This conference brings together policymakers, experts, academics and civil society leaders to explore the current condition of the state in Syria. It examines the structure, interrelations and importance of the regime’s core institutions and their interactions with international actors. It also highlights the regime’s different approaches in dealing with state institutions and non-state actors.

The speakers discuss governance dynamics in north-western Syria and the east Euphrates region and will analyse governance variations between regions within the regime-controlled areas after the dramatic changes in 2018 and 2019.

The conference also aims to evaluate the possibility for Syrians to move from a regime-led state to one that is accountable to its citizens and is governed by the rule of law.

 

Yemen suffered from the excessive control of the central government prior to the current conflict. Federalism has been put forward by many Yemeni political parties since the National Dialogue Conference (NDC) as the supposed magic cure for this significant problem. Today, Yemen is more fragmented than ever, its state central institutions have been scattered and lack leadership and the state has lost most of its sovereignty. The prevailing narrative that decentralization through federalism is Yemen’s inevitable path post-conflict often fails to acknowledge that there are prerequisites for effective local governance, beyond political will.  

In a recent article, Osamah Al Rawhani addressed how the weakness of central state institutions is the key challenge to proceeding with federalism in Yemen and highlighted prerequisites and contextual factors that need to be addressed before reforming the structure of the state. He argued that the viability of decentralization relies on the presence of a functioning, representative central government that is capable of devolving power but also able to keep the state from further fragmentation. 

In this webinar, part of the Chatham House project on The Future of the State in the Middle East and North Africa, the article’s author will discuss recent developments in Yemen, where shifting frontlines and regional divisions are fragmenting the country in new ways. The speaker will explore alternative approaches to pursue the path of federalism that recognize the current realities and the critical need for strong central institutions. He will also survey the internal and external factors that must be considered to rebuild a stable state in Yemen.

You can express your interest in attending by following this link. You will receive a Zoom confirmation email should your registration be successful. Alternatively, you can watch the event live on the MENA Programme Facebook page.

As new cases of COVID-19 continue to surge, countries around the world struggle to mitigate the public health and economic effects of the virus. It is becoming increasingly clear that an effective pandemic response requires a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach. In the Arab world, where health systems are already strained by armed conflicts and displaced populations, a whole-of-society response to the pandemic is particularly critical as countries have become increasingly dependent on non-state actors, notably the private sector, for healthcare provision and any response that includes the state alone may not be sufficient to address the pandemic.

In a recent article, Fadi El-Jardali, argued that while the pandemic will have grave health and economic consequences for years to come, it brings with it a valuable opportunity to re-envision the role of state and non-state actors in strengthening health systems. The article addressed the need for increased collaboration between state and non-state actors, and the rethinking of existing cooperation models to provide quality healthcare services for all.  

In this webinar, part of the Chatham House project on the future of the state in the Middle East and North Africa, Dr El-Jardali will discuss how state and non-state actors can collaborate more effectively to address the shortcomings of national health care systems amidst the pandemic and beyond. The article’s author will share insights on the different capacities available in Arab societies that governments can draw upon to ensure that Universal Health Coverage, equity considerations and social justice are at the core of health systems.

You can express your interest in attending by following this link. You will receive a Zoom confirmation email should your registration be successful. Alternatively, you can watch the event live on the MENA Programme Facebook page.

 

As the US surgeon general warns Americans to brace for ‘our Pearl Harbor moment’, the US faces a week in which it may see the worst of the global pandemic. The absence of US leadership at the global level has enabled the Security Council’s inaction. And at the G7, President Trump actively obstructed efforts to agree a joint statement.

US efforts to increase its support of international aid to the tune of $274million are minimal, not least in light of a 50% reduction in its support for the World Health Organization (WHO) and radically diminished support for other global health programmes as well. International coordination is essential to mitigate unregulated competition for critical medical supplies, manage border closures, and guarantee international economic stability.

True, it won’t be possible to control the epidemic at home if the global effort to defeat the pandemic fails. But the absence of leadership from Washington at home is palpable. And what happens at home sets a natural limit on America’s internationalism.

Both solution and problem

In response to the coronavirus crisis, the US state is proving to be a solution - and a problem. The dramatic response to the economic crisis is evident with the $2.3trillion stimulus package signed into law by President Trump boldly supported by both Democrats and Republicans in the most significant piece of bipartisan legislation passed in decades.

America’s political economy is unrecognisable, moving left and looking increasingly more European each week as Congress and the executive branch agree a series of stimulus packages designed to protect citizens and businesses. Some elements of this legislation were more familiar to Americans, notably $200bn in corporate tax breaks.

But Congress also agreed unemployment insurance, and cheques - one in April, one in May – to be sent directly to those Americans most directly hit by the economic impact of COVID-19. In effect, this is adopting a temporary universal basic income.

The stimulus plan also dedicated $367bn to keep small businesses afloat for as long as the economy is shuttered. Already the government is negotiating a fourth stimulus package, but the paradox is that without rigorous steps to halt the health crisis, no level of state intervention designed to solve the economic response will be sufficient.

The scale of the state’s economic intervention is unprecedented, but it stands in stark contrast to Washington’s failure to coordinate a national response to America’s health crisis. An unregulated market for personal protective equipment and ventilators is driving up competition between cities, states, and even the federal government.

In some cases, cities and states are reaching out directly beyond national borders to international organisations, foreign firms and even America’s geopolitical competitors as they search for suppliers. In late March, the city of New York secured a commitment from the United Nations to donate 250,000 protective face masks.

Now Governor Cuomo has announced New York has secured a shipment of 140 ventilators from the state of Oregon, and 1,000 ventilators from China. The Patriots even sent their team plane to China to pick up medical supplies for the state of Massachusetts. And following a phone call between President Putin and President Trump, Russia sent a plane with masks and medical equipment to JFK airport in New York.

Networks of Chinese-Americans in the United States are rapidly mobilising their networks to access supplies and send them to doctors and nurses in need. And innovative and decisive action by governors, corporates, universities and mayors drove America’s early response to coronavirus.

This was critical to slowing the spread of COVID-19 by implementing policies that rapidly drove social distancing. But the limits of decentralized and uncoordinated action are now coming into sharp focus. President Trump has so far refused to require stay-at-home orders across all states, leaving this authority to individual governors. Unregulated competition has driven up prices with the consequence that critical supplies are going to the highest bidder, not those most in need.

Governor Cuomo’s call for a nationwide buying consortium has so far gone unheeded and, although the Federal Emergency Management Agency has attempted to deliver supplies to states most in need, the Strategic National Stockpile is depleting fast. Without critical action, the federal government risks hindering the ability of cities and states to get the supplies they need.

But President Trump is reluctant to fully deploy his powers under the Defense Production Act (DPA). In March, he did invoke the DPA to require certain domestic manufacturers to produce ventilators. But calls for it to be used to require manufacturers to produce PPE (personal protective equipment), control costs, and manage allocations has so far gone unheeded by a president generally opposed to state interventions for managing the economy.

It is true that federalism and a deep belief in competition are critical to the fabric of US history and politics, and innovations made possible by market values of entrepreneurism and competition cannot be underestimated. In the search for a vaccine, this could still prove to be key.

But with current estimates that more Americans will die from coronavirus than were killed in the Korean and Vietnam wars combined, it is clear now is the time to reimagine and reinvent the role of the American state.

In the absence of a coordinated effort driven by the White House, governors are working together to identify the areas of greatest need. Whether this will lead to a recasting of the American state and greater demand for a deeper and more permanent social safety net is a key question in the months ahead.

In the short-term the need for coordinated state action at the national level is self-evident. US leadership globally, to manage the health crisis and its economic impacts, is also vital. But this is unlikely to be forthcoming until America gets its own house in order.

Ample evidence exists that China was caught off guard by the Trump administration's onslaught of punishing acts—the trade war being a prime, but far from the only, example. This article, in addition to contextualizing their earlier optimism about the relations with the United States under President Trump, examines why Chinese leaders and analysts were surprised by the turn of events. It argues that three main factors contributed to the lapse of judgment. First, Chinese officials and analysts grossly misunderstood Donald Trump the individual. By overemphasizing his pragmatism while downplaying his unpredictability, they ended up underprepared for the policies he unleashed. Second, some ingrained Chinese beliefs, manifested in the analogies of the pendulum swing and the ‘bickering couple’, as well as the narrative of the ‘ballast’, lulled officials and scholars into undue optimism about the stability of the broader relationship. Third, analytical and methodological problems as well as political considerations prevented them from fully grasping the strategic shift against China in the US.

Islamic State videos have often been associated with savage violence and beheadings. An in-depth scrutiny however reveals another striking feature: that female bodies are absent, blurred or mute. Examining a few Islamic State videos in depth, the article suggests that the invisibility of women in tandem with the ostentatious visibility of male bodies enable gendered and embodied spectators to indulge in homoerotic as well as heterosexual imaginaries. In contrast to studies on visual security and online radicalization which assert that images affect an audience, this article focuses on the interaction between video and audience and argues that spectators are not only rational and emotional but embodied and gendered as well. Islamic State videos do not only attract western foreign fighters through religious–ideological rhetoric or emotional impact but also through gendered forms of pleasure and desire that enable carnal imagination and identification. The article probes the analytical purchase of carnal aesthetics and spectatorship.

As new cases of COVID-19 continue to surge, countries around the world struggle to mitigate the public health and economic effects of the virus. It is becoming increasingly clear that an effective pandemic response requires a whole-of-government, whole-of-society approach. In the Arab world, where health systems are already strained by armed conflicts and displaced populations, a whole-of-society response to the pandemic is particularly critical as countries have become increasingly dependent on non-state actors, notably the private sector, for healthcare provision and any response that includes the state alone may not be sufficient to address the pandemic.

In a recent article, Fadi El-Jardali, argued that while the pandemic will have grave health and economic consequences for years to come, it brings with it a valuable opportunity to re-envision the role of state and non-state actors in strengthening health systems. The article addressed the need for increased collaboration between state and non-state actors, and the rethinking of existing cooperation models to provide quality healthcare services for all.  

In this webinar, part of the Chatham House project on the future of the state in the Middle East and North Africa, Dr El-Jardali will discuss how state and non-state actors can collaborate more effectively to address the shortcomings of national health care systems amidst the pandemic and beyond. The article’s author will share insights on the different capacities available in Arab societies that governments can draw upon to ensure that Universal Health Coverage, equity considerations and social justice are at the core of health systems.

You can express your interest in attending by following this link. You will receive a Zoom confirmation email should your registration be successful. Alternatively, you can watch the event live on the MENA Programme Facebook page.

 

The US is eight months out from consequential presidential and congressional elections. Since his election in 2016, US President Donald Trump has presided over economic expansion and record unemployment rates following a 2017 tax overhaul and deregulation policies. Trump’s approval rating is at the highest level of his presidency, while on the Democratic side, the once-wide field is in a process of narrowing as intra-party ideological differences persist.
 
As we look ahead to the presidential elections in November 2020, Dr Lindsay Newman will reflect on Donald Trump’s presidency, the state of the 2020 election and preview the potential directions of travel ahead under a Trump 2.0 or a Democratic administration. How can we understand the health of Trump’s presidency post-impeachment and post-State of the Union address? What will Trump’s likely foreign policy priorities be ahead of his re-election bid including prospects for a US-UK or a US-Europe trade deal? And, across the aisle, how can we understand the Democratic primary so far and how are the Democrats positioned going into the general election? 
 

This event is only open to Major Corporate Member and Partner organizations of Chatham House. If you would like to register your interest, please RSVP to Linda Bedford. We will contact you to confirm your attendance.

To enable as open a debate as possible, this event will be held under the Chatham House Rule.

COVID-19
This event is proceeding as scheduled, as are other Chatham House events, in accordance with the advice from the UK Government, Foreign and Commonwealth Office and Public Health England. However, we are closely monitoring the spread of COVID-19 and will send updates to attendees as the situation warrants. 
In the meantime, in line with the official advice for returning travellers or visitors to the UK from specified countries and areas (see guidance here), we ask that:

• If you have travelled from Category 1 countries/areas, you refrain from attending the event even if asymptomatic (i.e. even if you are showing no symptoms);
• If you have travelled from Category 2 countries/areas, you refrain from attending the event should you develop symptoms.

​If you fall under one of these affected categories and have any questions, please call +44 (0)207 314 3638 or email lbedford@chathamhouse.org

 

As the US surgeon general warns Americans to brace for ‘our Pearl Harbor moment’, the US faces a week in which it may see the worst of the global pandemic. The absence of US leadership at the global level has enabled the Security Council’s inaction. And at the G7, President Trump actively obstructed efforts to agree a joint statement.

US efforts to increase its support of international aid to the tune of $274million are minimal, not least in light of a 50% reduction in its support for the World Health Organization (WHO) and radically diminished support for other global health programmes as well. International coordination is essential to mitigate unregulated competition for critical medical supplies, manage border closures, and guarantee international economic stability.

True, it won’t be possible to control the epidemic at home if the global effort to defeat the pandemic fails. But the absence of leadership from Washington at home is palpable. And what happens at home sets a natural limit on America’s internationalism.

Both solution and problem

In response to the coronavirus crisis, the US state is proving to be a solution - and a problem. The dramatic response to the economic crisis is evident with the $2.3trillion stimulus package signed into law by President Trump boldly supported by both Democrats and Republicans in the most significant piece of bipartisan legislation passed in decades.

America’s political economy is unrecognisable, moving left and looking increasingly more European each week as Congress and the executive branch agree a series of stimulus packages designed to protect citizens and businesses. Some elements of this legislation were more familiar to Americans, notably $200bn in corporate tax breaks.

But Congress also agreed unemployment insurance, and cheques - one in April, one in May – to be sent directly to those Americans most directly hit by the economic impact of COVID-19. In effect, this is adopting a temporary universal basic income.

The stimulus plan also dedicated $367bn to keep small businesses afloat for as long as the economy is shuttered. Already the government is negotiating a fourth stimulus package, but the paradox is that without rigorous steps to halt the health crisis, no level of state intervention designed to solve the economic response will be sufficient.

The scale of the state’s economic intervention is unprecedented, but it stands in stark contrast to Washington’s failure to coordinate a national response to America’s health crisis. An unregulated market for personal protective equipment and ventilators is driving up competition between cities, states, and even the federal government.

In some cases, cities and states are reaching out directly beyond national borders to international organisations, foreign firms and even America’s geopolitical competitors as they search for suppliers. In late March, the city of New York secured a commitment from the United Nations to donate 250,000 protective face masks.

Now Governor Cuomo has announced New York has secured a shipment of 140 ventilators from the state of Oregon, and 1,000 ventilators from China. The Patriots even sent their team plane to China to pick up medical supplies for the state of Massachusetts. And following a phone call between President Putin and President Trump, Russia sent a plane with masks and medical equipment to JFK airport in New York.

Networks of Chinese-Americans in the United States are rapidly mobilising their networks to access supplies and send them to doctors and nurses in need. And innovative and decisive action by governors, corporates, universities and mayors drove America’s early response to coronavirus.

This was critical to slowing the spread of COVID-19 by implementing policies that rapidly drove social distancing. But the limits of decentralized and uncoordinated action are now coming into sharp focus. President Trump has so far refused to require stay-at-home orders across all states, leaving this authority to individual governors. Unregulated competition has driven up prices with the consequence that critical supplies are going to the highest bidder, not those most in need.

Governor Cuomo’s call for a nationwide buying consortium has so far gone unheeded and, although the Federal Emergency Management Agency has attempted to deliver supplies to states most in need, the Strategic National Stockpile is depleting fast. Without critical action, the federal government risks hindering the ability of cities and states to get the supplies they need.

But President Trump is reluctant to fully deploy his powers under the Defense Production Act (DPA). In March, he did invoke the DPA to require certain domestic manufacturers to produce ventilators. But calls for it to be used to require manufacturers to produce PPE (personal protective equipment), control costs, and manage allocations has so far gone unheeded by a president generally opposed to state interventions for managing the economy.

It is true that federalism and a deep belief in competition are critical to the fabric of US history and politics, and innovations made possible by market values of entrepreneurism and competition cannot be underestimated. In the search for a vaccine, this could still prove to be key.

But with current estimates that more Americans will die from coronavirus than were killed in the Korean and Vietnam wars combined, it is clear now is the time to reimagine and reinvent the role of the American state.

In the absence of a coordinated effort driven by the White House, governors are working together to identify the areas of greatest need. Whether this will lead to a recasting of the American state and greater demand for a deeper and more permanent social safety net is a key question in the months ahead.

In the short-term the need for coordinated state action at the national level is self-evident. US leadership globally, to manage the health crisis and its economic impacts, is also vital. But this is unlikely to be forthcoming until America gets its own house in order.

Islamic State videos have often been associated with savage violence and beheadings. An in-depth scrutiny however reveals another striking feature: that female bodies are absent, blurred or mute. Examining a few Islamic State videos in depth, the article suggests that the invisibility of women in tandem with the ostentatious visibility of male bodies enable gendered and embodied spectators to indulge in homoerotic as well as heterosexual imaginaries. In contrast to studies on visual security and online radicalization which assert that images affect an audience, this article focuses on the interaction between video and audience and argues that spectators are not only rational and emotional but embodied and gendered as well. Islamic State videos do not only attract western foreign fighters through religious–ideological rhetoric or emotional impact but also through gendered forms of pleasure and desire that enable carnal imagination and identification. The article probes the analytical purchase of carnal aesthetics and spectatorship.

This meeting formed part of a programme of work which investigates the role of negative emissions technologies (NETs) in achieving the Paris Agreement climate targets. Previous meetings held in London and Brussels have looked at integrating negative emissions into EU policy-making, the implications and degree to which NETs, and in particular bioenergy with carbon capture storage (BECCS), can be an effective climate mitigation tool. This meeting focused on the possible deployment pathways of NETs and alternatives to BECCS for the US in particular, in the context of geographical constraints and socioenvironmental implications, the role of the private sector, and appropriate governance and finance mechanisms. 

Asia’s political class learnt many lessons on digital governance in 2019, not all of them positive.

The prolonged protests in Hong Kong and India, led by disaffected young citizenry and enabled by social media tools, powerfully demonstrated how things could spiral out of control when the virtual and the real streets come together.

Not surprisingly, governments across the region are taking a step back. Instead of placing the citizen at the heart of digital public policy – with privacy, trust, security and inclusion as drivers of digital governance – Asian governments are focusing instead on surveillance and command and control, which contradicts the spirit of a decentralized Internet and undermines citizen’s rights.

Asia’s digital governance is fragmenting from the global norm and morphing into two platforms with remarkably similar characteristics.

One is a China-driven model aptly called the Great Firewall where surveillance of citizens is an explicit objective and any external material deemed to be subversive is kept out. A complementary model has also emerged more recently, which can best be described as China-light, which seeks to emulate the control aspects of the Great Firewall.

There are of course overlaps between emulators of the China model (this list includes Vietnam, Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos) and those pursuing China-light (Singapore, India, Indonesia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Thailand and Malaysia). A common thread running through these two approaches, which differ only in intensity and scope, is the belief that the state is best positioned to police social media and protect the rights of citizens.

This was not how it was supposed to be. A decade ago, Asian political leaders spoke about the virtues of an open internet. Such talk has faded, and a narrowing of Asia’s digital space is taking place against a backdrop of an intensifying trade war between America and China, where regional supply chains run the risk of a decoupling into distinct Sino and American spheres, upending Asia’s durable economic model of the past few decades.

Digital fragmentation in the world’s fastest growing region, with five G20 members, will complicate efforts to build global governance and standards.

Asia’s digital landscape

Asian governments, including democratic ones, have developed an unhealthy obsession with what their citizens are up to on a daily basis. Their solution is round-the-clock monitoring in cities and towns, powered by new surveillance technologies.

Name tagging and facial recognition to track movement of citizens has become pervasive across the region, with China emerging as the preferred source of technology, knowledge, and techniques. While India’s Supreme Court has ruled that privacy is a fundamental right, translating this into concrete citizen’s protections will be difficult with the Modi government eager to emulate China’s approach.

Asian governments are also following China in requiring that their citizen’s data be housed within national borders and are rebelling against the established practice of data offshoring.

In the post-Snowden era and amidst increasing cyber risks, there are rational national security reasons for why governments may want to ring-fence customer data within national boundaries. However, Asian governments are paying little or no attention to how companies are using customer data within national boundaries, with widespread abuses going unchecked.

Global standards are still evolving and there is a strong case here for a uniform regional approach, perhaps via ASEAN or APEC, on standards governing customer privacy, payments, data collection and handling. Big tech companies and platforms operate across much of Asia and a regional approach will curb their current instinct of conducting regulatory arbitrage.

There is a genuine problem in Asia, as elsewhere in the world, with the proliferation of fake news and extremism. But instead of addressing the source of this problem, governments are clamping down by generously expanding the definition of fake news (Singapore) or by shutting down the internet altogether (India, Sri Lanka, and China being serial offenders).

As disseminators of news of all stripes, including the fake variant, the big tech firms have a primary responsibility in policing their platforms. However, the regulatory capacity of many Asian governments to monitor this is weak and in crisis situations, governments prefer to shut the pipes altogether.

Digitalization of course is not all about surveillance and holds the promise of driving inclusion. There is considerable hype within Asia on the promise of fintech as an enabler of this inclusion.

Hong Kong and Singapore are licensing new digital banks, India’s UPI (unified payments interface) is reducing friction in domestic payments and China’s BAT companies (Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent) are disrupting traditional commerce and payments, and seeking to expand in the region.

However, there is an elite focus in many of these initiatives, with the target market being the region’s rising middle class rather than those at the bottom of the income ladder. Making fintech work for all will require micro-initiatives with the support of NGOs, local governments and small enterprises, with the objective of digitalizing microfinance.

Here developing Asia will again benefit from learning from each other and in building regional approaches. India’s Aadhar for example, with appropriate security safeguards, is a model for Asia in terms of building digital identity.

Given differing regional and national objectives, it is difficult to imagine a global accord for digital governance any time soon. However, by signing on to the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Transpacific Partnership (CPTPP, the successor to the TPP), Asia has consistently demonstrated its leadership in trade and regional governance.

This is why the region needs to come together to ensure that the promise and potential of digitalization flows evenly and equitably to the region, with the region’s 3.8 billion citizens at the heart, rather than at the margins of sensible public policy.