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Should Europe be seriously worried about the latest developments in Italian politics or simply shrug its shoulders and tick off the forthcoming parliamentary elections as yet another convulsion of a chronically unstable system? I have just received a nice envelop from the Italian Consulate in Paris with all the materials to vote to renew the […]
The post What is going on in Italy? appeared first on European Notepad.

Italian defense minister Guido Crosetto said Wednesday that his country had to be "realistic" about Ukraine's battlefield prospects and that "the time seems to have come for effective diplomatic action."
Crosetto said that Italy and Europe had to maintain its military support for Ukraine, but that continued aid did not mean avoiding talks of diplomacy.
"We have two paths: that of aid without 'ifs and buts,'" explained Crosetto. "And that of attempting to build a diplomatic path that brings us to the end of the conflict. The coming months will have to balance deterrence and diplomacy."
The defense minister's formulation is similar to those made by advocates of diplomacy in the United States, but is quite notable given Italy's steely support for Ukraine's war effort in the past.
"It is quite true, as the Biden administration has warned, that ending U.S. aid to Kyiv would quickly result in Ukraine's collapse. Sufficient aid to help Ukraine to stand successfully on the defensive should therefore continue," the Quincy Institute's George Beebe and Anatol Lieve wrote in RS this week. "But what U.S. policymakers need to understand and honestly acknowledge is that absent a compromise peace settlement, massive levels of aid will have to continue not just for the coming year, but indefinitely."
When Giorgia Meloni became Italy's prime minister in October 2022, there were concerns that Rome might back off of its support for Kyiv's war effort. But under Meloni's leadership, Italy has continued to deliver aid to Ukraine, and is now preparing an eighth tranche of military support.
Crosetto, though, said that the disappointing outcome of Kyiv's counteroffensive means that it is time to pursue a new approach.
The Italian minister said that he had noticed "important signals" from both Moscow and Kyiv that made him optimistic about the prospect of peace talks, saying that both sides had shown signs of war fatigue and internal dissent.
"In Ukraine, the domestic front no longer appears as united as in the past in supporting President Zelenskyy's policies, highlighting some political differences," Crosetto said.
Publicly, however, neither Russia's Vladimir Putin nor Ukraine's Volodymyr Zelensky have significantly shifted from their rhetoric at the start of the war.
Putin said during a recent end-of-year press conference that his goals remain "unchanged" and that there will be peace only when he achieves his objectives. Zelensky for his part said last month that discussions of peace talks were "not relevant" and that he will be willing to speak to Putin if Moscow accepts Ukraine's ten-point peace plan, which calls for the withdrawal of all Russian troops from all Ukrainian territory. Zelensky repeated during a surprise trip to Lithuania on Wednesday that, contrary to recent reports, he has received "no pressure" from allies to freeze the conflict and enter negotiations.
In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:
—Ukraine and a group of allies held a secret meeting in Riyadh in mid-December to try to solidify support for Kyiv's vision of a peace plan, according to Bloomberg. The summit followed a series of similar meetings over the last year, including ones in Copenhagen, Jeddah, and Malta, and before the next publicly announced one in Davos later this month. The discussions have featured evolving groups of countries from the West and Global South, though Russia has yet to be invited. Representatives from India, Saudi Arabia and Turkey were reportedly at the latest summit, though those from other nations who were present at previous iterations, including China, Brazil and the United Arab Emirates, did not attend.
"There was no major progress at the latest meeting, held in Riyadh, according to people familiar with the session who asked for anonymity to discuss matters that aren't public. Ukraine and its G-7 allies continued to resist calls from the Global South nations to engage directly with Russia," reports Bloomberg.
—National security adviser Jake Sullivan convened a meeting with companies from the defense industry on Monday to discuss how battlefield technologies could support Ukraine's war effort, according to the Los Angeles Times. The meeting reportedly included executives from Palantir, Anduril, and Fortem. "Officials emphasized that the discussions with defense companies are not a substitute for urgently needed supplemental funding from Congress," reads the report. "Rather, they said, they wanted to hear directly from companies about the capabilities they are developing."
—The Biden administration is supporting Congressional legislation that would allow it to seize $300 billion in frozen Russian assets, according to Bloomberg.
"Biden's support for the move emerges as Republicans in Congress have blocked more than $60 billion in funding for Ukraine, partly over concerns that Washington is carrying too much of the financial burden as Kyiv's counteroffensive stalls," reports Bloomberg. "The idea of using Russia's own money to finance the reconstruction of Ukraine is seen as a way to bolster US support for the war as some Republicans balk at continued funding." The legislation has received bipartisan support in Congress, and Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R-La.) called it "eminently responsible" during an interview last November.
U.S. State Department news:
The State Department did not hold a press briefing this week.

The latest data covering global arms sales shows that sale of arms in 2010 decreased to around $40.4 billion, 76% of which went to developing countries. This was a substantial 38% decrease in arms sales compared to 2009, and the lowest since 2003.

The global financial crisis has affected many countries, and developing countries have started to see a decrease in purchases in the last couple of years. Although most arms are sold to developing countries, 10 countries account for some 60% of all sales in the period 2003 to 2010, which the data covers. Saudi Arabia tops that list followed by India and the United Arab Emirates. (As well as concerns about some of the regimes in the top buyers, some of this spending is also said to be due to modernizing efforts.)

Updated graphs and charts on arms sales data are provided here.

The arms trade is big business. The 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Russia, France, United Kingdom and China), together with Germany and Italy, account for approximately 84% of the arms sold between 2003 and 2010.

Some of the arms sold go to regimes where human rights violations will occur. Corruption often accompanies arms sales due to the large sums of money involved.

Read full article: The Arms Trade Is Big Business

Europeans have become increasingly pessimistic about the chances that Ukraine can recover territories that it has lost since the Russian invasion two years ago, according to a new poll of 12 EU member states.And an aggregate average of 41 percent of respondents in the 12 countries said they would prefer that Europe "push Ukraine towards negotiating a peace with Russia" compared to 31 percent who said Europe "should support Ukraine in taking back the territories occupied by Russia."The poll, which was released by the European Council on Foreign Relations Wednesday, was conducted during the first half of January, before the latest advances by Russian forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine, notably in their takeover of the town of Avdiivka, which is likely to add to the impression that Kyiv is increasingly on the defensive.The survey interviewed a total of more than 17,000 adults in the 12 countries, which included Austria, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden.It found that continued support for Ukraine's war aims was strongest in Sweden, Portugal, and Poland where pluralities of respondents said Europe should support Kyiv's efforts to take back its territory. Support was weakest in Austria, Romania, Italy, Greece, and Hungary, where significant pluralities or large majorities in the five countries said Europe should focus on achieving a negotiated settlement. In France, Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany, opinion was more divided between the two alternatives.The poll's results offered a marked contrast to previous polling by ECFR, according to Ivan Krastev and Mark Leonard, co-authors of a report released with the survey. In June 2022, ECFR found that many Europeans favored a quick resolution to the war, even if that meant Ukraine would have to give up territory. But buoyed by Ukraine's battlefield successes in regaining territory one year later, a subsequent poll in 2023 found that a plurality of respondents in nine EU countries that were surveyed at the time wanted to support Ukraine's war aims and believed they were achievable."Now, in the aftermath of Ukraine's disappointing counteroffensive and amid flagging support in Western capitals, some of that optimism seems to have dissipated," according to the two co-authors.Indeed, an aggregate average of only ten percent of respondents in the new poll now believe that Ukraine will defeat Russia, while twice as many, or 20 percent, believe that Moscow will prevail. Across all countries, a plurality of respondents (37 percent on average) believes that a compromise settlement between the two countries will be the most likely outcome.The survey also queried respondents on the impact of a possible victory by former president Donald Trump in November's U.S. elections on the Ukraine war. An aggregate average of 43 percent of respondents said a new Trump presidency would make a Ukrainian victory "less likely." Asked what Europe should do if Trump were to end U.S. aid to Ukraine, an aggregate average of 41 percent respondents said they would favor maintaining (21 percent) or increasing (20 percent) aid to Kyiv, while a third of respondents said they would prefer to follow the U.S. in limiting assistance.

The latest data covering global arms sales shows that sale of arms in 2011 increased to around $85 billion, 84% of which went to developing countries. This was almost double the arms sales compared to 2010 which was the lowest since 2004.
One major factor for the increase was the US sales of arms to Saudi Arabia. Most other major arms sellers otherwise saw a decrease in sales and the trend in recent years had been declining sales.
The global financial crisis has affected many countries, and many developing countries started to see a decrease in purchases in the last few years. However, just 10 developing countries account for some 85% of all sales to developing countries in the period 2004 to 2011, which the data covers. Saudi Arabia tops that list followed by India and the United Arab Emirates. (As well as concerns about some of the regimes in the top buyers, some of this spending is also said to be due to modernizing efforts.)
Updated graphs and charts on arms sales data are provided here.
The arms trade is big business. The 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council (US, Russia, France, United Kingdom and China), together with Germany and Italy, account for approximately 85% of all arms sold between 2004 and 2011.
Some of the arms sold go to regimes where human rights violations will occur. Corruption often accompanies arms sales due to the large sums of money involved.
Read full article: The Arms Trade Is Big Business

Jennifer Huddleston


Recently, the Irish Data Protection Commission halted the launch of Google's new artificial intelligence (AI) product, Bard, over concerns about data privacy under European Union (EU) law. This follows a similar action by Italy following the initial launch of ChatGPT in the country earlier in 2023.
Debate continues over whether potential regulation is needed to address concerns about AI safety. However, the disruptive nature of AI suggests that existing regulations, which never foresaw such a rapid development, may be preventing consumers from accessing these products.
The difficulty of launching AI products in Europe shows one of the problems of the use of static regulation to govern technology. Technology often evolves faster than regulation can adapt. The rapid uptick in the use of generative AI is the latest example of the increasingly fast adoption of new technologies by more consumers. But regulations typically lack the flexibility to consider such disruption, even if it might provide better alternatives.
The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) is an EU law that created a series of data protection and privacy requirements for businesses operating in Europe. Many American companies spent over $10 million dollars each to ensure compliance, while others chose to exit the European market instead. Furthermore, the law led to decreased investment in startups and development of apps in an already weaker European tech sector.
But beyond these expected outcomes stemming from static regulations, the requirements of GDPR have raised questions about whether new technologies can comply with the specific requirements of the law. Stringent and inflexible technology regulations can keep us stuck in the past or present rather than moving on to the future. At the time, much of this concern was focused on blockchain technology's difficulty in complying with GDPR requirements, but now the disruptive nature of AI is showing how a regulatory and permissioned approach can have unintended consequences for beneficial innovation. A static regulatory approach impedes the evolution of technology, which, if permitted to develop without such restrictions, could potentially rectify the very deficiencies that the regulations originally aimed to prevent.
Unlike market‐​based solutions or more flexible governance, such a compliance‐​focused approach presumes to know what tradeoffs consumers want to make or "should" want to make. Ultimately, it will be consumers who lose out on the opportunity and benefits provided by new technologies or creative solutions to balancing these concerns.
While there may be privacy debates to be had over the use of certain data by the algorithms that power AI, regulations like the GDPR presume privacy concerns should always win out over other values that are significant to consumers. For example, more inclusive data sets run afoul of calls for data minimization in the name of privacy but are more likely to respond to concerns about algorithmic bias or discrimination.
Europe has long seemed set on continuing a path of heavy‐​handed regulation over a culture of innovation, and the growing regulatory thicket is starting to result in regulations that contradict one another on issues such as privacy. As the U.S. continues to consider any data privacy regulations and any regulatory regimes impacting AI, policymakers should carefully watch the unintended consequences the more restrictive approach in Europe has yielded.

 Wow, time is flying by.  I have one week in Finland, two weeks of tourism in middle Germany and Northern Italy with Mrs. Spew, and then two weeks left of research and speaking and networking and Berlining. I have really enjoyed my time here, have made significant progress in the project, learned a lot about how Europeans are thinking about Ukraine (haven't had a chance to talk with them about Iran-Israel yet), and eating a lot of great baked goods.   The research has been good but not great.  Parliamentarians have been too busy to talk to me, so I am hoping for better luck next winter when I return for another three months.This was a fun week as I started it having a beer in a beer garden with Erin Koenig, a Canadian diplomat I know via her work as chair of Women in International Security-Canada.  Tis a CDSN partner, so we had much discuss on that as well as comparative Berlin experiences.  And she was a great photographer as she patiently endured my interview on the Canadian defence review for the home crowd.  Had I had more warning about the DPU (I learned it was dropping a day before it dropped), I would have gotten my hair cut.  Shaggy, beer swilling Steve on the CBC!  I had a very productive visit to Potsdamn.  The Bundeswehr's Center for Military History and Social Sciences is in a very scenic location, right on the river.  I met with a couple of folks there to discuss future cooperation with the CDSN as we move towards our next big grant application which will focus more onc civil-military relations and will involve international partners more directly and more extensively.   I had a fun conversation with a Canadian student studying at Hertie about why Canada doesn't produce foreign policy reviews.  Tis is his project, and he guessed right that I might have opinions.  I have interacted with a handful of Hertie students regarding their projects.  They are sharp and engaging and fun--kind of like NPSIA students, as Hertie is the closest thing to NPSIA in Germany.  I spent my Saturday walking to and from an excellent small Indonesian restaurant.  One of my basic rules of life: if I can find such a place with a good rating, I must go.  And it was pretty terrific.  The walk was great too, as it was a spectacular Berlin spring day.  My only regret was that I discovered a street market too late in the day to enjoy it--it was closing up when I arrived.  So, something to do when Mrs. Spew is town in a couple of weeks.  I walked past some neat murals and a funky park (see pics below).I am finishing this now as I am about to board my flight from Frankfurt to Helsinki.  It has been one of my best Frankfurt experiences--incoming and outgoing planes eight gates apart, a small coffeeshop with sandwiches in between.  I may start to hate this airport less!  Anyhow, enjoy the rest of your weekend.  Next weekend's post will be about my first trip to Finland since a very short layover going from Leningrad to NYC long ago. 

The Pentagon is marshaling a new international task force to combat Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, and not a moment too soon, it would seem, as it has been expending millions of dollars in munitions to intercept the militants' drones and missiles since Oct. 7.

But is it essentially expanding the "target set" for the Houthis, who are clearly bent on proving their own strength (with, of course, Iranian backing) and scoring political points against Israel? Will this task force, named Operation Prosperity Guardian, bring the U.S. one step closer to a regional war that will, in the end, cost Americans much more?

According to the Department of Defense, the Houthis have conducted 100 drone and ballistic missile attacks since Oct. 7, targeting cargo vessels involving more than 35 flags from different nations in the Red Sea, including U.S Navy destroyers. Most have been intercepted, though some have hit their targets, causing minor injuries and damage. But with the hijacking of one ship, plus the major disruptions to shipping (the Houthis are blocking an estimated $10 billion in cargo a day) and resulting price hikes, the situation has put security in the region on high alert.

It is also costing the United States a pretty penny to act as the key defender of these predominant global shipping lanes. Each munition used to shoot down the Houthi missiles and drones costs between $1 million and $4.3 million and the ships cannot reload at sea and will have to return to port — perhaps Djibouti? — to reload if the kinetic activity goes on much longer, according to experts that talked to Responsible Statecraft this week.

According to experts, the US Carney and US Mason destroyers (also joined by U.K. warships in some cases) could be using a mix of RIM66 SM-2 and RIM66 SM-6 interceptors as well as ESSM Sea Sparrows to take down the drones. The Carney is outfitted with SM-3s as well, but it is not clear that they are being used. This is all part of a "layered defense" that deploys different interceptors depending on the threat. The missiles mentioned so far in numerous interception reports have been the SM-2 and the Sparrows.

According to the Missile Defense Advocacy Alliance (as of 2022), the SM-2 costs $2.1 million per unit; the SM-6 costs $4.3 million; and the ESSM Sea Sparrows costs $1.7 million. The destroyers are also fitted with the Rolling Airframe missile, which cost $905,000 in 2022. One source suggested, however, not to assume the high end of the cost, adding that the U.S. Navy was likely cleaning out their old stocks and not using the latest versions of these interceptors.

The Pentagon spent $12.3 billion on its missile defense programs in 2022 and $24.7 billion on its missiles and munitions. There is a lot in the stockpile. Plus the countries called into the new task force will have their own capabilities. They include, according to Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the United Kingdom, Bahrain, Canada, France, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Seychelles and Spain. Interestingly it does not include NATO ally Turkey, or Saudi Arabia (which of course is currently tied to a ceasefire in its own conflict with the Houthis in Yemen).

Maybe cost isn't the most urgent concern, then. Others who have spoken to RS said the threat of escalation — that the U.S. is close to engaging in an all-out war in the Red Sea at a time when its energy and resources are stretched in Ukraine and in sending Israel everything it asks for in the Gaza conflict — is key right now. Our Navy fleets — and U.S. troops/sailors in the region — are in harm's way, and it is important for the American people to assess if what happens next is truly in the national interest.The Houthis have said they will target the ships and U.S. Navy in the Red Sea until Israel stops its bombardment of Palestinians in Gaza. If this video is any indication, the new Operation Prosperity Guardian is going to have its hands full, and millions more dollars in U.S. missile interceptors will be expended before this situation is resolved.

Japan has gone through a gradual process of dismantling its self-imposed ban on exporting lethal weapons, a process that reached a new plateau with last month's decision to permit the export to third countries of the next-generation fighter aircraft to be developed jointly with the United Kingdom and Italy.When this policy change is read in conjunction with the U.S.-Japan Joint Leaders' Statement issued on April 10, 2024, it is likely that Japan has agreed to jointly develop and produce missiles with the United States and export them to third countries. (It also marks the latest development in its departure from its pacifist defense policy that dates back to the immediate post-World War II era.) This article tries to explain the background and implications of Japan's policy changes.Eroding the arms export banAfter the end of World War II, the Japanese government refrained from exporting arms. In 1967, then-Prime Minister Eisaku Sato made it clear that Japan would not allow the export of weapons either to communist countries, countries whose arms exports are prohibited by U.N. resolutions, or countries involved in international conflicts. In 1976, the cabinet of his successor, Takeo Miki, issued a unified government opinion that banned all arms export. Despite some subsequent exceptions, such as the supply to the United States of technologies related to missile defense, Japan continued to make it a national policy to refrain from exporting arms.The ban on arms exports began to wear away in 2011. In that year, the cabinet of then-Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, the leader of the Democratic Party of Japan, eased regulations in order to permit joint development of weapons with countries that cooperate with Japan on security matters, and export the products to partners in the joint development program. Pursuant to this exception, Japan tried to sell jointly produced submarines to Australia in 2015-16.In 2014, the cabinet of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe enabled the export of military equipment for such uses as rescue, transport, surveillance, and reconnaissance. Under this reform, Mitsubishi Electric began delivering the Air Surveillance Radar Systems to the Philippine Air Force just last year.In December 2023, the cabinet of Prime Minister Fumio Kishida approved exporting domestically produced weapons under license to the provider of the license. Thus, PAC-2 and PAC-3 interceptors, which are manufactured in Japan under a U.S. license, will be exported to the U.S., effectively replacing what Washington has provided to Ukraine in its war against Russia. This measure is reportedly based on a request from the U.S. government.Getting close to lifting the whole banMost recently, Kishida made a cabinet decision on March 26 to permit the export to third countries of the next-generation fighter aircraft that will be developed jointly with the United Kingdom and Italy. At the same time, the National Security Council amended the Implementation Guidelines on the Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology. Although the government set three conditions on the export of fighter jets to third countries in the document, the new policy change has broad implications.First, the government asserts that exports to third countries will be allowed only for the next-generation fighter aircraft, which is the only item now listed in the Implementation Guidelines. However, joint development of Glide Phase Interceptor (GPI) and unmanned aerial vehicles is already under consideration. The very recent U.S.-Japan joint statement also put missiles on the agenda. Once these are materialized, the only thing the government will have to do is add them to the guidelines.Second, Japan and the recipient country must "conclude an international agreement obligating the use of defense equipment transferred from Japan in a manner consistent with the purposes and principles of the Charter of the United Nations." Currently, 15 countries are signatories to such agreements, including some authoritarian regimes like Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates. Negotiations are underway with Bangladesh to conclude a similar agreement. The number of signatory countries that will presumably be eligible to buy the jointly-developed weapons will continue to grow. Third, the ban on exporting the fighter to "a country where combat is currently deemed to be taking place as part of an armed conflict" will remain in effect. For example, if a next-generation fighter plane were completed tomorrow, Japan could not export it to Ukraine. Once sold to an eligible buyer, however, it would of course be possible that it could be transferred to a country that is engaged in conflict.Rationales for deregulationThe most recent decision, of course, begs the questions of why Japan is so determined to pursue joint development and export, and why it chose the United Kingdom and Italy as its partners.First and foremost, declining to engage in joint production and exports to third countries would be tantamount to abandoning the efficient introduction of advanced weapons systems in Japan's future. When the United States started the joint development with its allies and partners of the F-35, Japan was unable to participate in the program because its arms export ban was intact at the time. As a result, Tokyo had to pay much more to buy the warplane and also wait much longer for delivery. As weapon systems become more sophisticated and development costs soar, forgoing participation in the joint development of advanced weapon systems would very negatively affect Tokyo's arms procurement policy. Moreover, other participants in a joint development program would effectively disqualify participation by a country that did not agree to the export to third countries. When it comes to arms procurement, Tokyo has been disappointed with Washington's performance. In 1987, Japan and the United States began co-production of the current support fighter, the F-2. During the process, however, the U.S. assumed complete control of the development and refused to disclose key technologies to Japan. In the late 2000s, Japan showed interest in purchasing the F-22, but was rebuffed by the U.S. In more recent years, aspects of U.S. weapons development goals have failed to meet the needs of the Self-Defense Forces. As a result, Tokyo has grown skeptical of Washington's willingness to be flexible. The United Kingdom, on the other hand, appears to have satisfied Japanese requirements for partnership in the joint development of the next-generation fighters.Domestically, more than 100 companies have withdrawn from the defense industry over the past 20 years, and there is a growing sense of crisis in maintaining the country's defense industrial base and employment. Because the Japanese companies have limited experience and the domestic market is still too small, the only way to preserve and promote the industry is through joint production and export.There is a strong desire within the Japanese government to strengthen the alliance and enhance deterrence against China through cooperation with the United States. The Russia-Ukraine war has also reinforced the government's belief that relying on the U.S. alone will be insufficient in the event of a future conflict with China, and that Japan will need broader support from the West. In this view, joint development is useful for deepening security relationships with the West. In addition, Japan hopes to create a more favorable security environment by exporting arms to Southeast Asia and elsewhere.Finally, nostalgia for the pre-World War II period also has its appeal for some Japanese. As former Prime Minister Abe advocated "dismantling the postwar regime," many Diet members from the ruling Liberal Democratic Party want to once again realize the "combination of military and nationalism" that existed before the war. Fostering the defense industry through arms exports has been their long-cherished wish.After approving the export of jointly developed weapons to third countries, political leaders vow that Japan would uphold its basic principles as a peace-loving nation. Coupled with a sharp increase in defense spending and the stipulation of "counterstrike capabilities" that enables attacks on other national territories in its National Security Strategy, however, few would take these words at face value. At the very least, the meaning of "peace-loving nation" has changed completely. While the main pillar of the traditional notion of peace-loving nation was for Japan to maintain its military asceticism and not become a threat, Japan today emphasizes the reinforcement of deterrence in order to achieve peace.Unfortunately, the military buildup that Japan has recently embarked on and the increase in arms exports alone is unlikely to bring about the improvement in the security environment that Japan desires. Despite the Biden administration's apparent increased density of dialogue with China following the November 2023 U.S.-China summit, Tokyo has recently shown virtually no interest in direct communication with China. If Tokyo pursues deterrence by further building its military infrastructure, promoting arms exports, and strengthening alliances without offering reassurance to Beijing, it will inevitably result in the security dilemma for both countries. The real concern is that Japan is underestimating the risk.

With no ceasefire in the war between Israel and Hamas in sight and Houthi forces in Yemen still firing missiles and drones at commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the EU's efforts at addressing conflict in Gaza and its broader regional ramifications keep flailing.After weeks of discussions, the EU officially launched its naval operation in the Red Sea on February 19 to protect international commercial shipping from Houthi attacks. The Houthis claim they wantto force a ceasefire in Gaza. Yet, while the ceasefire remains elusive, the attacks impose real costs on EU members: the EU commissioner for economy Paolo Gentiloni recently estimated that the rerouting of shipping from the Red Sea has increased delivery times for shipments between Asia and the EU by 10 to 15 days and the consequent costs by around 400%. Around 40% of the EU's total trade with the Middle East and Asia passes through the Red Sea.Protecting that shipping route thus is an important collective economic and security interest for the EU. Yet only four countries — France, Germany, Italy and Belgium — out of the 27 member states have agreed to provide warships for the new operation. Spain, which refrained from using its veto power to block the initiative, nonetheless declined to participate, having expressed concerns from the outset that any armed operation would reduce pressure on Israel to agree to a ceasefire in Gaza. A bigger question is how effective this new EU operation will be in countering the Houthi threat given its purely defensive mandate to provide "situational awareness, accompany vessels and protect them against possible attacks at sea." Accordingly, the participating EU warships will be authorized to fire on Houthi targets only if they themselves or commercial vessels they are to protect are attacked. That rules out pre-emptive action against Houthi missile batteries or related targets.The defensive nature of the operation, however, may not be enough to convince the Houthis to refrain from attacking the European ships. In fact, Houthi leaders warned Italy, one of the new operation's chief promoters, that it will become "a target if it participates in attacks on the Houthis." If this threat comes to fruition, will the EU authorize offensive action against the Houthis, potentially drawing itself into a wider conflict? Will it rely on U.S. hard power for protection given that Washington is already engaged against the Houthis through "Operation Prosperity Guardian," in which a few EU nations – Denmark, Netherlands and Greece, as well as non-EU NATO members Britain and Norway -- are also participating? Would such developments not lead to a de facto merging of the U.S. and EU-led operations under Washington's lead — an outcome Europeans sought to avoid and which is the very reason why they launched their own mission in the first place? That these are not abstract questions is underscored by the failure, so far, of scores of U.S.- and UK-led strikes to degrade the Houthis' capabilities to the point where they would no longer pose a significant threat. Indeed, just as the EU announced its mission, the Houthis hit a British cargo ship which was at risk of sinking in the Gulf of Aden in what the Yemeni rebels claimed was their biggest attack yet. The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations confirmed the incident, though it did not name the ship.Ironically, the safest way for the EU to avoid a direct military engagement with the Houthis, apart from testing their vow to stop attacking shipping if Israel ends its Gaza offensive, would be to reduce the number of targets in the Red Sea by encouraging ships to reroute. But such an outcome would, of course, vindicate the Houthi strategy to impose costs on the Western powers for the failure to stop the war in Gaza.And that brings us back to the mother of all conflicts in the Middle East: the continuing war in Gaza. The EU's approach so far has been to delink Gaza from the crisis in the Red Sea and the broader escalation in the region, including clashes between Israel and Lebanon's Hezbollah. Yet mounting tensions on that front show that its approach is not working. Some actors in the EU understand the urgent need for a ceasefire in Gaza as a necessary condition for regional de-escalation. The EU high representative on foreign policy Josep Borrell has been particularly vocal in his criticism of Israel. He suggested limiting arms sales to Tel Aviv on the grounds that such transfers violate EU guidelines that ban sales to countries accused of violations of the international humanitarian law. A Dutch appeals court recently ordered a halt to exports of F-35 jet parts to Israel on the same grounds. However, it is highly unlikely that the EU as a whole would adopt such a position, given that a number of countries – especially Germany, Austria, Czech Republic, Hungary – strongly support Israel.A stronger point of leverage could be to suspend fully or partially the association agreement between the EU and Israel. The EU is Israel's largest trading partner. In 2023, that agreement enabled 46.8 billion euros worth of bilateral trade. The prime ministers of Spain and Ireland, Pedro Sanchez and Leo Varadkar, respectively, asked the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, to "urgently review" whether Israel is violating the human rights clauses included in that agreement. On February 19, the Spanish foreign minister, Jose Manuel Albares, insisted that the review should be completed in time for the next EU foreign ministers meeting on March 18.A full suspension of the agreement seems very unlikely even if the Commission finds Israel to have violated its human rights obligations because that would call for a unanimous decision by all member states. A partial suspension would require a qualified majority: 55% of member states (or 15 out of 27) representing 65% of the EU's total population. Notably, the only precedent for taking such an action came in 2011 when the EU suspended an association agreement with Syria in response to mass violations of human rights by the Bashar al-Assad regime. Meanwhile, the EU proved unable last week to issue even an official appeal to Israel not to follow through with its plans to carry out a ground invasion of Rafah, the southernmost city in Gaza, which has become the last refuge of nearly a million refugees from elsewhere in the enclave. In the face of a veto threat by Hungary, the other 26 member states instead issued a joint statement warning of the catastrophic humanitarian consequences should Israel move ahead with such an invasion. Notably, however, Hungary was isolated in its opposition to the appeal as Germany and other member states that have traditionally been reluctant to criticize Israel's conduct of war were on board. That is a step forward, but it's too little and it comes too late. As long as the EU keeps avoiding imposing real consequences on Israel for its conduct, it will keep losing influence in the Middle East.

 The Best Joke in Barbie Years ago I remember encountering Félix Guattari's little essay, "Everybody Wants to be a Fascist." At the time its title seemed more clever than prescient. (Although it is worth remembering how much fascism, and the encounter with fascism was integral to Deleuze and Guattari's theorizing, well beyond the reference to Reich). Now that we are living in a different relation to fascism the problem posed by Guattari (and Deleuze) of desire seems all the more pertinent and pressing. One of the problems of using the word fascism today, especially in the US, is that it is hard to reconcile our image as a politics, a politics of state control of everything, and the current politics of outrage aimed at M&Ms, Barbie, and Taylor Swift. How can fascism be so trivial and so petty? This could be understood as the Trump problem, although it is ultimately not limited to Trump. There are a whole bunch of pundits and people getting incredibly angry about the casting of movies and how many times football games cut away to Taylor Swift celebrating in the expensive seats. The Fox News Expanded Universe is all about finding villains everywhere in every library or diverse band of superheroes. It is difficult to reconcile the petty concerns of the pundit class with the formation of an authoritarian state. I have argued before that understanding Trump, or Trumpism, means rethinking the relationship between the particular and universal, imaginary and real. Or, as Angela Mitropoulis argues, the question of fascism now should be what does it look like in contemporary captitalism, one oriented less around the post-fordist assembly line than the franchise. Or as she puts it, "What would the combination of nationalist myth and the affective labour processes of the entertainment industry mean for the politics and techniques of fascism?"It is for this reason (among others) that Alberto Toscano's Late Fascism is such an important book. As he argues in that book fascism (as well as in an interview on Hotel Bar Sessions) fascism has to be understood as kind of license, a justification of violence and anger, and a pleasure in that justification. We have to give up the cartoon image of fascism as centralized and universal domination and see it as not only incomplete persecution, unevenly applied, but persecution of some coupled with the license to persecute for others. Fascism is liberation for the racist, sexist, and homophobe, who finally gets to say and act on their desires. As Toscano argues, "...what we need to dwell on to discern the fascist potentials in the anti-state state are those subjective investments in the naturalizations of violent mastery that go together with the promotion of possessive and racialized conceptions of freedom. Here we need to reflect not just on the fact neoliberalism operates through a racial state, or that, as commentators have begun to recognize and detail, it is shaped by a racist and civilizational imaginary that delimits who is capable of market freedoms (Toscano is not referring to Tosel, but that is an important part of Tosel's work) We must also attend to the fact that the anti-state state could become an object of popular attachment or better, populist investment, only through the mediation of race." Toscano's emphasis is on race in this passage, but it could be argued to apply to sexism, homophobia, etc., to the enforcement and maintenance of any of the old hierarchies. As Toscano cites Maria Antonietta Macciochhi later in the book, "You can't talk abut fascism unless you are also prepared to discuss patriarchy." Possessive includes the family as the first and most vital possession. At this point fascism does not sound too different from classical conservatism, especially if you take the definition of the latter to be the following: "Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit: There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."  However, what Toscano emphasizes is the libidinal pleasure that comes with this, it is not just a matter of who is in and who is not, who is protected and who is not, but in the pleasure that one gets from such exclusion, a pleasure that is extended and almost deputized to the masses. While conservative hierarchies and asymmetries passed through the hallowed institutions of the state and the courts, the fascist deputies take to the streets and the virtual street fights of social media. As Toscano argues, pitting Foucault's remarks about the sexual politics of fascism in the seventies against Guattari's analysis,"For Foucault, to the extent that there is an eroticization of power under Nazism, it is conditioned by a logic of delegation, deputizing and decentralization of what remains in form and content a vertical, exclusionary, and murderous kind of power. Fascism is not just the apotheosis of the leader above the sheeplike masses of his followers; it is also, in a less spectacular but perhaps more consequential manner the reinvention of the settle logic of petty sovereignty, a highly conditional but very real 'liberalising' and 'privatising' of the monopoly of violence...Foucault's insight into the 'erotic' of a power based on the deputizing of violence is a more fecund frame, I would argue, for the analysis of both classical and late fascisms than Guattari's hyperbolic claim that "the masses invested a fantastic collective death instinct in...the fascist machine' --which misses out on the materiality of that 'transfer of power' to a 'specific fringe of the masses' that Foucault diagnosed as critical to fascism's desirability."I think that Toscano's analysis picks up an important thread that runs from discussions of fascism from Benjamin to Foucault (and beyond). As Benjamin writes in the Work of Art essay "The growing proletarianization of modern man and the increasing formation of masses are two aspects of the same process. Fascism attempts to organize the newly created proletarian masses without affecting the property structure which the masses strive to eliminate. Fascism sees its salvation in giving these masses not their right, but instead a chance to express themselves. The masses have a right to change property relations; Fascism seeks to give them an expression while preserving property. The logical result of Fascism is the introduction of aesthetics into political life."Today we could say that the right of expression includes a deputization of power and the pleasure in exercising it. In a capitalist society, in which the material conditions of existence must belong to the capitalist class, the only thing that can be extended to the masses is the power and pleasure to dominate others. Real wages keep on declining, but fascism offers the wages of whiteness, maleness, cisness, and so on, extending not the material control over one's existence but libidinal investment in the perks of one's identity.All of which brings me to Taylor Swift. I have watched with amusement and some horror as the fringes of the Fox News Expanded Universe have freaked out about Taylor Swift attending football games and, occasionally, being seen on television watching and enjoying the games. It is hard to spend even a moment thinking about something which has all of the subtlety of the "He-Man Woman Hater's Club," but I think that it is an interesting example of the kind of micro-fascism that sustains and makes possible the tendency towards macro-fascism. Three things are worth noting about this, first most of the conspiracy theories about Swift are not predicated on things that she has actually done, but what she might do, endorse Biden, campaign for Biden, etc., I think that this has to be seen as a mutation of conspiracy thinking from the actual effects of an action or event, Covid undermining Trump's presidency, to an imagined possible effect. One of the asymmetries of contemporary power is treating the fantasies or paranoid fears of one group as more valid than the actual conditions and dominations of another group. Second, and to be a little more dialectical, the fear of Swift on the right recognizes to what extent politics have been entirely subsumed by the spectacle fan form. (Hotel Bar Sessions did a show about this too) Trump's real opponent for hearts and minds, not to mention huge rallies, is not Biden but Swift. Lastly, and this really deserves its own post, some of the anger about Swift being at the game brings to mind Kate Manne's theory of misogyny, which at its core is about keeping women in their place. I would imagine that many of the men who object to seeing Swift at their games do not object to the cutaway shots of cheerleaders during the same game. It is not seeing women during the game that draws ire, but seeing one out of her place--someone who is enjoying being there and not there for their enjoyment.I used to be follow a fairly vulgar materialist line when it came to fascism. Give people, which is to say workers, actual control over their work, their lives, and their conditions and the appeal of the spectacle of fascist power would dissipate. It was a simple matter of real power versus its appearance. It increasingly seems that such an opposition overlooks the pleasures that today's mass media fascism make possible and extend to so many. It is hard to imagine a politics that could counter this that would not be a politics of affect, of the imagination, and of desires. Libidinal economy and micro-politics of desire seem less like some relic from the days of high theory and more and more like necessary conditions for thinking through the intertwining webs of desire and resentment that make up the intersection of culture, media, and politics. I think one of the pressing issues of the moment is the recognizing that all of these junk politics of grievances of popular culture should be taken seriously as the affective antechamber of fascism while at the same time not accepting them on their terms; there is nothing really to be gained by rallying to defend corporations and billionaires. 

Western officials are starting to broach the idea of peace talks with Russia as the situation on the ground in Ukraine has devolved into a stalemate, according to a major new report from NBC News.American and European diplomats reportedly used a recent round of talks in Malta to encourage Ukraine to consider what concessions it may be willing to make — a significant shift from the public messaging around the summit, which was largely framed as an opportunity to build support for Ukraine's maximalist peace plan.Officials are now privately referring to the situation on the ground as a stalemate, and some "have privately said Ukraine likely only has until the end of the year or shortly thereafter before more urgent discussions about peace negotiations should begin," the report notes.A State Department spokesperson denied NBC's reporting on Tuesday, reiterating the administration line that "nothing should happen about Ukraine without Ukraine" and saying that the U.S. is "not aware of any conversations with Ukraine about negotiations outside of the peace formula structure that you've already seen a number of engagements take place on."The news comes at a difficult time for Ukraine as the world's attention has largely turned toward Israel and Palestine, where weeks of intense fighting has left Gaza in a humanitarian disaster. The West's differing reactions to the two conflicts have further complicated efforts to bolster Global South support for Ukraine.In the United States, President Joe Biden is now attempting to link $14.3 billion in aid for Israel to an additional $61.4 billion in funding for Ukraine, a move that House Republicans have so far rejected. The chances that there will be a gap in American funding for Kyiv have continued to grow as a potential government shutdown looms later this month.And in Europe, many leaders have begun to move away from full-throated support for Ukraine given the stalling efforts on the battlefield and the economic impact on the continent. Even Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, who has staked out a distinctly pro-Ukraine stance since taking office earlier this year, told Russian pranksters posing as African Union officials that "there is a lot of fatigue" in Europe due to the war."We [are] near the moment in which everybody understands that we need a way out," Meloni added.None of this guarantees that Russia is prepared for talks. Some experts argue that Russian President Vladimir Putin sees a chance to wait Ukraine and the West out through a war of attrition, a serious possibility given the extent of Ukrainian losses (the average age of a Ukrainian soldier is now reportedly 43 years old) and the relatively low appetite for future funding among Republicans in the U.S.In fact, Russia appears to have already leaned into this approach with its renewed bombing campaign against Ukrainian energy infrastructure, a move that could cause blackouts across Ukraine during its often brutal winter.If Russian President Vladimir Putin does end up pursuing his advantage, Ukraine's strongest boosters may be kicking themselves for ignoring the advice of more skeptical voices, including former Joint Chiefs head Mark Milley, who said late last year that the winter could provide "a window of opportunity for negotiation.""There has to be a mutual recognition that a military victory is probably, in the true sense of the word is maybe not achievable through military means, and therefore you need to turn to other means," Milley said.As Branko Marcetic recently argued in Compact, the consequences of ignoring Milley's advice may be severe."[J]ust as pro-peace voices had warned, Ukraine is now looking at the worst of both worlds: accepting a far inferior peace deal, while having weathered the tremendous human and economic costs of a prolonged conflict," Marcetic wrote. "Most perversely, [Kyiv] has been put into this position by those who postured as its most ardent supporters, the hawks who thought of the war as a way of humiliating Russia on the cheap."In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:— The European Union executive recommended Wednesday that Ukraine start formal talks to join the bloc as soon as next year if it completes the necessary reforms for membership, marking one step closer to Kyiv joining the EU, according to Reuters. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky called the move a "historic step," though it does not completely clear the way for Kyiv, which will still have to convince holdouts in Hungary and now potentially Slovakia that Ukraine should be permitted to join the EU.— The foreign ministers of the Group of 7 (G7) reaffirmed their "steadfast commitment to supporting Ukraine's fight for its independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity" following a series of meetings in Japan on Tuesday and Wednesday, according to Al Jazeera. The group, which was keen to swat down the argument that events in Gaza have pulled their attention away from the war in Ukraine, also held a virtual discussion with Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba. G7 members include Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, the United States, and the European Union.— Russia formally withdrew Tuesday from a post-Cold War treaty limiting the deployment of conventional weapons in Europe, drawing condemnation from NATO, which will now suspend its participation in the pact, according to Reuters. Moscow, which said the decision was a result of NATO's eastward expansion, had already stopped active participation in the treaty in 2015.— Egypt may give military equipment to Russia after reportedly reversing a decision to sell missiles to Moscow earlier this year, according to the Wall Street Journal. After the missile deal was scuppered, the report says, Russian officials asked Egypt to give back 150 helicopter engines that it had previously sold to Cairo in exchange for forgiving some Egyptian debts and guaranteeing a continued supply of Russian wheat to the country. The report, which cites three people "with knowledge of the incident," says that Egypt has agreed to the terms and the engine shipments could begin next month.— On Thursday, Russia struck a civilian ship in a Black Sea port near Odessa, Ukraine, raising questions about the safety of a new shipping corridor that Kyiv put in place following Moscow's withdrawal from the Black Sea grain deal, according to Reuters. The blast killed one crew member and injured four others. Ukraine played down the incident and said shipping traffic continues "despite Russia's systematic attacks on port infrastructure."U.S. State Department news:In a Tuesday press conference, State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel defended Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky's decision to delay elections, arguing that Russia's occupation of large swathes of Ukraine and its continual bombing of civilian targets would make a fair vote impossible. "We also have made clear with our Ukrainian partners our commitment to supporting not just Ukraine in its fight but our commitment to support a careful and constitutional approach to keeping democracy strong in wartime," Patel said.

 There are many different answers to the question of what Marx and Spinoza have in common, theories of ideology, materialism, naturalism, and so on, to name a few that have been discussed on this blog. To this list Margherita Pascucci adds that perhaps what Spinoza and Marx have in common is the common itself. This is is claim put forward in Potentia of Poverty: Marx Reads Spinoza (part of the Historical Materialism series, currently it is only out as a hardcover, but it will be out from Haymarket in the Spring). In making such a claim Pascucci focuses on the intersection of not just Marx and Spinoza, but the way in which they both assert in different ways, the primacy of the epistemology and ontology of relation. As Pascucci writes, "The commodity in Marx and the common notion in Spinoza are both defined through an other. This 'other' which defines them is the common among two or more things. In the case of the commodity, this common has a character of abstraction--it disappears at a certain point; in the case of common notions, this common is something material, that which, common to a body and other bodies, brings the trace of relation and allows for knowledge."As they used to say in graduate school, lets unpack this claim. First, we have the common notion in Spinoza, the second kind of knowledge, beyond the imagination. As Spinoza writes in Proposition 37 and 38 of Part Two of the Ethics:P37. What is common to all things, and is equally in the part and in the whole, does not constitute he essence of any singular thing.P38 Those things which are common to all, and which are equally in the part and the whole, can only be conceived adequately. Common notions are understood in terms of both their genesis and their logic. In terms of their genesis let us begin with the simple and most basic encounter, walking around in the house in the dark I bang my shin against something, I do not know what. This is an encounter marked by pain and confusion, by the affects of sadness and hate. Those affects give shape to what could be called the inadequate ideas in which how something affects me and what something is are confusedly muddled in my scream of "ow, shit! what the fuck?" In that encounter there is still something in common, something that can be conceived adequately, I know something about my body, its materiality, and about whatever I ran into in the dark. I know that it is matter too, it has density and hardness. This commonality is incredibly general, but it is the basis for the construction of other common notions. Later, in Proposition 40, Spinoza contrasts common notions, which do not define the essence of any singular things, with the universal. The universal is attempt to define the essence of a singular thing, to understand what quality defines humanity, as rational or political animal, or even featherless biped. However, the problem with this particular essence is precisely the variability of particulars. As Spinoza writes, "But it should be noted that these notions are not formed by all in same way, but very from one to another, in accordance with what the body has been more often affected by, and what the mind imagines or recollects more easily. For example, those who have more often regarded men's stature with wonder will understand by the word man an animal of erect stature. But those who been accustomed to consider something else will form another common image of men--for example that man is an animal capable of laughter, or a featherless biped, or a rational animal."In contrast with a universal burdened with an often unstated particularity we have the common as that which is common to all and particular to none.Okay, what does this has to do with the commodity? Here one only has to think of Part One of Capital.  Value can only be expressed in relation. This is the point of all those formulations about linen and coats. As Marx writes, "The value of linen as a congealed mass of human labour can be expressed only as an 'objectivity' [Geganständlichkeit], a thing which is materially different from linen itself and yet common to the linen and other commodities." There are a lot of jokes, and memes, about the laborious process Marx goes through to show two things: first, that the value of a commodity cannot be shown through itself, a coat is worth a coat is tautology, and that the value any commodity can be expressed through any other commodity. As much as this section seems to go on a bit too long, and with unnecessary precision, its fundamental point, a point that comes out in relation to Spinoza, is worth stressing, and that is that the common, the relational is there even at the heart of capitalism. In capitalism commodities relate even if we remain isolated as subjects of freedom, equality, and Bentham.This brings us back to Pascucci's point, that the difference between the commodity and the common notion is that while the common notion is common to all and in the part and the whole, both my shin and the end table (or whatever I ran into) have extension and mass, value of the commodity is not common to all materially, but is abstracted from it. This abstraction underscores the brief, all too brief discussion of money that takes place in Capital between the general form of value and the famous section of commodity fetishism. Money is of course the general equivalent, it is why we do not go around expressing the value coats, tea, and corn, in the form of linen. Money is the materialization of the abstract idea. As Balibar writes in his little book on Marx, "Money is then constantly reproduced and preserved by its different economic uses (unit of account, means of payment, being hoarded or held in 'reserve' etc.) The other side of this materialization is, then, a process of constant idealization of the monetary material, since it serves immediately to express a universal form or an 'idea."Here is the difference this difference makes. I often think of the opening section of Capital as Marx asking a question that we do not ask in daily life: how are two disparate and different commodities equivalent? We do not ask this question because it presents itself as already answered. Money is the answer. Money is the condition of the equivalence of the disparate and distinct. This is another reason as to why I think that Marx's commodity fetishism section covers the same problem as the Appendix to Part One of the Ethics. In other words, the common, the commonality of labor is obscured in the fetish of the money form. This is not a consideration, much less a review, of the entirety of Pascucci's book. I have not even gotten into the discussion of poverty and subjectivity, parts that I have some serious questions about, but her reflections on the common in Spinoza and Marx not only sheds light on a different commonality between the two, one that ultimately sheds light on the common itself. 

Trying to make sense of U.S. policy toward Cuba is like trying to make sense of a play in the theater of the absurd. The rationales offered by the policy's defenders make no sense, and when they try to explain, they sound like characters in an Ionesco play. Recent legislative proposals from Cuban American members of the House of Representatives are prime examples.Rep. Mario Díaz-Balart (R-Fla.), chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, and Rep. María Elvira Salazar (R-Fla.), chair of the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, recently proposed new sanctions locking in Cuba's groundless designation as a sponsor of international terrorism, blocking assistance to Cuba's private sector on the grounds that it doesn't exist, and punishing countries hosting Cuban medical missions for practicing "modern slavery." The last two proposals became law in the omnibus appropriations bill passed last month to avoid a government shutdown.Cuba is on the State Department's terrorism list, even though the Department's latest Country Report on Terrorism offers no evidence for Havana engaging in international terrorism. It cites Cuba's harboring of U.S. fugitives who committed politically-motivated crimes in the United States more than 40 years ago. Meanwhile, the United States for years harbored notorious Cuban exiles like Orlando Bosch and Luis Posada Carriles guilty of myriad terrorist attacks against Cuba, including bombing a Cuban airline flight, killing all 73 people aboard, and bombing tourist hotels in Havana.Early in the Biden administration, the White House said it was "committed to carefully reviewing" Cuba's designation, and in October 2022, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Colombia's President Gustavo Petro, "We will continue as necessary to revisit those to see if Cuba continues to merit that designation." But just five months later, he told Congress, "We are not planning to remove them from the list." Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Eric Jacobstein told a group of Democratic lawmakers that, contrary to what they had been told previously, there was no review of Cuba's designation underway.Asked in a 2023 press briefing why Cuba was still on the terrorism list, a State Department spokesperson replied that it was because of Cuba's "long track record of egregious human rights abuses, suppression of a free press, suppression of civil society" — which has nothing to do with international terrorism. The official also acknowledged, oblivious to the irony, that the U.S. and Cuban governments engage in regular counter-terrorism cooperation talks under the auspices of a law enforcement agreement concluded during the Obama administration.Last year, Díaz-Balart joined Salazar to sponsor a bill preventing the Biden administration from removing Cuba from the terrorism list until it becomes a multi-party democracy. Although the bill is unlikely to become law this Congress, its disregard for the statutory criteria for designating a country as a sponsor of terrorism brings to mind Humpty Dumpty's declaration in Alice in Wonderland, "When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean."Díaz-Balart had better luck with the omnibus appropriation. When Congress fails to do its job passing the 12 appropriations bills that fund the government, it resorts to omnibus appropriations that lump all the unfinished bills together into one must-pass bill to avoid a government shutdown. All sorts of dubious measures make their way into omnibus appropriations because there just is not time to filter them all out. As chair of the Appropriations Subcommittee on Foreign Operations, Díaz-Balart was perfectly positioned to insert new Cuba sanctions into the omnibus.The omnibus appropriation prohibits the Biden administration from supporting Cuba's emerging private sector of some 10,000 new businesses, despite the fact that promoting private enterprise has been U.S. policy under Presidents Obama, Trump, and Biden. Rep. Salazar calls the private sector a "myth" because some of the businesses are owned by relatives of government officials, even though the vast majority are not. A year ago, Díaz-Balart forced the Biden administration to abandon plans to help the private sector by threatening to block aid for Ukraine. His appropriations language, now law, blocks U.S. funding for "business promotion, economic reform, [or] entrepreneurship" in Cuba.Another provision of the omnibus appropriation would punish countries that pay Cuba for providing medical services on the grounds that such contracts constitute "modern slavery." Since the 1960s, Cuba has sent some 400,000 medical professionals to serve in 164 countries, but in the past two decades medical service contracts have become an important source of foreign exchange earnings.In 2006, President George W. Bush began offering entry to the United States and a fast path to citizenship to entice Cuban doctors serving abroad to defect. Some of those who defected criticized the pressure placed on them to serve abroad, harsh and restrictive working conditions, and the percentage of the contract fees they received. By contrast, doctors serving in the programs report that they volunteered because the wages are significantly higher than their wages in Cuba, and out of a desire to help people in need.During the Obama administration, U.S. and Cuban medical personnel worked together in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake and in west Africa fighting Ebola virus outbreak. President Obama, in his 2016 speech to the Cuban people, praised Cuba's medical internationalism, saying "No one should deny the service that thousands of Cuban doctors have delivered for the poor and suffering." But Cuban American Republicans do deny it.The original House version of the foreign operations appropriation that came out of Díaz-Balart's subcommittee and passed the House would have cut off U.S. assistance to the Pan American Health Organization and all countries and international organizations that have medical contracts with Cuba. Those provisions did not make it into the final omnibus legislation. But the bill that passed denies entry to the United States and threatens financial sanctions against "officials of foreign governments and their immediate family members" whose governments have medical service contracts with Cuba.Cuba has medical personnel serving abroad in dozens of countries, including Mexico, Italy, Qatar, Jamaica, several smaller Caribbean states, and Northern Ireland. Is it really in the U.S. national interest to ban their government officials from the United States? Would Mexico's indispensable cooperation on migration and narcotics trafficking survive such a ban? Luckily, during the negotiations over the final omnibus bill, cooler heads prevailed and made these sanctions subject to a presidential waiver. But they are still the law of the land, with Washington once again arrogating to itself the right to sanction other countries for their relations with Cuba, as if neither their sovereignty nor Cuba's counts for anything in Washington.That is the final absurdity of U.S. Cuba policy. It's not just that so much of it is built on false premises and distorted facts. It's that a small group of conservative Cuban American legislators, obsessed with reducing Cuba to penury, have been able to dictate policies that damage broader U.S. interests in Latin America, Europe, and the Global South. They get away with it because no issue is more important to them than Cuba, and Cuba is not important enough to Biden for him to stand up to them.These policies are not cost free. Like water dripping on a stone they gradually erode the good will of other countries, diminishing Washington's "soft power." The accretion of damage is chronicled by the annual vote at the United Nations General Assembly on Cuba's resolution condemning the U.S. embargo. When the resolution was first introduced in 1992, it passed with 59 countries in favor, 3 against (the United State, Israel, and Romania), and a majority, 71 abstaining. Last year 187 countries voted for the resolution. Ukraine abstained and only Israel joined the United States in voting no.When American patriots declared their independence from the British crown, they detailed their reasons in the Declaration of Independence out of a "decent respect to the opinions of mankind." That respect is not a virtue Washington policymakers should abandon just because the United States has become a superpower.

Ukraine would consider inviting Russian officials to a peace summit to discuss Kyiv's proposal for a negotiated end to the war, according to Andriy Yermak, the Ukrainian president's chief of staff."There can be a situation in which we together invite representatives of the Russian Federation, where they will be presented with the plan in case whoever is representing the aggressor country at that time will want to genuinely end this war and return to a just peace," Yermak said over the weekend, noting that one more round of talks without Russia will first be held in Switzerland.The comment represents a subtle shift in Ukrainian messaging about talks. Kyiv has long argued that it would never negotiate with Russian President Vladimir Putin, yet there is no reason to believe Putin will leave power any time soon. That realization — along with Ukraine's increasingly perilous position on the battlefield — may have helped force Kyiv to reconsider its hard line on talking with the widely reviled Russian leader.Zelensky hinted at a potential mediator for talks following a visit this week to Saudi Arabia. The leader "noted in particular Saudi Arabia's strivings to help in restoring a just peace in Ukraine," according to a statement from Ukrainian officials. "Saudi Arabia's leadership can help find a just solution."Russia, for its part, has signaled that it is open to peace talks of some sort, though both Kyiv and Moscow insist that any negotiations would have to be conducted on their terms. The gaps between the negotiating positions of the two countries remain substantial, with each laying claim to roughly 18% of the territory that made up pre-2014 Ukraine.Ukraine's shift is a sign of just how dire the situation is becoming for its armed forces, which recently made a hasty retreat from Avdiivka, a small but strategically important town near Donetsk. After months of wrangling, the U.S. Congress has still not approved new military aid for Ukraine, and Kyiv now says its troops are having to ration ammunition as their stockpiles dwindle.Zelensky said Sunday that he expects Russia to mount a new offensive as soon as late May. It's unclear whether Ukrainian troops are prepared to stop such a move.Even the Black Sea corridor — a narrow strip of the waterway through which Ukraine exports much of its grain — could be under threat. "I think the route will be closed...because to defend it, it's also about some ammunition, some air defense, and some other systems" that are now in short supply, said Zelensky.As storm clouds gather, it's time to push for peace talks before Russia regains the upper hand, argue Anatol Lieven and George Beebe of the Quincy Institute, which publishes Responsible Statecraft."Complete victory for Ukraine is now an obvious impossibility," Lieven and Beebe wrote this week. "Any end to the fighting will therefore end in some form of compromise, and the longer we wait, the worse the terms of that compromise will be for Ukraine, and the greater the dangers will be for our countries and the world."In other diplomatic news related to the war in Ukraine:— Hungary finally signed off on Sweden's bid to join NATO after the Swedish prime minister met with Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in Budapest, according to Deutsche Welle. What did Orban get for all the foot dragging? Apparently just four Swedish fighter jets of the same model that it has been purchasing for years. The prime minister blamed his party for the slow-rolling, saying in a radio interview prior to the parliamentary vote that he had persuaded his partisans to drop their opposition to Sweden's accession.— French President Emmanuel Macron sent allies scrambling Tuesday when he floated the idea of sending NATO troops to Ukraine, according to the BBC. Leaders from Germany, the United Kingdom, Italy, Poland, and other NATO states quickly swatted down the idea that the alliance (or any individual members thereof) would consider joining the war directly. Russia said direct conflict with NATO would be an "inevitability" if the bloc sent troops into Ukraine.— On Wednesday, Zelensky attended a summit in Albania aimed at bolstering Balkan support for Ukraine's fight against Russia, according to AP News. The Ukrainian leader said all states in the region are "worthy" of becoming members of NATO and the European Union, which "have provided Europe with the longest and most reliable era of security and economic development."— Western officials were in talks with the Kremlin for a prisoner swap involving Russian dissident Alexei Navalny prior to his death in a Russian prison camp in February, though no formal offer had yet been made, according to Politico. This account contrasts with the one given by Navalny's allies, who claimed that Putin had killed the opposition leader in order to sabotage discussions that were nearing a deal. Navalny's sudden death has led to speculation about whether Russian officials may have assassinated him, though no proof has yet surfaced to back up this claim. There is, however, little doubt that the broader deterioration of the dissident's health was related to the harsh conditions he was held under.
U.S. State Department news:In a Tuesday press conference, State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller said the situation on the frontlines in Ukraine is "extremely serious." "We have seen Ukrainian frontline troops who don't have the ammo they need to repel Russian aggression. They're still fighting bravely. They're still fighting courageously," Miller said. "They still have armor and weapons and ammunition they can use, but they're having to ration it now because the United States Congress has failed to act."