• 264: Ukraine’s Best Chance for Peace: How Neutrality Can Bring Security—and Satisfy Both Russia and the West, submitted on 2022-06-01 22:52:19+08:00.
• 265: A Conversation With Antony Blinken, submitted on 2022-06-02 03:42:45+08:00.
• 266: A Conversation With Antony Blinken: The U.S. Secretary of State Discusses the Biden Administration’s Foreign Policy, submitted on 2022-06-02 04:59:07+08:00.
• 267: Ethiopia’s Invisible Ethnic Cleansing: The World Can’t Afford to Ignore Tigray, submitted on 2022-06-02 22:58:16+08:00.
• 268: Ethiopia’s Invisible Ethnic Cleansing: The World Can’t Afford to Ignore Tigray, submitted on 2022-06-02 23:00:42+08:00.
• 269: Bowing to the Prince: Why It’s a Mistake for Biden to Visit Saudi Arabia, submitted on 2022-06-03 22:46:42+08:00.

264: Ukraine’s Best Chance for Peace: How Neutrality Can Bring Security—and Satisfy Both Russia and the West, submitted on 2022-06-01 22:52:19+08:00.

—– 264.1 —–2022-06-01 22:55:14+08:00:

[SS from the article by Samuel Charap, Senior Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation]

“At this stage of the war in Ukraine, as Russia steps up its offensive in the Donbas and more revelations of the atrocities committed by its forces emerge, the prospect of any kind of negotiated peace between Moscow and Kyiv seems remote. Even earlier this spring, when delegations from the two sides were meeting, the talks had little impact on either Russia’s or Ukraine’s determination to keep fighting. And at times, both Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and Russian President Vladimir Putin have been dismissive of the negotiations. Today, the sides have effectively suspended their diplomatic efforts.

Amid the gloom, it would be easy to forget the real progress that negotiators have already made. In late March, Ukrainian diplomats introduced an innovative framework for a deal that could provide a pathway out of the war. And crucially, the proposal, which was leaked to the press following talks in Istanbul on March 29, has already received at least preliminary support from both sides. At the center of the proposed deal is a trade: Kyiv would renounce its ambitions to join NATO and embrace permanent neutrality in return for receiving security guarantees from both its Western partners and from Russia.

Perhaps because of its novelty, the significance of the Istanbul proposal has yet to be appreciated in many Western capitals, where security guarantees have become synonymous with treaties of alliance. Unlike an alliance, which unites close partners in common defense, usually against a potential enemy, the proposed deal calls for geopolitical rivals to guarantee Ukraine’s long-term security jointly, outside of an alliance structure—and to do so despite one of the rivals’ ongoing war of aggression against Ukraine. If the proposal were to become the basis of an eventual settlement, the result would be a mechanism, however counterintuitive, that would make Russia itself a stakeholder in Ukraine’s security.”

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265: A Conversation With Antony Blinken, submitted on 2022-06-02 03:42:45+08:00.

—– 265.1 —–2022-06-02 03:43:21+08:00:

[SS]

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined Foreign Affairs Editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan for a conversation about the evolution of American foreign policy and the challenges facing the Biden administration today in regard to Russia, China, the war in Ukraine, and more. Listen to their discussion here.

266: A Conversation With Antony Blinken: The U.S. Secretary of State Discusses the Biden Administration’s Foreign Policy, submitted on 2022-06-02 04:59:07+08:00.

—– 266.1 —–2022-06-02 04:59:29+08:00:

[SS]

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken joined Foreign Affairs Editor Daniel Kurtz-Phelan for a conversation about the evolution of American foreign policy and the challenges facing the Biden administration today in regard to Russia, China, the war in Ukraine, and more.

267: Ethiopia’s Invisible Ethnic Cleansing: The World Can’t Afford to Ignore Tigray, submitted on 2022-06-02 22:58:16+08:00.

—– 267.1 —–2022-06-02 22:59:37+08:00:

[SS from the article by Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International and Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch]

“For more than a year and a half, a largely invisible campaign of ethnic cleansing has played out in Ethiopia’s northern region of Tigray. Older people, women, and children have been loaded onto trucks and forced out of their villages and hometowns. Men have been herded into overcrowded detention sites, where many have died of disease, starvation, or torture. In total, several hundred thousand Tigrayans have been forcibly uprooted because of their ethnicity.

These crimes are an outgrowth of a war that began in November 2020, pitting Ethiopian federal forces and their allies, including troops from Eritrea and the neighboring Ethiopian region of Amhara, against forces linked to the Tigray People’s Liberation Front (TPLF), which once led Ethiopia’s coalition government. Early in the conflict, Amhara security forces and officials gained control of Western Tigray, a long-contested area of the region, where with the acquiescence and possible participation of Ethiopia’s federal military, they have carried out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing against Tigrayan communities.

Many of these abuses have been hidden from view. Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has imposed communication restrictions throughout Tigray and obstructed the efforts of independent investigators, journalists, and humanitarian workers, making it difficult to verify accounts from the region. In the first half of 2021, chilling reports of rapes, killings, and mass displacement nonetheless trickled out, prompting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to condemn the ethnic cleansing and call on Ethiopian and Amhara troops to withdraw. Ethiopian authorities, however, have since sealed off Tigray almost entirely, severing telecommunications and even banking services.

But as investigators for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have shown, the atrocities have continued. For over ten months after Blinken’s condemnation of the ethnic cleansing, Amhara regional officials and security forces carried out a systematic campaign of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, unlawful imprisonment and torture, forced displacement, sexual violence, possible extermination, and other inhumane acts. The United States and other countries have pressed for a cessation of hostilities and sought to negotiate humanitarian access to Tigray, but they have largely ignored the horrors in the west of the region. They can no longer afford to look away. “

268: Ethiopia’s Invisible Ethnic Cleansing: The World Can’t Afford to Ignore Tigray, submitted on 2022-06-02 23:00:42+08:00.

—– 268.1 —–2022-06-02 23:01:58+08:00:

[SS from the article by Agnès Callamard, Secretary General of Amnesty International and Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch]

“Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed’s government has imposed communication restrictions throughout Tigray and obstructed the efforts of independent investigators, journalists, and humanitarian workers, making it difficult to verify accounts from the region. In the first half of 2021, chilling reports of rapes, killings, and mass displacement nonetheless trickled out, prompting U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken to condemn the ethnic cleansing and call on Ethiopian and Amhara troops to withdraw. Ethiopian authorities, however, have since sealed off Tigray almost entirely, severing telecommunications and even banking services.

But as investigators for Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have shown, the atrocities have continued. For over ten months after Blinken’s condemnation of the ethnic cleansing, Amhara regional officials and security forces carried out a systematic campaign of war crimes and crimes against humanity, including murder, unlawful imprisonment and torture, forced displacement, sexual violence, possible extermination, and other inhumane acts. The United States and other countries have pressed for a cessation of hostilities and sought to negotiate humanitarian access to Tigray, but they have largely ignored the horrors in the west of the region. They can no longer afford to look away.”

269: Bowing to the Prince: Why It’s a Mistake for Biden to Visit Saudi Arabia, submitted on 2022-06-03 22:46:42+08:00.

—– 269.1 —–2022-06-03 22:47:35+08:00:

[SS from the article by Dalia Dassa Kaye, Senior Fellow at the UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations]

“U.S. President Joe Biden began his term determined to reverse his predecessor’s habit of cozying up to dictators, including Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the de facto leader of Saudi Arabia. In February 2021, Biden pinned the blame for the murder of the Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi on MBS, declassifying a U.S. intelligence report that tied the assassination directly to him. Over a year later, however, it appears that the president plans to travel to Saudi Arabia in the first Middle East visit of his presidency. For those who saw Biden as a champion of human rights, it is a grave disappointment: rewarding MBS with a handshake and photo op on the crown prince’s home turf would amount to an admission that autocrats can get away with murdering their opponents, so long as they keep the oil flowing.

But the problem is not just that a presidential visit to Riyadh would so obviously illustrate a compromise on principles. It is also that Biden probably will not gain anything meaningful in return. Help with domestic oil prices would be nice, but given the tight oil market in the midst of the Ukraine war, it’s not clear that the Saudis could do much even if they wanted to. A major breakthrough on the normalization of Israeli-Saudi ties does not appear to be in the offing, either. Nor is it realistic to expect that this trip could reverse the Saudis’ close relationships with both China and Russia. If he follows through on his plans to visit Riyadh, Biden will be making a bad deal: exchanging near-certain reputational damage for the mere possibility of modest triumphs. It is a visit that should never have been planned.”