and not in the hands of one, all-powerful but fallible executive.RS: You recently told The American Conservative that "We've been down this road before and we know it costs the U.S. blood and treasure for little gain." How concerned are you about the risk of escalation in the Middle East that could draw the U.S. in even further? What steps do you think could or should be taken to reduce these risks?
Sen. Lee: I am deeply concerned about escalation in the Middle East. For President Biden to admit that airstrikes have not changed the strategic environment in favor of U.S. interests while announcing his intention to continue them is wildly reckless policy. Beyond that, it doesn't seem the administration is concerned about how any of this affects the strategic landscape broadly for the United States. Both the 2018 and 2022 National Defense Strategies acknowledge that we cannot effectively engage in active military campaigns in two theaters at once, even by proxy, and yet the Biden administration seems perfectly content to ignore its own acknowledged limits. RS: Do you support the repeal of the 1991 and 2002 authorizations for the use of military force in Iraq? Do you expect that efforts to repeal these AUMFs will succeed this year?
Sen. Lee: Keeping outdated AUMFs on the books creates an unnecessary risk of misuse. The 1991 and 2002 AUMFs should have been repealed years ago and I joined a number of my colleagues in cosponsoring bipartisan legislation to do this. The repeals passed the Senate last year and I continue to encourage my colleagues in the House to take action to complete the repeal. I also believe that Congress needs to begin a serious debate on the merits of maintaining the 2001 AUMF, which has become the fallback "authorization" cited for most military action in the Middle East.

UPDATE, 1/16: Trump won the Iowa caucuses early-on Monday night, with 51% of the vote totals, followed by Ron DeSantis at 21%, Nikki Haley at 19%, and Vivek Ramaswamy, who later suspended his campaign, at 8%. In exit polling, 12% voters said that foreign policy was their most important issue going into the caucuses, behind the economy (38%) and immigration (34%).On the eve of the Iowa Caucus, a Donald Trump caucus captain said that Nikki Haley was a "warmonger" and a shill for the Deep State, and that Ron DeSantis was pretty much the same.Welcome to the beginning of the 2024 Republican primary contests where foreign policy is very much a part of the conversation.While Trump is still far ahead of his primary competitors, the battle for a distant second is in play. A Des Moines Register/NBC News poll last week showed Trump with 48 percent in Iowa, Haley at 20 percent and DeSantis at 16 percent. Vivek Ramaswamy trails in fourth with 8 percent. The Iowa caucuses begin tonight at 8 p.m. EST.Just as noteworthy, an Associated Press poll released in early January revealed that, "Foreign policy has gained importance among respondents from both parties. Some 46% of Republicans named it, up from 23% last year. And 34% of Democrats list foreign policy as a focal point, compared with 16% a year ago.""It also shows that the Israeli-Hamas war is feeding public anxiety," AP noted, reporting that double the amount of Americans are bringing up foreign policy now as compared to last year's polling on the same subject. The data also showed concerns about U.S. involvement with the Ukraine conflict were about where they were a year ago.But via their positions on both the Israel-Gaza and Russia-Ukraine conflicts, this is a diverse GOP presidential field when it comes to foreign policy.Donald TrumpThe current Republican frontrunner boasted in the spring that he would settle the Ukraine-Russia war in 24 hours. "The key is the war has to stop now because Ukraine is being obliterated," Trump said in March.Meanwhile, he has issued intermittent and mixed messages on Israel-Gaza, though often seems to imply it was a problem of those entities and not necessarily the U.S."So you have a war that's going on, and you're probably going to have to let this play out," Trump told Univision in November. "You're probably going to have to let it play out because a lot of people are dying."Trump appeared to acknowledge that as far as grievances, there were two sides regarding Palestine and the Jewish state. "There is no hatred like the Palestinian hatred of Israel and Jewish people. And probably the other way around also, I don't know," the former president said. "You know, it's not as obvious, but probably that's it too. So sometimes you have to let things play out and you have to see where it ends." Trump has called what was taking place in Gaza "unbelievable."Nikki HaleyIf Trump's inclination on both Ukraine and Gaza is somewhere between diplomacy and letting things play out, there are not two sides in these conflicts for Nikki Haley. For the former United Nations ambassador, there is the impenetrable righteousness of Ukraine and Israel, and the undebatable evil of Russia and Palestine.And she wants the U.S. fully backing the good guys of both. If you liked George W. Bush kicking off the Global War on Terror by declaring, "either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists," then Haley is your candidate.For Republicans, particularly in leadership and the donor class, for whom Bush-Cheney still represents the fundamental approach to Republican foreign policy — trying desperately to ignore that attitudes in the Trump-era base have changed — Haley is unquestionably their candidate.Not surprisingly, neoconservative lodestar Bill Kristol is a big Haley fan, and on the flipside, antiwar Republican Sen. Rand Paul recently launched a 'Never Nikki' campaign.Ron DeSantisBut if some Trump supporters revel in calling Haley a "warmonger," Ron DeSantis, who began his campaign promoting himself as a more responsible or viable version of Trump, now often gets lumped in with Haley.After calling Ukraine-Russia a "territorial dispute" in March 2023, the Florida governor seemed quick to walk back his remark, calling Russian head Vladimir Putin a "war criminal."In contrast, Trump has been urged to call Putin a war criminal but has refused to do so, while also admitting Russia "made a mistake" in invading Ukraine. "If you say he's a war criminal it's going to be a lot tougher to make a deal to get this thing stopped," Trump said in May.Haley has said she thinks President Biden isn't being aggressive enough with Russia.DeSantis has said it is far more important to support Israel than Ukraine, and that he would not try to stop Israel's war in Gaza, going so far as to say in the last Republican debate that he would support "mass removal" of the Palestinians.Vivek RamaswamyThe clearest '"America First" foreign policy message in 2024 to date on these two conflicts has not come from Trump, but entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who doesn't want the U.S. involved in the Russia-Ukraine war and says a negotiated peace with Ukraine giving up some territory is the only solution. "I don't think it is preferable for Russia to be able to invade a sovereign country that is its neighbor, but I think the job of the U.S. president is to look after American interests," Ramaswamy said in June. Haley has said Putin is "salivating" over a Ramswamy presidency — a neocon tactic used in the past on anti-war Republican candidates like Ron Paul, who was constantly accused of siding with America's enemies.Ramaswamy has said Israel had the right to defend itself after the October 7 terrorist attacks, but opposes U.S. intervention and aid, but also says that aid should be contingent on what actions Israel's government takes in Gaza."Israel is barreling toward a potentially catastrophic ground invasion of Gaza without clear objectives," Ramaswamy said in late October. "'Destroy Hamas' is not on its own a viable or coherent strategy."The fight for the foreign policy mantleTwo decades after the Global War on Terror, some candidates still run to carry on the legacy of George W. Bush, but others — even frontrunners — appear to reject that kind of foreign policy.The same goes for some Republican voters, though they appear split on the Ukraine and Israel issues. While a growing number oppose more aid to Ukraine for example, a plurality say the U.S. is not doing enough to support Israel in its war on Gaza and are more likely than Democrats to support Israel's bombardment and siege of the Palestinian territory. There is some hope, with restrainers on the conservative side quite vocally questioning not only the strategic thinking behind Biden's recent strikes against the Houthis, but their constitutionality.What does a Republican foreign policy look like in 2024? We won't know for some time, but it's arguably more of a question than an answer right now than at any time in modern party history.

The long-anticipated move by leftist MP Sahra Wagenknecht to form a new left-populist party opens the prospect of a more active debate within Germany on the policy course taken by the now highly unpopular coalition of Social Democrats, Greens and liberal Free Democrats (FDP).The potential appeal of this new party will depend largely on whether voters agree that the policy of supporting Ukraine is responsible for Germany's economic downturn.Party ConfigurationThe German political scene has evolved in recent decades away from the alternation in power of the center right Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and the center left Social Democrats (SPD), often with the FDP in coalition with one or the other of these, to present a spectrum of parties including the center left Green party, the far-left Die Linke (the Left) party and the right-wing nationalist Alternative for Germany (AfD).With the lone exception of AfD, these parties all broadly support Ukraine's war effort, until Ukraine itself is ready to seek a negotiated settlement. CDU/CSU support now stands at 29.4%. The AfD comes second with 21.2%. Support for the three governing parties together has fallen to 35.6%. The AfD's spectacular rise in polls seems to many analysts to suggest a generalized dissatisfaction with the status quo, and not necessarily the sudden conversion of many Germans to far-right extremist views. Wagenknecht has called this a "representation gap," one that her party would seek to exploit. The long-anticipated announcement on October 23 of the launch of a new party led by Die Linke MP Sahra Wagenknecht makes the course of German politics much less predictable. Even more than the AfD, the new party foregrounds its opposition to the prevailing stance on the war in Ukraine. Antiwar politics and the "representation gap"A majority of Die Linke's Bundestag delegation has backed tough sanctions against Russia, while still opposing weapons exports to Ukraine. Tensions within the parliamentary delegation grew as Wagenknecht, in public and in the Bundestag, assailed the sanctions policy and called for the opening of negotiations to end the war in Ukraine. The party has hovered since the last election just below the 5% threshold of support needed to win representation in the Bundestag. The breaking away of Wagenknecht and her nine colleagues from the Die Linke faction reduces that party to a parliamentary group, rather than a faction, affecting its funding and other prerogatives in the Bundestag.Wagenknecht and the nine other Die Linke MPs who have joined her effort to form the new party have provisionally named it the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance. They plan to have the party officially formed and ready to contest the European Parliament elections of June 2024 and three state elections in Saxony, Thuringia, and Brandenburg (all in the former East Germany) later next year. This timing seems well chosen: European Parliament elections are typically favorable to smaller parties, and many voters in the eastern states are, for various reasons, favorable to the Wagenknecht initiative. A snap poll reported on October 31 found that 14% of voters could imagine themselves voting for the new party. This would immediately place it in fourth place, behind the CDU/CSU, AfD, and the SPD, and ahead of the Green party. The new party's impact would be felt mostly on the AfD, but would attract support from all parties other than the Greens and Die Linke itself. Wagenknecht's stated aim is to fill a "representation gap," which means her party will seek to represent those German voters who do not support further arming of Ukraine and who favor efforts to settle the conflict through diplomacy. Evidence of the existence of this gap is the spectacular rise of AfD which began just after Russia's invasion in February of 2022 (when AfD support stood at 9.5%) and more recent polls placing AfD support above 20% since mid 2023. As of March of this year, about 30% of Germans found the arming of Ukraine to have been excessive, and a small majority — 52% — said diplomatic efforts to end the conflict had not been adequate. More recently, a majority (52%) opposed providing Taurus missiles to Ukraine.Wagenknecht's anti-war popularityWagenknecht has been an MP since 2009 and was co-leader of Die Linke in the Bundestag from 2015 to 2019. Born in East Germany, she became active after 1989 in the post-communist Party of Democratic Socialism, initially heading its leftmost, avowedly communist wing. The PDS merged with disaffected leftists of the west German SPD in 2007 and became Die Linke, which for some time enjoyed some electoral success, including in western Germany. Former SPD leader and finance minister, Oskar Lafontaine, was co-founder of Die Linke and is Wagenknecht's husband.Because of her frequent appearances on political talk shows, Wagenknecht is fairly well known to the German public. Often the lone dissenter against the prevailing posture on Ukraine, her arguments are always persuasive, articulate and above all dispassionate. She is a controversial figure, but one that remains among the most popular German politicians. A recent poll showed her finishing third behind Defense Minister Pistorius and CSU leader Markus Söder in national approval ratings.Ukraine War positions: AfD and WagenknechtAlthough AfD's published program states that there can be no viable security order in Europe that excludes Russia, this issue is not often emphasized in their appeal to voters. By contrast, Sahra Wagenknecht's notoriety is entirely wedded to her very public antiwar stance. In February 2023, Wagenknecht joined Alice Schwarzer, a leading anti-war activist and editor of the feminist journal EMMA, to put forward a Manifest für Frieden (Manifesto for Peace) and inviting signatures online.The antiwar demonstration in Berlin on February 25, led by Wagenknecht and Schwarzer, attracted participation by about 10,000 people, but did not produce the momentum that the organizers might have hoped for.Wagenknecht has called herself a "conservative leftist," faulting Die Linke with having built its support base among younger, urban progressive voters while allegedly neglecting voters of the working class. This dispute has taken the form of a contest between an identity vs a class basis of leftist politics. Wagenknecht argues for the refocus of the left on defense of the interests of the German working class. She has sounded some caution about what she sees as excessive openness to flows of migrants.What does it mean?The launch of organizational efforts to form Wagenknecht's new party opens the prospect of a more active debate within Germany on the policy course taken by the weak governing coalition. Wagenknecht has stated that she and her party will not cooperate with AfD. The AfD made a very strong showing in recent state elections in the prosperous western states of Hesse and Bavaria, suggesting that its own potential is not confined to eastern Germany. By filling a tempting "gap" in German politics, the Wagenknecht alliance could endeavor to to curb the rise of AfD.

The historic removal of Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) from the House Speakership on Wednesday introduced a new roadblock to the prospect of future aid for Ukraine's war effort.Funding for Ukraine emerged as a centerpiece in the negotiations to pass government spending bills and avoid a government shutdown in recent weeks, and McCarthy's maneuvering last weekend was ultimately not enough to save his job. The race for who will take his spot has begun, with Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and Steve Scalise (R-La.) already throwing their hats into the ring and others, like Rep. Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) are rumored to be interested as well. One attribute that all share is reluctance to provide more aid to Ukraine, at least in the immediate future. "Looking at the Republican candidates for speaker, I have a tough time seeing any of them bringing Ukraine funding to the floor — even with strings," wrote Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman on the social media platform X. Sherman later added that he "would be surprised if the W.H. gets another Ukraine aid package this year." The reluctance stems from the growing opposition in the GOP caucus to continuing to provide aid for Ukraine. During the Pentagon Appropriations Act amendment process last month, just over half of Republican House members voted against including $300 million in Ukraine aid, and a handful of members maintained that they would not vote for any government spending bills that included money for Ukraine. After much back-and-forth, McCarthy had seemingly acquiesced to the bloc of House Republicans who are skeptical of funding Ukraine. The 45-day Continuing Resolution, which passed with the support of 209 Democrats and 126 Republicans over the weekend, did not contain any further money for Kyiv. But the issue was still a major reason for McCarthy's ouster, with Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), the leader of the revolt, accusing the former Speaker of working with President Joe Biden behind the scenes to ensure that Ukraine funding would ultimately be brought to the floor. "Members of the Republican party might vote differently on a motion to vacate if they heard what the speaker had to share with us about his secret side deal with Joe Biden on Ukraine. I'll be listening," Gaetz said earlier this week, before introducing the motion to vacate. On Sunday, Biden said that he expected McCarthy to "keep his word and secure the passage of support for Ukraine at this critical moment." McCarthy was eventually removed from his leadership position, with eight Republicans joining forces with every voting Democrat to vacate the speakership. It marked the first time ever that a "motion to vacate" had been successfully employed to remove a House Speaker from power. But if the next Speaker refuses to bring Ukraine aid up to a vote, supporters of sending more aid to Ukraine could have a couple of procedural options that would allow them to supersede the Speaker. One is a petition to discharge, a mechanism by which any House majority can bypass leadership and force floor action on a bill that has been stuck in committee. A petition to discharge would require legislation to first be introduced and be pending in a committee for 30 legislative days. Further, a petition to discharge would require the signatures of a majority of members. Even if all Democrats signed the petition, it would still need six Republicans to reach the necessary 218. There are far more than six Republicans who are in favor of continued aid for Ukraine, but the question is whether there are six who are willing to team up with Democrats and publicly buck their party's leadership. Because petitions to discharge always require members of the majority party to agree with the minority party's legislative priorities, they have rarely been employed successfully.Another option would be a maneuver known as "defeating the previous question." Voting on the previous question is a motion used to end debate on pending legislation and therefore bringing it to an immediate vote.If Democrats — once again with sufficient GOP help — vote to defeat the previous question on a future rule vote, it will leave the rule being voted on open to debate and amendment, which could theoretically be used to add in funding for Ukraine. Both options were floated in the media as ways for Democrats and moderate Republicans to overcome opposition from others in the GOP during the government funding debate. Experts viewed them unlikely to happen, because it would mean that a group of Republicans would essentially declare war on party leadership. At the time, Molly Reynolds of the Brookings Institution wrote on X that any solution that relied on a bloc of Republicans joining forces with Democrats would have to be "implicitly blessed by the GOP leadership."Therefore, bringing future Ukraine-related legislation to the floor over a speaker's public objection would require either rank-and-file Republicans taking a major political risk by going against them, or leadership doing so by privately endorsing the effort.A third possibility, a close observer of the Hill tells RS, is that members who want to continue funding Ukraine strike a deal with the next Speaker, either by pairing it with conservative policy goals like border security concessions, or by trimming down the size of the aid package. In any case, these options are all either unlikely or will take time to progress. The White House and legislators supportive of continued funding for Ukraine have argued that quickly passing another tranche of aid is essential to Kyiv's effort. "We cannot under any circumstances allow America's support for Ukraine to be interrupted," Biden said on Sunday after the stopgap funding measure was passed. "We have time, not much time, and there's an overwhelming sense of urgency," President Joe Biden said Sunday. On Tuesday, eight Senate Democrats sent a letter to House and Senate leadership, saying that "now is not the time to slow our aid to Ukraine.""It is past time for the U.S. Congress to take up and pass legislation guaranteeing Ukraine has the critical resources necessary to continue defending themselves against Putin's illegal war," they wrote. "We urge you to act immediately to advance legislation that will provide critical and sustained security and economic support for Ukraine to the President's desk for his signature."Proponents of expediting the next package argue that the money that Washington has already sent to Kyiv is quickly drying up, though as Responsible Statecraft has reported this week, the reality is more complex. Sen. Mark Warner, (D-Va.) noted on Tuesday that he does not have "100% clarity," on how much of the roughly $62 billion that has been appropriated for military aid remains. Given the events in recent months, the path forward for more Ukraine aid already seemed tricky. With House leadership in turmoil, it now appears to be even more daunting.