Day: September 18, 2023

Azerbaijan opens criminal case in connection with explosion of a …  Trend News Agency

Azerbaijan attempts to conceal its actions by falsely accusing Armenia of provocations, warns senior diplomat  ARMENPRESS

Iran says prisoner exchange process with US will take up to two …  Arab News

Russia Analytical Report, Aug. 14-21, 2023  Russia Matters

By Ryan McMaken

Former Vice-President Mike Pence is very concerned that Republicans are not sufficiently enthusiastic about aggressive, unnecessary wars. In a speech on Monday, Pence claimed “Some Republican candidates …[are] embracing a new and dangerous form of isolationism.” 

“Isolationism” is just a slur used by hawks to describe any policy that falls short of further expanding US interventionism across every region of the globe. Fortunately for Pence and his ilk, no such thing is happening. Not even close. No Republican candidate argues in favor of closing any military bases, reining in CIA meddling, withdrawing from NATO, ending defense commitments in east Asia, or even cutting military spending. The closest any candidate comes to the isolationism Pence mentions is Vivek Ramaswamy who has opposed expansion of NATO and called for a “minimal footprint” in the Middle East—whatever that means. These, of course, are reasonable policies and would be a step in the right direction, but could hardly be described as “isolationism.” 

Trump and Ron DeSantis both are probably isolationists in Pence’s book, but both of them are worse than Ramaswamy. DeSantis has vowed to declare war on Mexico, and Trump’s primary concern about NATO is merely that members other than the US don’t pay their “fair share.” Trump also clearly has a certain bellicose obsession with Iran and China that hardly have anything to do with anti-interventionism. 

For conservatives like Pence, however, there is no corner of the planet earth that does not demand near-constant US war spending, drone bombing, spying, regime change, or worse. The typical interventionist response is to label anyone who disagrees an isolationist or pacifist. (So-called “progressives,” of course, are just as bad.)

Pence uses all the usual prowar buzzwords as well. He invokes “appeasement” as a means of suggesting that anything other than constant intervention is akin to enabling the next Hitler. In the mind of the American interventionists, it’s always 1938. (The more realistic historical parallel is 1914, not 1938.) The use of the term “isolationist” meanwhile is designed to suggest a type of naïve disarmament and complete withdrawal from the world. 

Historically, however, American opponents of Pence-like warmongering have never supported isolationism as Pence imagines it. Rather, the anti-interventionist tradition is one of neutrality focused on increasing international trade and friendly relations with all. In his introduction to his great book The Costs of War, John Denson describes the benefits of this type of foreign policy known as “armed neutrality.” Denson begins by describing how some reacted to the book: 

Some readers and reviewers also asked if the book is advocating pacifism or isolationism. The answer is emphatically “No” on both counts. There are “just wars” in American history, as Murray Rothbard describes in his first article in the book. Our Founding Fathers advocated, as does this book, that the United States should adopt a foreign policy of a well-armed neutrality, with no military alliances which would drag the U.S. into unnecessary wars which do not constitute a clear and present danger to its security. 

One element of the “just war” theory is that it must be defensive. Many presidents have tried to make American wars appear to be defensive by provoking the other side into firing the first shot. These presidents include Polk, Lincoln, McKinley, Wilson, Roosevelt, and Johnson. 

Ludwig von Mises stressed, as did the Founding Fathers, that we should be involved in the global economy with free trade with all nations of the world, and with no favored nation status applied to our trading partners. However, foreign trade should be at the risk of the entrepreneur or capitalist, and without subsidies of the government or the military aid of its armed forces. Our military forces should be limited to the defense of the United States, and not for the assistance of certain special economic interests abroad. But our armed forces should be the best equipped and trained in the world and ready to engage in a defensive war.

A defensive military looks very different from one designed to occupy foreign countries, engage in “regime change, ” or provide defense guarantees to a dozen foreign regimes. 

A truly defensive military wouldn’t have a standing army at all, and wouldn’t have an archipelago of bases on foreign soil across the globe. A defensive military does not require 5,000 nuclear weapons. 

Denson continues:

Non-interventionism is not isolationism, and isolationism was not the policy of Washington and Jefferson, nor is it advocated in this book. In fact, the original U.S. foreign policy was the same philosophy as that espoused by all people who believe in free trade, such as Cobden and Bright in England. The original U.S. foreign policy was trade and commerce with everyone, not isolationism. The choices are not simply isolationism or being the world policeman. The third alternative is the original U.S. foreign policy of global free trade, a non-interventionist military policy with a well-armed neutrality for the defense of the United States, and no military alliances.

It is appropriate that Denson mentions the great British advocates of neutrality Richard Cobden and John Bright here. As radical classical liberals and members of Parliament in the nineteenth century, both were very familiar with the realities of international war and were major figures in their movement—which, by the way, had won major political victories in the first half of the century. Or as Jeff Riggenbach put it: “Cobden and Bright were among the most radical and most important of 19th Century English liberals.” Both also sought neutrality as the proper, moral response to the constant machinations of foreign states. Specifically, they supported constant engagement with foreign peoples and foreign governments in pursuit of peaceful exchange. Murray Rothbard put it this way: 

such laissez-faire “extremists” as Richard Cobden and John Bright of the “Manchester School.” Cobden and Bright took the lead in vigorously opposing every British war and foreign political intervention of their era and for his pains Cobden was known not as an “isolationist” but as the “International Man.” Until the smear campaign of the late 1930s, opponents of war were considered the true “internationalists,” men who opposed the aggrandizement of the nation-state and favored peace, free trade, free migration and peaceful cultural exchanges among peoples of all nations. Foreign intervention is “international” only in the sense that war is international: coercion, whether the threat of force or the outright movement of troops, will always cross frontiers between one nation and another.

One might say that so-called “isolationism” is the true internationalism. Meanwhile, interventionists like Pence incessantly seek out new enemies to isolate, embargo, sanction, and cut off from the rest of the world.  As we’ve seen with Russia, interventionists seek to do with any nation that shows insufficient obeisance toward NATO’s schemes in Ukraine.  The interventionists tell us this is necessary because Moscow invaded a sovereign country. This is an obvious lie since Washington did the same thing in Iraq twenty years ago. The interventionist impulse is to alienate, divide, vilify, bomb, kill, and endlessly sow international discord. Yet it is the proponents of peace and trade, we are told, who are the “isolationists.” 

The interventionists attempt to justify their aggression on the grounds that it somehow keeps Americans safer. Yet, it’s difficult to see how the regime’s efforts to incessantly give half the world reasons to hate the United States make the average taxpayer any safer. The interventionist logic might seem reasonable to people to believe absurd propaganda slogans like “they hate us because we’re free.” But in reality, invading, bombing, sanctioning, and threatening a wide variety of foreign states—and their hapless populations—makes no American safer. 

If the interventionists actually cared about ordinary Americans, people like Pence would be calling for more diplomacy, expanded trade, smaller military budgets, and a focus on the defense of North America. This policy is quite different from robbing the taxpayers to pay for more losing wars, the ongoing occupation of eastern Syria, and mounting brinksmanship against nuclear-Armed Russia. The robbery will never end until people like Mike Pence are finally sent packing.

About the author: Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is executive editor at the Mises Institute. Send him your article submissions for the Mises Wire and Power and Market, but read article guidelines first. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy and international relations from the University of Colorado. He was a housing economist for the State of Colorado. He is the author of Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre.

Source: This article was published by the Mises Institute

Keeping banks safe and sound, and anchoring financial stability, hinges as much on good supervision as on effective risk management and governance in banks, robust regulation, and vigilant markets. 

We saw it earlier this year, as turbulence in the banking sector precipitated three questions: Are banks’ risk management practices strong enough? Is prudential regulation adequate? Is banking supervision effective, or can it be improved? 

The making of good supervision

While much attention is typically devoted to the needed upgrading of regulations following episodes of bank distress, upgrading of supervisory effectiveness can be left bereft of corresponding attention—despite our analysis consistently showing that it is key to banking and financial stability.

In a new paper, Good Supervision: Lessons from the Field, we reflect on the lessons learned from the recent bank turmoil in the United States and Switzerland and review progress made across countries in delivering effective supervision, drawing on the IMF’s surveillance and capacity building work of the past 10 years. 

Good supervision might be thought of as a construction site—where design, material, and skill all come together to culminate in a resilient structure. Supervisors require operational independence to carry out their tasks free of outside pressures, along with accountability. They need a clear mandate to ensure they are focused on the right trouble spots. And they need adequate legal powers to back their actions. Sufficient resources, appropriate skillsets, and the application of sound judgment and deep analysis based on accurate situational awareness of the outlook, risks, and vulnerabilities, are also vital to supervisors taking timely and conclusive action. 

The global financial crisis had highlighted the importance of supervisors needing to be assertive and intrusive, that is, demonstrating the will and ability to act. The 2012 update of the global standards for banking supervision—the Basel Core Principles—raised expectations for supervisors take account of economic and business trends, as well as the build-up and concentration of risks inside and outside the banking sector. “Light touch” supervision, often invoked as part of efforts to encourage economic activity and foster competition, had proved unsuccessful—institutional and systemic distress had followed in its wake, with the blame inevitably placed, after the fact, on the absence of intrusive and timely supervisory effort. 

Progress, but a long road ahead

First the good news. Our review found much progress in risk monitoring and analysis across advanced, emerging, and developing countries, with many of them having incorporated forward-looking supervisory approaches, in some cases harnessing data-intensive and technology-driven tools. 

Wider adoption of stress tests has also been a great advance. These tools help broaden supervisors’ views of threats facing individual banks, the banking sector, and the financial system, beyond the historical data and past experiences. Likewise, business model analysis has become integral to supervisory frameworks in many countries, helping flag vulnerabilities early on and convey these in their dialogue with banks. 

But in key respects, progress on supervision has not been sufficient. Our findings show that more than half of the jurisdictions do not have independent bank supervisors with a clear safety and soundness mandate, with sound internal governance, or with resources appropriate to their assigned responsibilities. Deficiencies also remain in supervisory approaches, techniques, tools, and (use of) corrective and sanctioning powers. 

As a result, undertaking timely action based on supervisory findings continues to be a challenge. The ongoing structural evolution of the financial sector, such as the growth of nonbank financial intermediation, the digitalization of finance, and climate change, adds to supervisory challenges and makes these weaknesses even more relevant.

Higher bar for good supervision 

Bringing supervision up to the task at hand requires action on four important fronts:

• Take a more systematic approach to requiring banks to go beyond quantitative regulatory thresholds and prudential rules when business and macro-financial risks are high.
• Overcome the tendency to under-allocate resources and attention to all but the largest of banks, as vulnerabilities at smaller banks can also trigger or amplify adverse systemic impact. 
• Ensure that trained and experienced supervisors are available and can focus attention on governance, business models, and risk management at banks.
• Develop internal processes for decision making and escalation of actions that are clear and effective.

But efforts by supervisors alone will not be sufficient. Attention by other policymakers, including parliaments, to ensure a vigilant, independent, well resourced, and accountable supervisory structure is needed. Stronger institutional foundations enhance supervisors’ will and ability to act and purging perceived or actual vulnerability to government or industry influence will pay rich dividends.

About the authors:

• Tobias Adrian is the Financial Counsellor and Director of the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department. He leads the IMF’s work on financial sector surveillance and capacity building, monetary and macroprudential policies, financial regulation, debt management, and capital markets.
• Fabiana Melo is a Deputy Division Chief in the Financial Supervision and Regulation Division of the Monetary and Capital Markets Department. Since joining the IMF in 2009, she has been involved in Basel III/FSB/G20 related policy work, including the Core Principles for Effective Banking Supervision (BCP), regulation of Fintech, and Governance. She has participated in several FSAPs, including the Euro Area, the U.S.A, Germany, New Zealand, Philippines, Paraguay, Spain, Italy, Iceland, Austria, and Russia. Fabiana also coordinates technical assistance projects in several countries.
• Marina Moretti is Deputy Director in the Monetary and Capital Markets Department of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). In this capacity, she oversees the policy and technical work on financial supervision and regulation as well as on financial crisis preparedness and management. 
• Jay Surti is Deputy Chief of the Global Financial Stability Analysis Division in the IMF’s Monetary and Capital Markets Department. He has also worked in the IMF’s European and African departments. His research interests cover financial institutions and markets and macro prudential policy. Mr. Surti holds a PhD in Economics from Boston University.

Source: This article was published by IMF Blog

By Dr. Opangmeren Jami

During an extraordinary session of the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) General Conference on 30 June 2023, with a majority of 132 votes in favour, the United States (US) was re-admitted to UNESCO. The US left the organisation in December 2018 under President Donald Trump, citing anti-Israel bias after the UNESCO designated a historic site in the West Bank City of Hebron as the Palestinian World Heritage Site. 

Audrey Azoulay, UNESCO Director General termed the US rejoining as “a great day for UNESCO and for multilateralism”.1 Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson, though, stated that “international organizations are not parks. Countries can’t just come and go as they please.”2 The Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs welcomed the “reintegration of the United States” but noted that the US should not violate the UNESCO constitution.3         

Previous US withdrawals from UNESCO  

The 2018 withdrawal, though, was not the first time when the US left the UNESCO. It did so previously in 1983 under President Ronald Reagan and rejoined only in 2003 under President George Bush. 

UNESCO was founded on 16 November 1945 to promote the humanistic value of ‘international peace’ through education, science and culture. Realising this aspiration however proved challenging, mainly due to Cold War politics.4 The contest on the UNESCO stage not only reflected the East–West tensions but also the divide between North and South. Cultural diplomacy, or combating the negative impression of the US through culture, education and media, was vigorously executed by the US during the Cold War to counter the Soviet bloc. UNESCO was considered an important partner by US administrations in promoting ‘American values’.5

The US, despite being an ardent supporter of UNESCO, almost from the outset, had an ambivalent relationship with the organisation. The education sector, an utmost priority for UNESCO to combat worldwide illiteracy, came under intense scrutiny from the US. It was accused of being ‘pro-communist’ and the US alleged that several education programmes initiated by the organisation contradicted ‘American ideals and traditions’.6 Being the largest financial contributor, the US also charged UNESCO with mismanagement and over-staffing, among other issues. Analysts noted that the US adopted an attitude of ‘benign neglect’ towards UNESCO.7    

Animosity was further fuelled when in the 1970s, the Non-Aligned Movement countries bought a proposal of New World Information and Communication Order (NWICO) to UNESCO, calling for major changes in communication media. The US considered the NWICO as an assault on the freedom of press and accused UNESCO Director General Amadou-Mahtar of promoting and supporting an illiberal proposal and threatened to withhold funding to the organisation. With the backdrop of all these contentious issues, in the notice of withdrawal in December 1983, US Secretary of State, George Shultz charged that the UNESCO was serving “improperly the political purpose of few member states”.8

The US rejoined the organisation in September 2003. President George Bush stated that UNESCO “has been reformed and America will participate fully in its mission to advance human rights, tolerance and learning”.9 Organisational reforms were indeed carried out by Director General Koichiro Matsuura, who took over in 1999. However, as Patrick Mendis, former American Commissioner of the United States National Commission for UNESCO notes, the US re-joining was also “possibly an attempt to promote goodwill and gain broader support from the international community” for the Afghanistan and Iraq wars and “to repair America’s global image by using soft power instruments within the UN system”.10 During the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, UNESCO, which designates World Heritages sites, played a critical role in restoring cultural centres that had been destroyed. 

The relationship again became strained when UNESCO in July 2011 admitted Palestine as a full member state. President Obama suspended funding to UNESCO, as US domestic law prohibits the payment of funds to any UN body accepting Palestine as full members. Antagonistic feeling was further fuelled when in July 2017, UNESCO designated the historic Tomb of Patriarchs in West Bank city of Hebron as Palestinian World Heritage Site. Consequently, President Trump, citing ‘anti-Israel bias’, pulled the US out of the organisation in December 2018.11

The China Factor

If the Israel–Palestine conflict was the primary reason for the US to leave UNESCO in 2018, then the return of the US for the second time is more about China’s growing influence. US Under Secretary of State for Management, John Brass in March 2023 noted that US absence from UNESCO only strengthened China and undercut US “ability to be effective in promoting our vision of a free world”. Brass added that “if we are really serious about the digital-age competition with China … we can’t afford to be absent any longer”.12 

US Secretary of State Antony Blinken noted that returning to UNESCO should not been seen “as a gift to UNESCO, but because things that are happening at UNESCO actually matter” as the organisation was “working on rules, norms and standards for artificial intelligence. We want to be there.” Blinken noted that China was the single largest contributor to UNESCO and “We are not even at the table.”13

As per Article 2 of the UNESCO Constitution, the US has the right to withdraw from and to re-join the organisation. But former US Permanent Representative to UNESCO, David Killion’s warning that withdrawal from UNESCO and several other UN agencies only “paves the way for other powers to play a more powerful role at UNESCO” turned out to be true.14 It was also pointed out by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) that US withdrawal disrupts international scientific collaboration, reduces confidences of US scientific leadership and forfeiture of the rights to participate in governance of UNESCO-led scientific initiatives.15    

Tellingly, the vacuum created by the withdrawal of the US has been filled by China, which has become one of the largest contributors to the UNESCO budget, as shown in Table 1. 

Table 1: UNESCO Budget 2023—Top 5 Contributors

Rank	Country	Rate of Assessment  (Percentage)	2023 contributions in USD
1	China	19.704	27 916 914
2	Japan	10.377	14 702 285
3	Germany	7.894	11 184 334
4	France	5.578	7 902 992
5	Italy	4.119	5 835 859

Source: Sector for Administration and Management Bureau of Financial Management, UNESCO, Paris, 1 December 2022.   

With 56 Chinese heritage sites protected by the World Heritage Committee, China has become the second most protected nation in the world after Italy. China’s commitment to promote cultural dialogue and diversity through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) have been appreciated by UNESCO.16 Moreover, to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals 2030, joint collaboration between UNESCO and BRI has been initiated on several science and education projects.17

Going Forward 

The UNESCO is not just a UN specialised agency. The mission of the UNESCO is lofty as stated in the opening words of UNESCO Constitution: “That since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defences of peace must be constructed.” Catalysed by the Second World War and the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the scientific community in particular raised concerns about “what scientists will do to us next”. The founding of UNESCO was intended to transform the “minds of men” by constructing the ‘defence of peace’ through the medium of humanism of science, education and culture in the hope of preventing another atrocity from occurring again.18    

In the immediate term, the US return will certainly give a big financial boost to the UNESCO as it will have to pay more than US$ 600 million in dues. In the longer term, however, the rising Sino-US rivalry casts a shadow over the working of the UNESCO.19 Science and technology is increasingly being framed within the language of national security and geopolitical competition. It remains to be seen if the UNESCO will become another platform for US–China contentions or it will realise its lofty goals as enshrined in its constitution.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Manohar Parrikar IDSA or of the Government of India.

About the author: Dr Opangmeren Jamir is Research Analyst at Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses

Source: This article was published by Manohar Parrikar IDSA

• 1.“The United States of America Returns to UNESCO: A Very Large Majority of Members States Vote in Favour”, UNESCO Press release, 30 June 2023.
• 2.“Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Wang Wenbin’s Regular Press Conference”, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 13 June 2023. 
• 3.“Press Release on the United States’ Plan to Rejoin UNESCO”, The Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, 16 June 2023.
• 4.Patrick Petijean, “Defining UNESCO’S Scientific Culture 1945-1965”, in Sixty Years of Science at UNESCO 1945-2005,UNESCO Publishing, Paris, 2006.  
• 5.S.E. Graham, “The (Real)politiks of Culture: US Cultural Diplomacy in UNESCO, 1946-1954”, Diplomatic History, Vol. 30, No. 2, 2006, pp. 231–251.
• 6.Charles Dorn and Kristen Ghodsee, “The Cold War Politicization of Literacy: Communism, UNESCO and the World Bank”, Diplomatic History, Vol. 36, No. 2, 2012, pp. 373–398. 
• 7.Klaus Hufner and Jens Naumann, “UNESCO: Only the Crises of a ‘Politicized’ UN Specialized Agency”, Comparative Education Review, Vol. 30, No. 1, 1986, pp. 120–131.
• 8.“The United States Withdrawal from UNESCO”, International Legal Materials,Vol. 24, No. 2, pp. 489–530.
• 9.“Fact Sheet: United States Rejoins UNESCO”, The White House, 12 September 2002.
• 10.Patrick Mendis and Antonina Luszczykiewicz, “The United States Must Rejoin UNESCO for its Perpetuum Mobile”, Harvard International Review,27 July 2021.
• 11.“United States Gives Notice of Withdrawal from UNESCO, Citing Anti-Israel Bias”, The American Journal of International Law,Vol. 112, No. 1, pp. 107–109.
• 12.“Department Press Briefing”, U.S. Department of State, 8 March 2023. 
• 13.“Review of the FY 2023 State Department Budget Request”, Foreign Relations Committee, 26 April 2022.
• 14.David  T. Killion, “Why UNESCO is a Critical Tool for Twenty-first Century Diplomacy”, The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs, Vol. 37, No. 2, 2013, pp. 7–14.
• 15.“AAAS Statement on US Withdrawal from UNESCO”, American Association for the Advancement of Science, 12 October 2017.
• 16.“Interview: UNESCO Chief Lauds China’s Efforts Promoting Cultural Dialogues along Belt and Road”, Xinhuanet,20 April 2017.
• 17.“CMG Exclusive: Interview with Director-General of UNESCO Audrey Azoulay”, CGTN, 18 June 2021. 
• 18.Julian Huxley, “UNESCO: Its Purpose and Its Philosophy”, Preparatory Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation 1946. 
• 19.Graham Allison et al., “The Great Tech Rivalry: China vs the U.S.”,Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, December 2021.

By Lisa Vives

As stricken Libyans searched for signs of life amid the wreckage left by two enormous dams that burst in a hurricane-strength storm, anger was growing over warnings that were ignored but could have possibly prevented the worst disaster in the country’s modern history.

“A lot of people are responsible for this. The dam wasn’t fixed, so now it’s a disaster,” said Alwad Alshawly, an English teacher who had spent three days burying bodies as a rescue volunteer, according to Reuters.

Searchers digging through mud and hollowed-out buildings say 10,000 people are missing and feared dead in flooding that has already taken the lives of over 11,000 men, women and children.

The dams collapsed in exceptionally heavy rains from Mediterranean storm Daniel, sending a wall of water several feet high, gushing down a valley that cuts through the city of Derna.

The unusual flooding and Libya’s political chaos contributed to the enormous toll. The oil-rich state has been split since 2014 between rival governments in the east and west backed by various militia forces and international patrons.

When hydrologist Abdul Wanis Ashour began researching the system of dams protecting the eastern Libya port town of Derna, the peril facing residents was already no secret, he said.

Ashour warned that if the dams were not urgently maintained, the city faced a potential catastrophe.

“There were warnings before that,” he said. “The Libyan government knew what was going on in the Derna River Valley. The two dams were built around half a century ago and the danger of the situation was known for a very long time.”

Derna is prone to flooding, and its dam reservoirs have caused at least five deadly floods since 1942, the latest of which was in 2011, according to a research paper published by Libya’s Sebha University last year.

All dams are potentially dangerous, according to the U.S. Association of State Dam Safety Officials —if they are old and have not been properly maintained or have fallen into disrepair.

At last count, according to a report by the Associated Press, there are 91,757 dams in the U.S. and more than 2,200 are in poor condition, likely endangering lives if they were to fail.

Climate change

Climate change has subjected some dams to greater strain from intense rainstorms. Homes, businesses and highways have cropped up below dams that were originally built in remote locations.

“All of the sudden, you’ve got older dams with a lower design criteria that now can potentially cause loss of life if they fail,” said Del Shannon, an engineer who is president of the U.S. Society on Dams.

“The number of deficient, high-hazard dams is increasing,” he said, adding that without investment in upgrades that number will continue to rise.

The actual number of high-hazard dams is likely even higher than the AP’s tally, because some states don’t track such data and many federal agencies refuse to release that information.

The $1 trillion infrastructure bill signed last year by President Joe Biden will pump about $3 billion into dam-related projects, including hundreds of millions for state dam safety programs and repairs.

Yet it’s still just a fraction of the nearly $76 billion needed to fix the tens of thousands of dams owned by individuals, companies, community associations, state and local governments, and other entities besides the federal government, according to a report by the Association of State Dam Safety Officials.

New York has about twice the number of high-hazard dams as it did in 2018, when the AP previously collected data for analysis.

Meanwhile, prosecutor general Al-Seddik Al-Sour has announced an investigation into the circumstances leading to the flash flood that swept through the city last Sunday.

Like much of Libya’s crumbling infrastructure, the two dams that had been built to hold back water from Derna fell into disrepair over years of neglect, conflict and division.

An Italian engineering firm hired to assess the damage confirmed finding cracks and recommended the construction of a third dam to protect the city, said Al-Sour.

By ANU Editorial Board

Thailand’s Pheu Thai, the populist party linked to the deposed former prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, is back in power for the first time since being ejected from office in a military coup in 2014 — ironically, in coalition with the proxy parties of the military junta that installed the last prime minister, Prayut Chan-ocha.

As Greg Raymond writes in this week’s lead article, ‘Thailand’s democratic processes have been subverted by not only a deeply illiberal constitution but also by a set of opaque machinations’ that unfolded in the wake of the May general election, at which Pheu Thai was unexpectedly pushed into second place by a surge of voter support for the reformist Move Forward.

Pheu Thai initially backed Move Forward as it brought together a diverse coalition of parties to support a parliamentary vote to appoint its leader, Pita Limjaroenrat, as prime minister.

But with scepticism about whether conservatives would use their numbers in the unelected senate to block Pita’s appointment, speculation swirled around about how long it would be before Pheu Thai pulled the pin on Move Forward to do a deal and install one of its own MPs as head of government.

After two failed attempts at appointing Pita, Pheu Thai did exactly that, breaking ties with Move Forward and making up the numbers by reaching out to military-linked parties, accepting their support for the appointment of property tycoon and Pheu Thai MP Srettha Thavisin as prime minister.

The icing on the cake for Pheu Thai was an agreement that allowed its de facto figurehead Thaksin to return to Thailand to serve out a reduced sentence for the corruption conviction slapped on him after the 2006 coup. One Thai expert described it as a ‘hostage swap’, with Pheu Thai coming to the rescue of the electorally discredited military-backed parties in exchange for allowing Thaksin to return.

Pheu Thai has taken a big political risk. The quality of Thai opinion polling lags that of the Philippines or Indonesia, but surveys suggest that the public is cool on Pheu Thai’s alliance with the remnants of the junta government. A national survey by the National Institute of Development Administration, in the field while Pheu Thai was assembling its post-Move Forward coalition, found that almost two-thirds of respondents opposed the idea of it including junta-backed parties in its coalition.

Srettha will hope that largesse in the form of new cash transfers and subsidy programs will take voters’ minds off Pheu Thai’s offering a political lifeline to pro-junta parties despite the electorate’s clear repudiation of them at the May election. But the more it leans on such populist measures, the greater the tension with conservatives whose concerns about Pheu Thai’s cavalier approach to policy design and public finance became part of the pretext for coups against it in 2006 and 2014.

It seems likely that Srettha’s government will be marked by internal infighting over economic and social policies and the extent of its ambitions to appease pro-democracy voters with institutional reforms — and, given the fragmented 11-party parliamentary coalition underpinning it, speculation about the potential for its collapse.

On social media, commentators have been quick to draw parallels between the Thai situation and that of Malaysia, where Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim governs in coalition with the UMNO, the cornerstone of the old Barisan Nasional regime that ruled the country for decades. Anwar can endure the ire of voters disappointed by his soft-pedalling of reforms to keep this alliance stable, because his government doesn’t face any threat on its progressive flank, but rather from the racist and Islamist right.

Srettha doesn’t have that advantage. All the signs suggest that Move Forward’s resolutely pro-reform message will make it the home of voters disillusioned with Pheu Thai. Move Forward just saw a significant swing towards it in a by-election in Thailand’s deep south, historically a stronghold of the conservative Democrat Party. Having been suspended from parliament on dubious legal grounds, its thwarted prime ministerial candidate Pita Limjaroenrat has resigned as party leader, allowing one of Move Forward’s other MPs to emerge as the leader of the opposition.

Thailand’s stability hinges on how the government deals with an assertive pro-democratic opposition. The appeal of the opposition, as proven in results of the May election, spans the country’s deep geographic and class divides, and looks set to increase as political competition is structured by an increasingly stark reformist-establishment divide. Indeed, one of the reasons why progressive outrage at Pheu Thai’s sell out hasn’t resulted in large-scale protests is that their disapproval can be channelled through the political system.

That only works so long as Move Forward offers that channel of protest. The anger that would greet a ban of Move Forward — the fate of its predecessor party, Future Forward — would be nothing short of explosive. The incentive to crack down on Move Forward will increase in the lead up to the constitutional expiry of the unelected Senate’s role in the appointment of a prime minister in 2024, which would give Move Forward another shot at the premiership in the event of another election or a no-confidence vote in Srettha.

What makes the situation in Thailand so deeply uncertain is that the hardline elements of the royalist–militarist elite have an occasional interest in instability if it can provide the pretext for extra-constitutional efforts to seize power. At the centre of Thailand’s tragic inability to bed down democracy is this establishment modus operandi, which resembles a racket in the classic sense of the term: creating a problem — political instability — that they are strategically positioned to ‘resolve’.

About the author: The EAF Editorial Board is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific, The Australian National University.

Source: This article was published by the East Asia Forum

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