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Gaza in the distance I have spent most of my career engaged in the five d's of dodgeball when it comes to the Mideast and especially the Israel-Palestine conflict. Despite starting my career with the international relations of ethnic conflict, I managed a total of one piece of research on the Mideast, and that was more by accident than by design. I got asked to join an edited volume project by a terrific Mideast scholar, Shibley Telhami, after one of my very best job talks (which did not produce a job). Bomb shelter next to a kindergarten if I remember correctlyWhen I turned to doing civil-military relations, I was asked if I was including Israel in my multi-democracy study, and I said nope. I have a better explanation for that--that as a very militarized society, its' civil-military relations are far less comparable. Bus stop, shelter in a town that was probably overrun last weekendBut on the ethnic conflict side? Maybe I refrained because the one time I raised it as an illustration in a job talk, it did not go well. That lesson was certainly reinforced by the experience of teaching US Foreign Policy the semester the US invaded Iraq. That class quickly divided into pro and anti factions based on how the students identified with one side or the other of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Perhaps it is because of a conflict between my background/identity and my scholarly work. I often joked that the three things I learned in Hebrew school were: enough Hebrew (barely) to get through my Bar Mitzvah, much about the Holocaust and the history of oppression of the Jews, and that Israel was empty before the Jews got there and everything Israel does is right. The last is the most relevant although the second obviously hits hard when more Jews died in one day due to violence this weekend than any other time since the Holocaust apparently. I definitely was miseducated about the history of Israel. I was also conflicted about my upbringing since I hated Hebrew school (I never fit in or came close), never believed in the religion, and came to realize my identity as Jew is defined by the reality that Nazis would have included me in their roundups no matter what I believe. That is, identity is not defined by oneself but by the interaction of oneself with others, and as long as folks saw me as Jewish, it was less relevant what I believed.Open air prison ....So, that ambivalence then hits the stuff I have picked up from the work on ethnic conflict. I can see via those lenses that ancient hatred is not really what is going here, but political dynamics in Israel and in the Palestinian community. There is outbidding and pandering to extremists in both, which then feed the outbidding and pandering in the other. Netanyahu feeds Hamas, and Hamas feeds Netanyahu. When I visited in 2019, my first visit, as part of a group tour of IR scholars, I got to see how much has been locked in, that bad decisions beget bad decisions. That Israeli generals told me that the only response to violence is to hit harder than they hit you, as if this were Chicago with the Untouchables fighting Capone. I could see their point of view, but again, it was a path to more violence. I left Israel, like many of those on the trip, sad and frustrated--that the future of Israel and of the Palestinians was bleak--that there was no way out and no one in or near power was interested in finding one. And this happens.So, I see people saying that an unprovoked Israel deserves all of our support. And I have to recoil a bit, as Israel has done a shit ton of provoking via its empowering of rabid settlers who have encroached on the Mosque and engaged in lots of violence against Palestinians in the West Bank. But I also recoil when I hear folks talk about Hamas being part of anti-colonial struggle, as, yes, the Palestinians do have legitimate grievances, but Hamas is an awful, theocratic, maybe nihilist entity that did truly barbaric things. Yet, I also know that Israel is going to kill a lot of Palestinian kids in Gaza since, yes, the population of Gaza is about 50% under 18. War crimes do not justify war crimes. And more violence is not going cause this conflict to go away. Pretty sure those towers are now destroyedBoth sides need far better governance, actors who don't benefit from the other side being radicalized. But the institutions and dynamics of each are perverse and reinforcing. I hope that Netanyahu pays a high price for letting this happen on his watch, but I seriously doubt that Israeli politics is going to move to the center as a result. The flavors of the more successful parties in Israel are all variants of far right. The left/center was broken by the second Intifada, and I doubt that these events will resurrect them. I know less and understand less the Palestinian side, but I am pretty sure that air strikes are not going to lead to moderates taking power. So, I have rambled without reaching a clear idea of who should do what. Which is probably fitting. And also explains why I have been reluctant to discuss this stuff--not just a bad job talk in 1993, but because the reality is so difficult, twisted, and painful.Update:I got into a conversation with my sister during the weekly family zoom, and she pressed me on when have ethnic conflicts ended peacefully rather than through conquest. I gave the easy answer: South Africa. But that conversation reminded me of the basic rules of ethnic conflict:Most ethnic groups, no matter their history, are at peace: violence is rare.When there is violence, it ends. No place is constantly at war forever.The past constrains choices but does not determine the present. It is up to today's politicians to decide what to do, and the incentives the structures/systems provide influence but do not determine. Agency remains.Which means it didn't have to be this way, it didn't have to happen this weekend, while there are dynamics locking the parties in, those dynamics can be resisted, and, yes, outsiders could play some role in either exacerbating or ameliorating the nasty dynamics.
In June of 2005, the relatively small and generally insignificant energy company Unocal became the focus of a fierce bidding war. China National Offshore Oil Company (CNOOC) made the first move, outbidding the American firm Chevron. Accepting the CNOOC bid looked like an obvious choice for Unocal since it was almost $1.5 billion dollars more. However, as it became increasingly clear that policy makers in Washington would not allow the deal to go through CNOOC withdrew its bid and Unocal had little option but to accept Chevron's offer. Washington's opposition seemed to be an overreaction to a deal that would have little immediate or long-term impact on U.S. energy supplies. Unocal accounted for less than one percent of U.S. oil and gas production. The opposition, however, was the product of larger forces. Industry experts and policy makers projected that the world was entering a period of fossil fuel scarcity. Holding energy resources was of vital importance for energy security and national survival. American policy makers found the deal unacceptable. China had a comparable energy demand and deficit. China would likely divert energy products away from the United States and towards itself. Many observers thought that this would be the beginning of what would be a long, drawn-out battle between the two countries over the world's fossil fuel resources. This competition, many believed, would unavoidably strain resources, and scholars such as Michael Klare predicted it would eventually end in war. In 2005, few would have predicted that the U.S. and China would soon cooperate in the development of energy resources located in the United States. This, however, is what transpired. In 2010, the U.S. allowed a Chinese company to invest in its domestic energy resources. CNOOC, the company that five years earlier had their attempt to invest in American energy assets blocked, reached a deal with Chesapeake Energy to help develop and produce shale gas reserves in the Eagle Ford formation in Texas. In 2011, these two companies reached an agreement to develop shale resources in Colorado and Wyoming. A little less than a year later, the Chinese firm Sinopec and the American firm Devon Energy also entered into a joint venture. CNOOC and Sinopec are also currently in competition to buy a 30 percent stake in FTS international, a company that specializes in hydraulic fracturing technology. Why would U.S. policy makers allow Chinese investment in 2010? This question becomes especially perplexing when taking into consideration that the energy demand for both countries grew during this time, and projections of energy scarcity have persisted. While the shale gas boom has given US policy makers reason for optimism, the amount of gas in the ground or how long it will supply U.S. demand is far from certain. I will offer an explanation for this puzzle by applying the theory outlined by Stephen Brooks in his book Producing Security. I will use his theory to create a typology that explains when US policy makers support cooperation and when they do not. I will argue that the United States can no longer seek to obtain energy security independently, or to limit investment only to close allies who pose no threat to energy supplies. High costs and rapid technological development have forced the United States to allow for investment from China, an energy competitor. The United States, however, does not indiscriminately allow for Chinese investment but will only do so when the investment will enable technological innovation and provide needed capital that will further ensure energy security. This paper will continue as follows: I will first provide a review of the relevant literature. I will then offer the theoretical foundations of my argument. I will then give the relevant background information. This will include a brief explanation of natural gas exploration and production as well as a short historical outline of the U.S.-China energy relationship. I will then test two case studies against the hypotheses that I will pose later in this paper. The first case will provide an in-depth examination of the previous attempt of CNOOC to buy a stake in American-held energy assets in 2005. This incident will help provide a baseline of the behavior of energy-deficit states when energy is scarce, or there are projections of scarcity, and there is no pressing need for technological innovation to produce fossil fuel economically. The second case study, U.S.-Chinese shale gas cooperation, will show the response of the United States when projects are technologically and capital intensive.
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To be fair, the friendship was always either nascent or tenuous at best. That Canada is host to the largest Sikh population outside of India, and like many diasporas, more enthused for more extreme political ends than those back home would set the tension level on "not good" anyway. Then you add in that India is ruled by the Hindu Nationalist Party and by Modi, so any friction becomes much hotter and much more useful for domestic political purposes back home.One can start on either side of the Indo-Pacific region on this. Because my own start as a scholar of the international relations of ethnic politics, which included some study of South Asia, came long before my move to Canada, I will start with the India side. Modi and his party got into power by engaging in ethnic outbidding, by promising to be the best defenders of the Hindu majority, which meant, of course, targeting minorities of all kinds as threats that needed to be put in their place. So, Muslims have paid a significant price for this in India. It has meant in foreign policy that Canada is seen as a real problem, rather than Canada's self-image as the less imperial Commonwealth country that everyone loves more than the US (Canadians take great pride that Americans will put on a Canadian flag on their backpacks when the US is governed by a Bush or Trump). In Modi's eyes, Canada is a supporter of Sikh separatism. That Sikhs in Canada are politically powerful and use that power to support separatism in the homeland. Yes, Sikhs are powerful--Trudeau at one point had four Sikhs in his cabinet, far out of proportion to their population, but their population is not small. Trudeau kept an awful Minister of National Defence because he didn't want to offend a key constituency and source of campaign dollars. And, yes, an Air India flight was blown up by Canadian-based Sikhs. The intelligence services and the cops messed up before and afterwards. So, Indian fans of Modi cite that event as Canada being a base of anti-India terrorism. The more accurate charge is that Canada continues to be lousy at stopping the flow of money to extremists of all kinds, but, no, Canada is not a place where Sikhs have bases to train for future terrorist attacks. Canada is not Afghanistan of 2001. Turning to the Canadian side, some folks are accusing Trudeau of playing this up and publicizing this for political gain. And that is, well, laughable. There are two dynamics here that are intersecting. The first is, yes, this government (and any other) would be pandering to Sikh voters, and, yes, significant numbers of folks in this community were asking for the government to take more seriously India's role in the death of Hardeep Singh Nijjar. The other dynamic is that the Trudeau government has faced much criticism for being slow to deal with China's election interference. So, there has been pressure for Trudeau to act faster.Still, this government did not act precipitously in this case. They did not go public as soon as they got a hint of this. Instead, they worked their allies, and they sent several folks over to India to get their support for an investigation, including Canada's National Security and Intelligence Advisor, Jody Thomas. They were rebuffed. It seems clear that the government would have liked to have continued to handle this quietly, but they got alerted that a reporter was going to release a story on this. With more stories coming out that the US was the country that had provided some signals intel to Canada that supported the India connection in Nijjar's death, I am pretty convinced that, yes, India through its intelligence services had this guy killed, directly or indirectly. I am biased in this, as I have long been suspicious of Modi and his Hindu National party. But the pattern of events seems to make it clear that there is more than just a little something to this. While India can be upset that Sikhs in Canada protest against India and support Sikh separatism, and that politicians took the sides of protesters in India over changes in agriculture policy last year, none of that justifies killing a Canadian citizen on Canadian territory. This is not what friends do to each other. Unless something happened that I am not aware of, at no point did the British whack any fundraiser in Boston seeking to support the Irish Republican Army. Modi did this because he is arrogant, and he may be right that he can get away with it since the US needs India in its anti-China containment efforts. And, yes, he would not be the first autocratic-leaning leader to bully Canada. It has been open season for some time with China, Russia, and the Saudis taking turns, with the Iranians also engaged in election interference.My pals in Ottawa who work in and near the intel scene are pretty outraged at how lamely this government and previous ones have dealt with such stuff. I am not sure better reactions would have mattered that much since the asymmetries in these situations are pretty stark, but, yes, Canada can do better on protecting its citizens, including those in the various diaspora communities, than it has.I don't expect things to get better between India and Canada. Modi is scoring a lot of points on this at home. Trudeau is not, but he is stuck. I have often wondered why his government pandered so much to Sikhs when there are also other Indian-Canadians here, and that pandering to one side might be problematic for the other. In this case, where a Canadian was killed, taking this seriously is less about the pandering of the past and more of the challenge of defending Canadians from backsliding democracies.
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Do Spew and 2 rhyme? I sure hope so as I begin my review of the year that was. The last time I blogged less than I did in 2022 was ... in 2008, when I didn't blog at all. What explains the decline? Partly exhaustion, partly a decline in imagination, partly other social media sucking up my time (the podcasts, now tooting as well as tweeting), and partly the reality that I have written enough stuff before that when the topic comes up, it is just easier to repost. Maybe a look at this year's posts will tell me a bit about what inspires me to write here and what does not, although survivor and recency biases may mesh nicely with my confirmation bias to prevent me from learning that much. Hmmm.JanuaryI started by pondering whether JK Rowling has utterly destroyed her legacy--whether I can still consume Harry Potter stuff. While I concluded that I could still enjoy the world she created, even as she betrays damn near all of it, my behavior, my choices, says otherwise as I had multiple opportunities to watch HP movies while hanging out at my mother-in-law's over the holidays and dodged all of them. Something I had not done in the past. Later in the month, I returned to the theme of what kinds of stuff can I read and enjoy given the complex realities of our time. I wrote about how it has become harder to watch and read cop shows given what we know about cops these days. I am finishing the latest John Sandford book which features multiple cops, Virgil Flowers and Lucas Davenport, solving a serial murder spree by bitcoin assholes, and have found it fairly compelling (unlike the most recent Jack Reacher book). So, maybe I am less affected by the topics than by the behavior of the artist?The month ended with the start of the occupation of Ottawa by extremists--far right white supremacists. The year ended with an examination of whether the government should have invoked the Emergency Act. Um, yeah, but because the emergency was that the provincial leaders were cowards who wanted the feds to own it.FebruaryThe extremists in Ottawa became a focus for me, as it did for most of my city, for most of the month with posts on: outbidding, explaining why the Conservatives were pandering to the extremistsanger, discussing how pissed off this made me, triggered indeed.policing, as I learned that Canadians think that the cops should not be directed by the politicians as if policing is not inherently political,my take on the Emergency Act.And then the past came back to bite Ukraine and me. My previous work on irredentism became relevant again with Russia's invasion of yet more Ukrainian territory. In this post, I explained the basics of irredentism--that it is always bad for the country doing the invading even as it may or may not be bad for its leader, that domestic dynamics are key, and so on.March The focus of March was very much on the war in Ukraine. I argued via a bit of screenwriting why a No Fly Zone was a bad idea. I elaborated about the disease of MOAR. And, yes, I then invoked my work on irredentism to explain why Putin was willing to kill Russia's kin in order to "save" them. I wrote about limited war, a topic that got new energy this week as some retired generals expressed much frustration at the unwillingness of the US to send deep strike weapons to Ukraine.I also blogged about my appearance before the House of Commons Defence Committee.AprilThis month had only a few posts, with nearly all focused on CDSN events. The outlier was a post discussing the appearance of Minister of National Defence Anita Anand in my Civil-Military Relations class. That was super-cool--a great way to finish off that course.MayI marked my 300,000th tweet before twitter's death spiral... maybe I caused it?I discussed the two events organized by the CDSN Undergraduate Excellence Scholars--a conference and a hackathon. I also went to Germany for another conference. Woot!My last post took a first look at the Arbour report, where a retired Supreme Court Justice assessed the Canadian Armed Forces and why it has fallen short, yet again, on reforming itself when it comes to sexual misconduct. I took a quick tour of the 48 recommendations. June I didn't write much in June, but two of my posts continued my examination of the Arbour Report: here and here. In the first one, I pushed on a point that will become a key question in my next project--what is the proper rule of a defence department or ministry or agency? Arbour says DND is to support the CAF, and, no, nope, nuh uh. This does help to explain a big problem with this and previous reports--having a very limited view of what DND's job is. I also focus on the lack of a recommendation for an Inspector General, which is now a topic of research of this year's Visiting Defence Fellow.I also marked my 10 years in Ottawa with this post. I am so glad that the tides of the academic job market washed me ashore here. It was not my plan, but it has worked out wonderfully.JulyJuly was a month of ups and downs. I started the month by pondering how long might the autocratic moment in the US last if Democracy were to give way. The most pivotal building at my old summer camp burned down, but there was much resilience that day and beyond to give me hope for its future.One of the ups was the new season of Battle Rhythm. I am forever grateful to Stéfanie von Hlatky for helping us launch our podcast, and I was sad to see her move to admin stuff at her university. But we got re-energized by a new crew of co-hosts. Artur, Anessa, Erin, and Linna have provided a variety of perspectives since they joined us. I am most grateful to Melissa Jennings for doing most of the heavy lifting in this effort and to Carelove Doreus and Racheal Wallace for their carrying the rest of the load. It has been a big year in Canadian civil-military relations, and one of the highlights was the decision to adjust the uniform standards to make the CAF more welcoming to more people. I addressed these changes with some accidental foreshadowing of the awful Vimy speech by one of those responsible for the culture crisis that prevented the CAF from adapting sooner.The month, which started with COVID finally hitting me and Mrs. Spew thanks to a conference trip to Berlin, ended in an upswing with both Beulahfest as my mom celebrated her 90th birthday and, yes, Stevefest, as I did a heap of stuff to celebrate another year of me. AugustNot many posts this month as I was very busy organizing and then hosting the first in-person CDSN Summer Institute. It was one of the original ideas animating the big grant application, and it was great to see it finally come to fruition with so many sharp people speaking and participating. Plus it was an excuse to have a reception or three. Just a great week worth all the effort by the CDSN team.Much news about classified documents thanks to Trump hoarding documents he should have had anymore, so I shared what I had learned during the year I had a top secret clearance and worked every day in a SCIF--secure compartmented information facility.Finally, I said goodbye to a key part of my life--ultimate frisbee. I just kept getting injured and could not stay on the field. I could still throw well, but that whole running thing proved to be too much. I very much miss it, it gave me friends across North America, it gave me some level of fitness, it gave me heaps of silliness, and nothing can fill the hole it left behind, alas. SeptemberAnother light month for blogging. I wrote a guide for those visiting Montreal for the American Political Science Association meeting. The focus of the month and of my career these days was/is civil-military relations. I wrote about the retired generals and SecDefs providing advice on how to manage this relationship. And then I addressed a recurring challenge up here--should the Canadian military prioritize domestic emergency operations? Whether the CAF wants to or not (not), climate change is going to make this happen. It already has. I am getting more and more interested in studying domestic emergency ops in part because few defence scholars have done so. Nothing like having a wide open field to pass the disk into. Oh wait, that was last month's post about ultimate.One reason I didn't post more in September is that I was headed west to Disneyland and to visit my daughter (not necessarily prioritized that way?).OctoberI gave thanks for all kinds of stuff as Canada celebrates Thankgiving in October when Americans debate the role of Columbus.I spent the rest of the month preparing both the CDSN Midterm Report for one of our funders and a conference to mark the midway point in our SSHRC grant. It was great to hear from the co-directors of the various research efforts--Civ-Mil Relations, Personnel, Security, and Operations. We were once told that the CDSN was just me and my friends dong stuff, but, to be clear, when it started, many of those who joined as co-directors were not friends and some were barely acquaintances. Now, we are friends, but isn't that how networking works when it works well? I am very proud of what we have put together even if it put a major dent in my blogging.November Was the theme of the month commenting on other people's mistakes? Seems like it with a post on twitter's dramatic decline thanks to Musk and then the craptastic speech by a retired general. That post generated more hits than any other this year and is in the top five of my 13 years of blogging. The related tweet was also the most tweeted/impressioned tweet of the year and then some. It led to a post addressing "woke" and being "anti-woke," which helped me think about vice-signaling, the flipside of virtue-signaling. I got to put on my old NATO hat when some errant missiles from Ukraine's war with Russia landed in Poland. I did much media as well to explain that NATO does not work the way may folks think--that there is nothing automatic about it, even if the attack had been deliberate.One reason I blog less is that I simply have not been writing that much about pop culture here. Why? Mostly due to lack of time. One exception to this was thinking about the International Politics of the second Black Panther movie.DecemberThe year ended with much CDSN and much cookies!I went to Winnipeg for the first time for a CDSN workshop on Domestic Emergency Operations. This is the focus of one of our four MINDS (DND) funded research projects. I learned a great deal from sharp people both in and out of the government. There is much work to do here, and I am glad we have made this one of our foci over the next three years. Once again, we held an end of the year conference, the Year Ahead, which addresses some of the issues on the horizon. This year, we also launched the new CDSN Podcast Network at the event! The CDSN Podcast Network brings together four podcasts--Battle Rhythm, Conseils de Sécurité, SecurityScape and NATO Field Report. We are open to adding others down the road. Along the way, we fixed our Apple podcast feed. I am most excited not just for having a new home for BattleRhythm but connecting and amplifying some student-run podcasts.I finished the year with a heap of baking--cookies for friends around Ottawa. The basic idea is this: I want to eat a lot of different kinds of cookies. But then making so many different kinds means finding people who are willing to take most off my hands or else I will gain a heap of weight (winterfest did that anyway). I enjoyed my first cookiefest in 2020, which was the first time I saw many people after months and months of quarantining. So, I keep doing it, now armed with better equipment (kitchen aid stand mixer makes it much easier than the first cookie fest) and more recipes. It is not just the baking and the eating. I got to chat with a bunch of great people as I delivered the cookies. If the cookies are joy (and, yes, they are), giving joy leads to receiving much joy.One of the interesting dynamics of 2022 was the re-emergence of blogging. That many folks started writing on substack, which, to me, seems like blogging but with the chance of income. I have not moved over there as I am pretty happy with this perch. It does not make me money, but I doubt that people would pay that much for my half-baked (semi-spewed) writings. One of my New Year's Resolutions is to blog more. My guess is that I will be more successful at that than the ones focused on dietary restraint.May you and yours have a terrific 2023!