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Superpowers-  university lecture Geopolitics
Nov 2020

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Superpowers Geopolitics - Dr Alasdair Pinkerton

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Disney's new heroine representing 670 million people

07/03/21

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It's taken almost 90 years - but Disney's first South East Asian heroine premiered on Thursday.

Raya is the titular character of Raya and the Last Dragon, which sees her travel around the region to reunite its people and attempt to save the world in the process.

But aside from bearing the weight of humanity on her shoulders - she's got another burden to bear.

South East Asia is a region that is home to 11 countries and 673 million people.

There are dozens, if not hundreds of different cultures in this region, which begs the question - what exactly is a South East Asian identity and can Disney's latest heroine really embody it?

Silat and salakots

The movie is set in Kumandra - a fantasy land that's home to five tribes - each of which has its own distinct culture, inspired by different places in South East Asia.

Director Don Hall told the BBC the decision to film in the region was inspired by a trip the filmmaking team took there.

The film doesn't take place in today's timeline, but rather imagines what the region might have looked like thousands of years ago.

It's clear that bits of South East Asia are peppered through the film.

Raya wears a hat that looks like the Salakot - a traditional headgear in the Philippines.

Her loyal sidekick and also her form of transportation is named Tuk Tuk - a cheeky reference to a rickshaw that is a popular mode of transportation there.

And her fighting technique is inspired by Silat - a traditional martial arts form practiced commonly in Malaysia and Indonesia.

Producer Osnat Shurer said they tried "to look at what are the underlying ideas that are shared... the most important one for us was this sense of community and working together."

What is a South East Asian identity?

Some online complain that the movie is essentially picking and choosing bits and pieces from different cultures in the region and throwing it together into one film.

But Malaysian-born Adele Lim, who is the co-scriptwriter for the movie, says it goes "deeper".

"When you talk about cultural inspiration, it wasn't just like 'Oh, we like how this looks, [so we] put it in'. It was much deeper than that," she said.

"[For example] the scene where Raya's father is making her soup - you know, as South East Asians, so much of our love is shown to us through food..[so that was] something that really touched me."

One Indonesian Twitter user told the BBC however, that she felt it was "impossible" to represent all of South East Asia, and felt the movie should have just "focused on a certain culture" in particular.

But the filmmakers say that the movie is simply "inspired" by the region - and was never meant to focus in on just one culture or country.

"I equate it to how the Arthurian legends were built on dramatic European [tales]. You can point to something French, something English," said Vietnamese-American co-scriptwriter Qui Nguyen.

"So this is our opportunity to create a wholly original story, but have its DNA be from somewhere that's real. We don't want to tell a story where the bad guys are from Thailand and the good guys are from Malaysia. So this felt like the way to do it."

"The question of what constitutes South East Asian identity is still being deliberated by South East Asians themselves," David Lim, an associate professor at the Open University Malaysia told the BBC.

He pointed out that the colonisation of the region also added to the different cultural lenses each country is shaped by. Vietnam, for example, was colonised by the French, and Indonesia by the Dutch.

"I think the history of colonialism has to a certain extent shaped the way we look at ourselves and what cultures we aspire to be more like, and who we identify as," he said.

"I suspect some in South East Asia will know less about their regional counterparts [than their colonisers]. Those in Vietnam for example, might know more about France than Thailand."

He adds that many in South East Asia do not view themselves as being "South East Asian", in the same way one might view themselves as being "European".

One example he brought up is the way countries in South East Asia compete to claim dishes as their own.

"There's an important point to be made about nationalism [in this region]. I think there's that sort of national competition going on," said Prof Lim.

Prof Lim also points out that it is "unfair" to put the burden of accurately representing an entire region on one film.

"The burden of [representing] the whole of South East Asia... who can carry that burden? I think if you start to impregnate the film with too many ideas that you project onto it, then it's rather unfair," he said.

"[But instead] look at the film as a way in to talk about South East Asia, to trigger conversation about the region."

That is definitely the way many others are choosing to look at it - pointing out that the film, while perhaps not perfect, is a step in the right direction.

"It's not perfect in terms of representation," said one Twitter user. "But it's one step closer."

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Raya and the Last Dragon: Disney's new heroine representing 670 million people

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It's taken almost 90 years - but Disney's first South East Asian heroine premiered on Thursday. Raya is the titular character of Raya and the Last Dragon, which sees her travel around the region to reunite its people and attempt to save the world in the process.

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08/10/2021

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Meanwhile, the US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, said that he was "deeply concerned" about actions that undermine peace across the Taiwan Strait, which separates Taiwan and China.

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South China Sea: US submarine collides with 'unknown object'

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Meanwhile, the US National Security Advisor, Jake Sullivan, said that he was "deeply concerned" about actions that undermine peace across the Taiwan Strait, which separates Taiwan and China.

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US election Result- what this means
07-11-20

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After days of uncertainty, Joe Biden has won the US presidential election, BBC projections show.

During Donald Trump's four years in office, America's relationship with the world changed profoundly.

BBC reporters across the globe, from Beijing to Berlin, explain how news of Mr Biden's victory is being received and what it could mean for key US relationships.

You might think Beijing would be glad to see the back of Donald Trump. As China-basher-in-chief he hit them with a trade war, levied a raft of punitive sanctions and badgered and blamed them for the coronavirus pandemic.

But some analysts have suggested that the Chinese leadership may now be feeling secretly disappointed. Not because they have any lasting fondness for Mr Trump, but because another four years of him in the White House held out the tantalising prospect of a bigger prize. Divisive at home, isolationist abroad - Mr Trump seemed to Beijing the very embodiment of the long-anticipated and hoped for decline in US power.

It was a message rammed home by the country's Communist Party-controlled TV news bulletins. They focused not on the election itself - but on the protests, rancour, and rising US virus infection rates alongside it.

China might, of course, try to find advantage in Joe Biden's willingness to seek co-operation on big issues like climate change. But he's also promised to work to repair America's alliances, which may prove to be far more effective in constraining China's superpower ambitions than Trump's go-it-alone approach.

And a Biden victory offers another challenge for a Chinese system devoid of democratic control. Far from a decline in American values, the transition of power itself is proof that those values endure.

India has long been an important partner to the US - and the overall direction of travel is unlikely to change under a Biden presidency.

South Asia's most populous nation will remain a key ally in America's Indo-Pacific strategy to curtail the rise of China, and in fighting global terrorism.

That said, the personal chemistry between Mr Biden and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi could be trickier to navigate. Mr Trump has held back from criticising Mr Modi's controversial domestic policies - which many say discriminate against the country's Muslims.

Mr Biden has been far more outspoken. His campaign website called for the restoration of rights for everyone in Kashmir, and criticised the National Register of Citizens (NRC) and the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) - two laws which sparked mass protests.

Incoming Vice-President Kamala Harris - half Indian herself - has also spoken out against some of the Hindu nationalist government's policies. But her Indian roots will spark mass celebration in much of the country. That the daughter of an Indian woman who was born and raised in the city of Chennai will soon be second-in-command at the White House is a moment of immense national pride.

It's likely Chairman Kim would have preferred another four years of Donald Trump.

The leaders' unprecedented meeting and follow-ups made for incredible photo-ops for the history books but very little of substance was signed. Neither side got what they wanted out of these talks: North Korea has continued to build up its nuclear arsenal and the US has continued to enforce strict sanctions.

In contrast, Joe Biden has demanded North Korea show that it is willing to abandon its nuclear weapons programme before he holds any meetings with Kim Jong-un. Many analysts believe that unless Mr Biden's team initiates talks with Pyongyang very early on, the days of "fire and fury" may return.

Mr Kim might want to get Washington's attention with a return to long-range missile tests, but he won't want to increase tensions to the point that the already impoverished state would be hit with even more sanctions.

South Korea has already warned the North not to go down a provocative path. Seoul may have struggled to deal with Donald Trump at times - but President Moon is keen to put an end to the 70-year war on the Korean peninsula and he praised Mr Trump for having the "courage" to meet with Mr Kim. The South will closely watch for any sign that Mr Biden is willing to do the same.

They won't be seen as natural allies: Joe Biden, the seasoned Democrat, and Boris Johnson, the bombastic Brexiteer.

In looking at how their future relationship might work, it's worth considering the past. Specifically that seminal year, 2016, when Donald Trump won the White House and the UK voted to leave the EU. Both Joe Biden and his boss at the time, Barack Obama, made no secret they preferred another outcome on Brexit.

The UK government's recent manoeuvres in relation to Brexit have not gone down well with key Democrats and the Irish lobby, including the US president-elect. Mr Biden said he would not allow peace in Northern Ireland to become a "casualty of Brexit" if elected - stating that any future US-UK trade deal would be contingent upon respecting the Good Friday Agreement.

Remember how Donald Trump once called Boris Johnson "Britain Trump"? Well, Mr Biden seemingly agreed, once reportedly describing the UK prime minister as Mr Trump's "physical and emotional clone". So it's possible Joe Biden may initially be more eager to talk to Brussels, Berlin or Paris than love-bomb London. The "special relationship" could, feasibly, face a downgrade.

However, the two men may yet find some common ground. The two countries they lead, after all, have long-standing and deep-running diplomatic ties - not least in the areas of security and intelligence.

The Kremlin has an acute sense of hearing. So when Joe Biden recently named Russia as "the biggest threat" to America, they heard that loud and clear in Moscow.

The Kremlin also has a long memory. In 2011 Vice-President Biden reportedly said that if he were Mr Putin, he wouldn't run again for president: it would be bad for the country and for himself. President Putin won't have forgotten that.

Mr Biden and Mr Putin are not a match made in geo-political heaven. Moscow fears the Biden presidency will mean more pressure and more sanctions from Washington. With a Democrat in the White House, could it be payback time for Russia's alleged intervention in the 2016 US election?

One Russian newspaper recently claimed that under Mr Trump, US-Russian relations had plunged "to the seabed". But it likened Mr Biden to a "dredger" who was going to "dig even deeper". Little wonder Moscow has that sinking feeling.

But for the Kremlin there could be a silver lining. Russian commentators predict a Biden administration will, at least, be more predictable than the Trump team. That might make it easier to reach agreement on pressing issues, like New Start - the crucial US-Russian nuclear arms reduction treaty due to expire next February.

Moscow will want to move on from the Trump era and try to build a working relationship with the new White House. There's no guarantee of success.

Germany will breathe a sigh of relief at this result.

Only 10% of Germans trust President Trump on foreign policy, according to the Pew Research Centre. He is more unpopular in Germany than in any other country surveyed. Even Russia's Putin and China's Xi Jinping poll better in Germany.

President Trump is accused of undermining free trade and dismantling the multinational institutions which Germany relies on economically. His spats with China have rattled German exporters and he has a notoriously poor relationship with Chancellor Angela Merkel - it's hard to imagine two leaders more different in ethos and personality. German politicians and voters have been shocked by his abrasive style, his unconventional approach to facts and his frequent attacks on Germany's car industry.

Despite this, the US is Germany's biggest trading partner and the transatlantic relationship is critical for European security. So the Trump presidency has been a rocky ride. German ministers have criticised President Trump's calls for vote-counting to stop and his unsubstantiated claims of electoral fraud. Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer called the situation "explosive".

There is an awareness here that major policy differences between Washington and Berlin will not go away under a Biden presidency. But Berlin is looking forward to working with a president who values multilateral co-operation.

In the weeks before the US election, President Trump said rather optimistically that once re-elected the first telephone call he received would be from Iran's leaders asking to negotiate.

That phone call to Mr Trump - if he had won - was never going to happen. Negotiating with the Trump administration would have been impossible for Iran; it would be too humiliating.

Under President Trump, US sanctions and a policy of maximum pressure have left Iran reeling on the edge of economic collapse. Mr Trump withdrew from the nuclear deal. Worse still, he ordered the killing of General Qasem Soleimani, a close friend of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Taking revenge for his killing remains near the top of the agenda for hardliners.

The election of Joe Biden makes entering negotiations with a US administration far easier for Iran. President-Elect Biden does not have the same baggage. He has said he wants to use diplomacy and return to the nuclear deal with Iran.

But Iran's hardliners will not come to the table easily. As Americans went to the polls on 3 November, the Supreme Leader claimed the election would have "no effect" on Tehran's policies. "Iran followed a sensible and calculated policy which cannot be affected by changes of personalities in Washington," he said.

Millions of Iranians thought differently as they quietly watched the US election unfold on their illegal satellite TV screens, convinced their futures depended on the results and hoping a Biden victory would see sanctions eased.

President Trump supercharged the two poles of the Middle East. He sought to reward and consolidate America's traditional regional allies, while isolating its adversaries in Tehran.

President-elect Biden will try to rewire US Middle East policy back to the way he left it as Vice-President under Barack Obama: Easing Mr Trump's "maximum pressure" campaign on Iran and aiming to re-join the 2015 nuclear deal abandoned by the White House two years ago.

That prospect horrifies Israel and Gulf countries like Saudi Arabia and the UAE. One Israeli minister said in response to Mr Biden's likely win that the policy would end with "a violent Israeli-Iranian confrontation, because we will be forced to act".

The result also dramatically shifts the US approach to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Mr Trump's plan was seen to heavily favour Israel and give it the chance to annex parts of the occupied West Bank. That was shelved in favour of historic deals to establish ties between Israel and several Arab states.

This drive to regional "normalisation" is likely to continue under Mr Biden, but he may try to slow controversial US weapons sales to the Gulf and would likely seek more Israeli concessions. Annexation now seems definitively off the table and Mr Biden will also object to further Israeli settlement building.

But there won't be the "complete U-turn" that one Palestinian official demanded this week. The rhetoric will return to the traditional understanding of a "two-state solution", but the chances of making much progress in the moribund Israeli-Palestinian peace process look slim.

Egypt's military-backed President Abdul Fattah al-Sisi enjoyed a very good relationship with Donald Trump. It would have been better for him to keep a friend in the White House, but now he will have to start a fresh chapter with Joe Biden.

Critics of President Sisi accused the Trump administration of turning a blind eye to his alleged human rights abuses. Egypt receives $1.3bn in US military aid per year. In 2017, a small tranche of this aid was suspended over human rights concerns but was released the following year.

Joe Biden winning the White House is seen as good news by many human rights groups here. Activists hope the new US administration will put pressure on the Egyptian government to change its heavy-handed policies toward the opposition - with tens of thousands of political prisoners reportedly in prison. The Egyptian authorities have always denied jailing any prisoners of conscience, challenging the credibility of critical human rights reports.

"US-Egyptian relations have always been strategic, regardless of who sits in the Oval Office," says Ahmed Sayyed Ahmed, a political analyst. "Partnership will continue, but the Democrats' rhetoric about human rights might not be well received by some Egyptians, who see this as meddling in their country's affairs."

A Biden presidency is exactly what most Cubans have been hoping for. Indeed, the majority of people on the island would happily see almost anyone in the White House other than Donald Trump. His sanctions have brought real hardship and Cubans are exhausted after four years of unrelenting hostility.

Joe Biden, on the other hand, revives memories of the recent highpoint in Cuban-US relations under President Obama. In fact, the former vice-president is said to have been instrumental in making the two years of detente possible.

The communist-run government in Havana will no doubt continue to say all US presidents are essentially cut from the same cloth. But among the people queuing for basic goods and struggling to make ends meet, the overriding feeling will nonetheless be one of great relief.

The only drawback from Cubans point of view? Mr Biden is now well aware of just how positively President Trump's harsh treatment of Cuba played to voters in the key election battleground of Florida. They fear he may be far less inclined to ease some of Mr Trump's measures than he otherwise might have been.

The Canadian prime minister pledged to deepen ties with the US no matter who won the presidential election - but it's likely relief was felt in Ottawa when it became clear Democrat Joe Biden had clinched victory.

Canada's relationship with the US has been rocky under President Trump, though not without its accomplishments. They include the successful renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement, along with Mexico.

But Justin Trudeau has made clear he felt a political kinship with former President Barack Obama - who endorsed him during the recent Canadian federal election. That feeling of warmth extends to the man who served as Mr Obama's vice-president - Joe Biden.

In Mr Biden, Mr Trudeau's Liberal Party will find an ally on issues like climate change and multilateralism. But that doesn't mean there aren't opportunities for friction with his administration. President Trump authorised the construction of the Alberta-to-Texas Keystone XL oil pipeline, a project seen as key to Canada's struggling energy sector - but President-elect Biden opposes the project.

And Joe Biden's "Buy American" economic plan to revive US industry after the coronavirus pandemic will be a concern given Canada's deep dependence on trade with the US.

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US election result: What Biden's victory means for rest of world

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After days of uncertainty, Joe Biden has won the US presidential election, BBC projections show. During Donald Trump's four years in office, America's relationship with the world changed profoundly. BBC reporters across the globe, from Beijing to Berlin, explain how news of Mr Biden's victory is being received and what it could mean for key US relationships.

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17/06/2020

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China and India have accused each other of provoking fighting in which at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a disputed Himalayan area.

The Indian army said that both sides suffered casualties, but there has been no word on numbers from China yet.

Tuesday's battle was reportedly fought with rocks and clubs. However, no shots were fired.

The Indian army said a number of its troops "were critically injured in the line of duty".

The statement goes on to note that the injured soldiers were also "exposed to sub-zero temperatures in the high altitude terrain ".

Monday's confrontation in the Ladakh region was the first deadly clash in the border area in at least 45 years.

India said China had tried to "unilaterally change the status quo". Beijing accused Indian troops of "attacking Chinese personnel".

The two armies later held talks to try to defuse tensions.

What happened?

Early on Tuesday, the Indian army said three of its soldiers had died in a clash in Ladakh, in the disputed Kashmir region.

It later said that "17 Indian troops who were critically injured in the line of duty" and died from their injuries, taking the "total that were killed in action to 20".

Both sides insist no bullet has been fired in four decades, and the Indian army said on Tuesday that "no shots were fired" in this latest skirmish.

How a clash that did not involve an exchange of fire could prove so lethal is unclear, but local media outlets reported that the Indian soldiers had been "beaten to death".

What have both sides said about the incident?

India's external affairs ministry accused China of breaking an agreement struck the previous week to respect the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

Foreign ministry spokesman Anurag Srivastava said the clash arose from "an attempt by the Chinese side to unilaterally change the status quo" on the border.

China did not confirm the number of casualties, but accused India in turn of crossing the border onto the Chinese side.

"The arrogance and recklessness of the Indian side is the main reason for the consistent tensions along China-India borders," read an editorial in the Chinese state-run Global Times on Wednesday.

The United Nations has urged both sides "to exercise maximum restraint".

"We take positive note of reports that the two countries have engaged to de-escalate the situation," UN associate spokesperson Eri Kaneko said.

How tense is the area?

The LAC is poorly demarcated. The presence of rivers, lakes and snowcaps means the line can shift. The soldiers either side - representing two of the world's largest armies - come face-to-face at many points.

But there have been tense confrontations along the border in recent weeks.

India has accused China of sending thousands of troops into Ladakh's Galwan valley and says China occupies 38,000sq km (14,700sq miles) of its territory. Several rounds of talks in the last three decades have failed to resolve the boundary disputes.

The two countries have fought only one war so far, in 1962, when India suffered a humiliating defeat.

In May, dozens of Indian and Chinese soldiers exchanged physical blows on the border in the north-eastern state of Sikkim. And in 2017, the two countries clashed in the region after China tried to extend a border road through a disputed plateau.

There are several reasons why tensions are rising now - but competing strategic goals lie at the root, and both sides blame each other.

India has built a new road in what experts say is the most remote and vulnerable area along the LAC in Ladakh. And India's decision to ramp up infrastructure seems to have infuriated Beijing.

The road could boost Delhi's capability to move men and materiel rapidly in case of a conflict.

India also disputes part of Kashmir - an ethnically diverse Himalayan region covering about 140,000sq km - with Pakistan.

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India and China blame each other for deadly clash

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China and India have accused each other of provoking fighting in which at least 20 Indian soldiers were killed in a disputed Himalayan area. The Indian army said that both sides suffered casualties, but there has been no word on numbers from China yet. Tuesday's battle was reportedly fought with rocks and clubs.

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China and Africa
07/08/2020

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5 June 2020

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Russian prosecutors have ordered checks at "particularly dangerous installations" built on permafrost after a huge oil spill in the Arctic.

An emergency was declared after 20,000 tonnes of diesel leaked into a river when a tank at a power plant near the city of Norilsk collapsed last Friday.

Initial Russian inquiries suggest ground subsidence as the cause.

The plant is owned by a subsidiary of Norilsk Nickel, which is the world's leading nickel and palladium producer.

Delays over reporting the collapse prompted criticism from President Vladimir Putin and the power plant's director, Vyacheslav Starostin, has been taken into custody.

The Russian Investigative Committee has launched a criminal case over pollution and alleged negligence.

Arctic permafrost has been melting in exceptionally warm weather for this time of year.

What checks have been ordered exactly?

Russia's chief prosecutor, Igor Krasnov, gave orders for regional and environmental prosecutors to conduct a "thorough check" of "particularly dangerous installations" located on "territories exposed to permafrost melting".

The aim is to prevent a repeat of the incident at the plant near Norilsk.

A spokesman for Mr Krasnov's department told Russian media prosecutors would assess companies' adherence to safety laws, environmental monitoring and measures to prevent emergencies.

The effectiveness of state monitoring would also be assessed, he said.

What is permafrost?

The term is used for ground that is frozen continuously for two or more years.

Some 55% of Russia's territory, predominantly Siberia, is permafrost and home to its main oil and gas fields.

A 2017 report to the Arctic Council, an international forum which includes Russia, warned that because of global warming and melting ice, foundations in permafrost regions could no longer support the loads they did as recently as the 1980s.

A recent report by Bloomberg news agency points out that Russia's newer oil infrastructure takes account of the changing climate: storage tanks on the Yamal Peninsula, for instance, are mounted on piles.

How bad was the spill?

The leaked oil drifted some 12km (7.5 miles) from the site, turning long stretches of the Ambarnaya river crimson red.

The spill contaminated a 350 sq km (135 sq mile) area, state media report.

In a statement, Norilsk Nickel said the incident had been reported in a "timely and proper" way.

The state of emergency means extra forces are going to the area to assist with the clean-up operation.

The accident is believed to be the second largest in modern Russian history in terms of volume, an expert from the World Wildlife Fund, Alexei Knizhnikov, told the AFP news agency.

What can be done to clear up the damage?

The incident has prompted stark warnings from environmental groups, who say the scale of the spill and geography of the river mean it will be difficult to clean up.

Greenpeace has compared it to the 1989 Exxon Valdez disaster in Alaska.

Oleg Mitvol, former deputy head of Russia's environmental watchdog Rosprirodnadzor, said there had "never been such an accident in the Arctic zone".

He said the clean-up could cost 100bn roubles (£1.2bn; $1.5bn) and take between five and 10 years.

It is not the first time Norilsk Nickel has been involved in oil spillages.

In 2016, it admitted that an accident at one of its plants was responsible for turning a nearby river red.

Minister of Natural Resources Dmitry Kobylkin warned against trying to burn off such a vast quantity of fuel oil and has proposed trying to dilute the oil with reagents.

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Checks ordered after huge Arctic oil spill

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Russian prosecutors have ordered checks at "particularly dangerous installations" built on permafrost after a huge oil spill in the Arctic. An emergency was declared after 20,000 tonnes of diesel leaked into a river when a tank at a power plant near the city of Norilsk collapsed last Friday.

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Iran executions
13/09/2020

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In a leaked recording released by the group, Afkari says: "If I am executed, I want you to know that an innocent person, even though he tried and fought with all his strength to be heard, was executed."

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Navid Afkari: Iran executes young wrestler despite global outcry

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In a leaked recording released by the group, Afkari says: "If I am executed, I want you to know that an innocent person, even though he tried and fought with all his strength to be heard, was executed."

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Will Covid kill globalisation?
20 Sept 2020

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Google and India
13/07/2020

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Google will invest $10bn (£7.93bn) in India in the next five to seven years, the chief executive of its parent company Alphabet Inc has announced.

Sundar Pichai spoke at the annual Google for India event, held online.

The investment will be used to build products and services for India, help businesses go digital and use technology "for social good".

"This is a reflection of our confidence in the future of India and its digital economy," Mr Pichai said.

With more than 500 million active internet users in the country, India is perhaps the biggest potential growth market for Google.

The investment will be made through the Google for India Digitisation Fund

Mr Pichai said the fund would focus on four areas to scale up digital infrastructure in India. It would:

enable "affordable access and information for every Indian in their own language"

"build new products and services that are deeply relevant to India's unique needs"

empower local businesses who want to go digital

"leverage technology and AI [artificial intelligence] ]for social good" in sectors like health, education and agriculture
Nikhil Inamdar, BBC news Mumbai
Mr Pichai also touted Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Digital India project which aims to overhaul the country's digital infrastructure.

Mr Modi tweeted to say that he and Mr Pichai had discussed "leveraging the power of technology to transform the lives of India's farmers, youngsters and entrepreneurs".

Why this investment makes sense for Google

India is already a major market for all of Google's key products including Android, Search and YouTube. Nearly 245 million Indians access YouTube in India.

Growing internet use across smaller towns and villages has also led to a boom in regional language internet use which, according to one estimate, now commands a 66% share in overall content consumption in India, far surpassing English.

This, along with a significant uptick in the number of Indians using AI-based technologies for education, healthcare and financial services, dovetails directly with Google's ambitions to bring first-time users online.

"I expect digital adoption in sectors like education will be two to three times faster because of this investment," telecoms analyst Minakshi Ghosh told the BBC.

The timing of Google's announcement is particularly interesting. It comes close on the heels of India announcing a ban on 59 Chinese apps including TikTok and WeChat.

"Google can scale its presence and fill the void created by some of them, especially in browser space, communication tools and utility apps," says Tarun Pathak, associate director with Counterpoint Technology Market Research. "The ban has created uncertainty in the market, which is an opportunity for Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook."

This is not the first time Google has made large investments in India.

In 2015, the company partnered with Tata Trusts to launch Internet Saathi, a programme to help bridge the gender divide and deliver technology to Indian villages. According to the programme's website, the effort has helped around 28 million women across nearly 300,000 villages learn about the internet.

In his blog, the Indian-born Mr Pichai wrote that this mission was "deeply personal".

"Growing up, technology provided a window to a world outside my own. It also brought us closer together as a family," he said.

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Google announces $10bn investment in India

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Google will invest $10bn (£7.93bn) in India in the next five to seven years, the chief executive of its parent company Alphabet Inc has announced. Sundar Pichai spoke at the annual Google for India event, held online. The investment will be used to build products and services for India, help businesses go digital and use technology "for social good".

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how Europe’s biggest regeneration project fell flat
02/02/21
https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2021/feb/02/penthouses-poor-doors-nine-elms-battersea-london-luxury-housing-development?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other&fbclid=IwAR21DhLeKrcmbkOQEyM3xoHMPfHrK8CjLvyDqMishxbBa9uIpevF0s6qdNs

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Health, Human rights and intervention
Russia protests

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The embassy said such warnings were a "common and routine practice", according to Reuters. The new Biden administration had previously called on the Russian authorities to release those detained, and condemned what it called "harsh tactics" used by the police against them.

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Russia Navalny protests: Kremlin hits out at West as it downplays rallies

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The embassy said such warnings were a "common and routine practice", according to Reuters. The new Biden administration had previously called on the Russian authorities to release those detained, and condemned what it called "harsh tactics" used by the police against them.

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A massive betrayal’: how London’s Olympic legacy was sold out

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o Paul Amuzie, it seemed like a life-changing opportunity. He was 16 and living in temporary accommodation with his mother and three siblings, having moved from home to home since his parents divorced. The east London borough where he lived, Newham, was home to some of the most deprived and overcrowded wards in the country. Now, it was being proposed as the location of the Olympic village in London's bid to host the 2012 games.

As a politically active student at St Bonaventure's school, just east of the designated site, Amuzie had become involved in local campaigns to reduce street violence after a spate of local stabbings, earning his place as an ambassador on the council's young mayor's team. When the Olympic bid was announced in 2003, he directed all his energies towards boosting local support for the games, on the basis that it would bring jobs, safer streets and the chance, one day, for someone like him to rent or even buy their own home. "This wasn't just going to be a sports event, with developers making lots of money," Amuzie told me. "It was about our future."

When London won the bid in July 2005, its backers billed it as a groundbreaking moment. Previous Olympics had done so much damage to host cities, leaving behind useless venues, unleashing property speculation and social displacement. But London's bid was different. It vowed to be "a model for social inclusion". Its legacy would be "the regeneration of the area for the direct benefit of everyone that lives there". Sebastian Coe, chair of London's organising committee, promised that the regeneration of the area in and around the Olympic park would produce 30,000-40,000 new homes, "much of which will be 'affordable housing' available to key workers such as nurses or teachers".

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Ten years on from the patriotic pageant that brought the nation together to bask in director Danny Boyle's opening ceremony, with its pastoral vision of merrie England and cavorting NHS nurses, just 13,000 homes have been built on and around the Olympic site. Of these, only 11% are genuinely affordable to people on average local incomes. Meanwhile, in the four boroughs the site straddles - Newham, Tower Hamlets, Hackney and Waltham Forest - there are almost 75,000 households on the waiting list for council housing, many living in desperate poverty. Thousands of former residents have also been rehoused outside the area since the Olympics took place.

It isn't the legacy that Amuzie fought for. On the windswept corner of Fortunes Walk, in London's new E20 Olympic neighbourhood, where Celebration Avenue meets Cheering Lane, the twin towers of Victory Plaza shoot towards the sky. Their concrete facades frame a private rooftop garden, safely elevated from the street, while vacant shopfronts below advertise the promise of "luxury living in East Village" - the former athletes' village, now rebranded with Manhattan-scale aspirations. Nearby, another pair of towers welcomes residents to its gated "village green" - where no dogs, ballgames or unsupervised children are allowed. Both projects were built by a development arm of the Qatari royal family, and neither includes a single affordable home. Rents begin at £1,750 a month for a studio and rise to more than £4,000 for a penthouse.

"It feels like a massive betrayal," said Amuzie, who now works as a community organiser for Citizens UK, a charity that helps local families living in overcrowded accommodation, and still shares a flat in Newham with his mother and two younger brothers. "It might look like the area has changed for the better, but it hasn't for most existing residents," he added. "They've brought a new community in, and they're the ones reaping the benefits. There's no way me or my friends could rent any of the new housing, or afford to buy a shared-ownership home, despite the fact that we campaigned for the Olympics to come here. Instead, the legacy has just meant gentrification on an industrial scale."

In the eyes of many who have been involved over the years, the result is a bitter failure. Nick Sharman was director of operations at the London Development Agency, whose remit was to buy up land for the Olympic site and evict local businesses. More recently, in his role as a Labour councillor for Hackney, he spent six years on the planning committee of the London Legacy Development Corporation (LLDC), the body charged with delivering the promises made at the time of the bid. He has come to the conclusion that the original aspirations have been all but abandoned. "There is no pretence any more that the legacy is trying to get a positive outcome for East Enders," he told me. "It is driven by a total market ideology, dressed up in some good aspirational talk, with a few baubles thrown out to keep local people happy, while mostly catering for the rich. It is a massive failure at every level."

A former board member of the legacy corporation has similar misgivings. "There are some pockets of brilliance," he said, "but overall the project hasn't improved people's life chances in the area. We have made a new community and plonked it down on the Olympic park, creating an enormous divide."

Speaking to those who have sat on the boards of the various Olympic legacy bodies, and the officials tasked with enacting their commands, a number of key themes emerge to explain all the missed opportunities and the broken promises. At least some of the mess can be traced back to the naivety and hubris that characterised the initial planning under London's first mayor, Ken Livingstone. But most seem to agree that the moment the project seriously lost its way was in 2008, with the election of Livingstone's successor, Boris Johnson.

he origins of London's Olympic bid had little to do with sport. Following his election as the first mayor of London in 2000, Ken Livingstone became fixated on the games as a means of funnelling cash into the regeneration of east London. "He was absolutely ruthless about getting the Olympics," said Sharman. "He prioritised it above everything else. But what gave heft to the bid was that he genuinely believed it would help the area." Livingstone was always frank about his motivations: "I bid for the Olympics because it's the only way to get the billions of pounds out of the government to develop the East End," he said in 2008.

In 2004, Livingstone had designated the Lower Lea valley as an "opportunity area". The ragged wedge, which slices through east London towards the Thames, had long been a dirty back yard, where sewage pumping, gasworks, high-voltage cabling, car-crushing and food-processing businesses convened around a tangle of waterways, marshland and rail lines. For the bid, the area's toxic status was emphasised. This was a place that had been poisoned by industry, a lawless dump at the nexus of the capital's most deprived boroughs. It was "ripe for redevelopment", as the Olympic bid put it.

In 2006, advising the secretary of state on the £1bn compulsory purchase of land from local businesses, the planning inspector David Rose described it as a place of "environmental, economic and social degradation". It needed to be scrubbed up before developers would be interested, and the Olympics, with its ample budget for soil-washing, pipe-laying, cable-burying and road building, would be just the job. The promise of affordable housing was cited as a key justification for acquiring the land, with a 50% target enshrined "to serve the needs of the local population and to provide them with a continuing opportunity of living in the area".

But research by an architectural academic paints a different picture from that of a forlorn wasteland. Prof Juliet Davis, head of the Welsh School of Architecture at Cardiff University, documented the site before the games, as part of her PhD on the Olympics. When she mapped the area in 2006, Davis found more than 280 businesses employing about 5,000 people, in trades ranging from belt-making to salmon smoking, wig supply to bagel baking. She found a community living happily in low-cost cooperative housing - and a Ghanaian pentecostal church with one of the largest congregations in Europe.

"This wasn't rustbelt dereliction," she told me. "They were all relocated in the years after the bid was won, some far outside London, and many closed down as a result. A lot of the businesses were struggling already but, rather than protect them, the Olympic regeneration exacerbated the process of decline. The so-called 'affordable' workspace being provided in and around the park now isn't in reach of the kinds of companies that were there before." A demographic survey in 2018 found that 80% of the employees at the Olympic park's "employment hub" were white - compared to 31% in the local area.

hile the Olympics is often credited as the saviour of this noxious swamp, bringing homes, jobs and shiny shopping centres to the East End, what tends to be overlooked is that much of this development was going to happen anyway.

In 2003, the largest planning application since the second world war had been submitted by Chelsfield, Stanhope and London & Continental Railways for the eastern side of what became the Olympic site. Stratford City was to be the new Canary Wharf, a dazzling metropolitan centre of 5,000 homes and 30,000 jobs, the cluster of high-rise towers connected to Europe by a new "international" station. (Eurostar has never stopped at Stratford International to this day.)

In July 2005, when London won the Olympic bid, the plans underwent a critical shift. To save time and money, 2,800 flats in the Stratford City plan were accelerated, to serve as the athletes' village for the games. As in previous host cities, the flats were to be funded and built by a private developer, and Australian firm Lendlease was chosen for the project in 2007. But, with the dawn of the 2008 financial crisis, the company struggled to raise cash, so the government stepped in to bail out the £1bn scheme. "By funding the entire project, the village will become publicly owned, and the public purse will receive substantial returns from sales," promised the Olympic minister Tessa Jowell at the time.

The London Olympic Park and surrounding area

In reality, the athletes' village was sold in 2011 for around half what it cost to build, to a joint venture of Qatari Diar and Delancey, representing a £275m loss to the taxpayer. The original bailout meant that taxpayers funded the construction of the affordable homes, a new school and health facilities, while the private sector kept the more profitable parts of the scheme - the shopping mall, the offices and the luxury flats. Westfield has become one of Europe's busiest shopping centres, while Lendlease's International Quarter enjoys rents from 1m sq ft of grade-A office space, and Qatari Diar Delancey continues to build exclusive gated towers under the brand Get Living London.

The details of the 2003 planning permission have come back to haunt the Olympic legacy plan two decades later.While London had a policy for 50% affordable housing at the time, the development was given permission for just 30%, on grounds of financial viability. Because the publicly funded athletes' village delivered most of the affordable homes required for the entire Stratford City site, the more recent developments in East Village - such as the towers of Victory Plaza and its steroidal neighbours - are allowed to be built as wholly private rental, without any affordable homes at all.

Under the leadership of Robin Wales, who served as mayor of Newham from 2002 until 2018, the borough was keen to attract a wealthier demographic and stem the flight of its financially successful residents to Essex. "Newham London - a place where people choose to live, work and stay" became the council's desperate slogan, emblazoned on signs in the run-up to the Olympics. The displacement and relocation of low-income households, as far afield as Stoke-on-Trent, wasn't so loudly trumpeted.

Dr Penny Bernstock, honorary senior research fellow at University College London, who has tracked Olympic housing delivery, points out that the official figures - which boast that more than 3,000 affordable homes have been built in the area since the games - ignore the homes that were demolished to make way for the Olympics in the first place. Clays Lane was the largest residential co-operative of its kind in the UK. Built in 1977, near where the Olympic velodrome now stands, it was an experiment in creating close-knit communities to help vulnerable single people in east London. Its demolition in 2007 eradicated 450 low-cost tenancies and left the community "shattered", in the words of one former resident. Bernstock notes that their relocation took an additional 327 social rented units out of the available stock, meaning that the net gain in housing built on the park since 2012 (in East Village and the first neighbourhood to be built on the park after the games, Chobham Manor) is just 110 genuinely affordable homes. A tiny number, given the need.

One local family I spoke to had been bidding for a council home in Newham for 15 years. Their household of seven lives in a one-bedroom flat close to the Olympic park, where the children all sleep together on the floor. "They say we are not priority, because we are in work," the mother told me. "The Olympics have only made things worse, driving up rents and pushing people out, as we slip further and further down the waiting list."

he promised housing targets might have fallen short, but what kind of place is the promised new Olympic urban quarter shaping up to be? In spite of being carefully coordinated by dozens of designers, scrutinised by teams of planners, cajoled by expert-laden quality review panels, and lavishly funded from public and private coffers, the emerging legacy-scape feels like the result of a series of unexpected accidents. Which, in many ways, it is.

"No one believed we would win the Olympic bid," I was told by an architect who led the masterplan for the site, and has worked on successive legacy plans since. "Madrid, Paris and New York all had better offers. So, of course, London wasn't going to win. We were asked to come up with a version of the plan without the games, which we all thought was more likely to happen. Then suddenly we got it, and boxes of technical requirements arrived from the International Organising Committee. We thought: 'Oh shit. You've got to be able to get to every single back-of-house place in the Olympic park within 20 minutes in an anticlockwise direction on a service road. Is that even possible?'"

One result was big, wide roads, and lots of them, which slice their way across the park to this day, making it still feel like an events campus rather than a normal part of London. "I still wince at some of the infrastructure," a former Olympic design director told me. "The roads were designed to get athletes and officials around the site as quickly as possible, but I wish we'd focused much more on pedestrians."

The Olympic park can also feel cut off from the surrounding neighbourhoods, and that's no accident either. The site was chosen for its natural severance, being hemmed in by waterways, rail lines and dual carriageways, making it a perfect high-security island, able to be locked down at a moment's notice. There was much talk of "stitching" it back into its surroundings after the games, but many of the right connections were missed. "Inclusivity and access was done as a box-ticking exercise," the masterplan architect told me, "rather than thinking which the important routes are. Half of those new connections will never mean anything to people living in nearby estates. They're still excluded."

His fears are borne out by the stories of those who live around the edges. Ethan Suppaya grew up on the Carpenters Estate, which lies immediately to the south of the Olympic park, across a railway line. It is the wrong side of the tracks in every respect, a rundown place taunted by years of promised regeneration that never arrived. (Newham council finally approved plans in May, having first proposed redevelopment in 2001.) Suppaya was eight years old when the Olympics took place, and his lasting memory is one of eviction. The council moved his family out of their flat in Dennison Point, where his grandparents had lived for 40 years, because the tower was scheduled for demolition, in plans that were later shelved. Adding insult to injury, the vacated flats were used by TV crews during the games, for their prize vantage point above the park.

"The whole place just feels like a walled city," said Suppaya, who is now 17. "There's the new, clean, shiny Olympic world on one side, and the old, rough, litter-strewn Stratford on the other. The nearest bus stop to the park is a 15-minute walk away through the Westfield shopping centre. I've only ever been there on school trips. It doesn't feel like it's meant for us."

f there is a moment when the nature of the Olympic legacy plan began to take a fundamental turn, it was after 2008, when Boris Johnson was elected mayor of London. In the four years running up to the games, Johnson oversaw a radical change to the character and ethos of the vision. He was determined to make his mark: from the moment of the Olympic handover in Beijing - when he made headlines with his clownish flag-waving and talk of "wiff-waff" coming home - it was his Olympics, not Ken's, and he wanted people to remember that.

Several insiders told me that the high-density housing model drawn up under Livingstone, and partially realised in the form of the athletes' village, was suddenly deemed "too European". Foreshadowing Brexit culture wars, the fact that the eight-to-10-storey courtyard blocks and tree-lined avenues were more redolent of Barcelona than London was now seen to be a bad thing. Johnson and his advisers called for a return to Victorian and Georgian types: terraces, mews and mansion blocks, with Bloomsbury and Maida Vale as the model. "It will mean more £1m houses on the park," a design adviser told a meeting at the time. The shift towards this nostalgic, low-rise model also had the effect of slashing housing numbers in half, from a possible 12,000 down to the current 6,000 earmarked for the neighbourhoods in the park.

At around the same time, the definition of "affordable" housing was revised by the Conservative-led coalition government to mean up to 80% of market rate, and a greater emphasis was put on shared-ownership homes in the legacy plan. As Nick Sharman has pointed out, this kind of "affordable" housing in the Olympic area generally demands an annual income of at least £60,000, and often up to £90,000. Meanwhile, the average income in the local boroughs is about £27,000. "The only truly affordable housing is social rented housing," he said. "In the first five years of the legacy, that made up just 6.4% of completed homes." The legacy corporation says the figure has now increased to 11%, and will be up to 13% once all the homes are built.

Housing plans were further knocked off course, according to insiders, by Johnsons's desire for a novelty attraction "to arouse the curiosity and wonder of visitors" to the games. The idea was for something to rival the Statue of Liberty or the Eiffel Tower. The result was the ArcelorMittal Orbit, a monument to its steel-magnate sponsor, Lakshmi Mittal, then the UK's richest man, designed by Anish Kapoor in the form of a tangled rollercoaster - only without a ride.

"We had a really nice plan for streets of housing on that site," the masterplan architect recalled. "But Boris had other ideas. Out of nowhere there was a competition for a viewing tower." Antony Gormley submitted an entry. So, too, did the architectural firm Caruso St John, in the form of a vertical seaside pier. "It had to be built incredibly quickly, and it had to be fun," Peter St John told me. "Boris wanted slides, so we put some slides in, and we had a special room at the top where you could enter a lottery to meet the mayor. The main aim at the presentation seemed to be to entertain Boris and keep him laughing. I wasn't sorry that we didn't win." ("Weirdly, the jury chose the design that everyone hated," the masterplan architect told me.)

The ArcelorMittal Orbit was intended to be a money-making attraction, with tickets for £17 a pop, but it ended up costing £10,000 a week to maintain. A slide was finally added in 2016 in the hope of boosting ticket sales, but it hasn't had the desired effect. The attraction has slid into at least £13m of debt, as a result of interest on the £9.2m loan from Mittal.

Johnson's reelection as mayor in 2012, bolstered by Olympic excitement, gave him a thirst for further control over the shape of the legacy. He disbanded the previous legacy company and formed the London Legacy Development Corporation, modelled on the London Docklands Development Corporation, which spawned Canary Wharf in the 1980s. He then installed himself as chair, and expanded its planning powers over a wider area. In what has since become a Johnsonian trademark, it was an unparalleled power grab. He set up a board "stuffed quite outrageously with people who supported his own interests," as one insider put it.

Crucially, Johnson ensured that the locally elected representatives were in a minority on the planning committee, which meant that big decisions could be steamrollered through. Johnson wanted to see results, and fast, before his mayoral term ran out. "He asked us to massively accelerate the delivery of the Olympic legacy housing plans," one former corporation employee told me. "It essentially doubled the speed. We had to do everything in half the time, in the most expedient way possible."

The speed had knock-on effects. "It greatly affected the housing affordability," said a former board member. "The original development calculations were based on an appreciation of land values over time, but the earlier we developed the sites, the less money we would get for them. Sitting in meetings with Boris, you constantly found that these big decisions were made without a lot of thought process. You would suggest that certain decisions might come with additional costs, and he would just say: 'What do you mean, costs?'"

Driven by pressure from the Treasury to repay some of the Olympic debt, the economic model for the legacy has always been based on selling off plots of land in the park to the highest bidders on long-term leases. Rather than leading the development itself, as some local authorities are now beginning to do, the legacy corporation has simply appointed the usual big housebuilders, like Taylor Wimpey and Balfour Beatty, who take profits as developers and contractors.

Nick Sharman argues that, given all the land had already been acquired by the public, the legacy corporation could have developed the area itself, and reinvested profits back into the future of the place, as happened in the postwar New Towns and places like Milton Keynes. Instead, the great money-making selloff isn't quite working out as planned. Livingstone's original ambition was for at least £1.8bn to be raised from selling the development plots, even with 50% affordable housing factored into the equation. But, with just two years to go before the legacy corporation is wound up, it has recouped a total of just £239m from land sales. It cites a number of factors for the low figure, from the impact of Brexit, to the impact of house price and tender price inflation, and changes to affordable housing targets (although these have dropped from Livingstone's 50%, not increased).

But the main reason, it turns out, is due to another major change to the legacy plan by Johnson.

n 2014, when the Olympic park reopened to visitors after the games, following £300m of re-landscaping Boris Johnson decided the legacy plans were lacking a real draw. The Orbit clearly wasn't enough to lure the crowds, so he declared that the park needed a "world-class centre for arts and education". Taking inspiration from South Kensington's "Albertopolis", the district of museums and universities bequeathed by the 1851 Great Exhibition, Johnson christened his vision "Olympicopolis ".

There had been interest from the owner of Madame Tussauds and Legoland, but the final lineup is a more highbrow affair. Set to be completed by 2025, the mountain of conjoined cultural buildings features a branch of the V&A and Sadler's Wells dance theatre, along with London College of Fashion, BBC studios and a new outpost of University College London to the south. The latter stands like a bulky radiator next to the Orbit and achieves the remarkable feat of making Kapoor's structure look marginally less bad by comparison.

The project was rejigged and rebranded as East Bank in 2018, by Labour mayor Sadiq Khan, in an attempt to equate the Olympic cultural hub with the South Bank and the Thames-side legacy of the 1951 Festival of Britain. The comparison doesn't do it many favours. "It's like the South Bank with all the space squeezed out of it," said one architect involved in the project. "It is basically one gigantic megastructure, dressed by different designers. It's the ultimate child of modern procurement methods." Piers Gough, an architect who sits on the legacy planning committee, agrees: "It's not nearly as great as it ought to be," he told me. "The buildings are good, workmanlike solutions, but not exhilarating, not really exciting, which I had hoped they would be."

Rather than hold international competitions for each building - as you might expect for such illustrious cultural venues - the legacy corporation procured the project in a similar way that it had for the housing plots, holding a competition to find one team that could do it all. The winning consortium has some decent architects involved (O'Donnell & Tuomey and Allies & Morrison, with young Spanish firm Arquitecturia responsible for an elegant steel footbridge) but the result so far appears designed by committee, the stocky buildings converging into a single mass. There is hope that the V&A might still shine. Designed by O'Donnell & Tuomey, it looks somewhat like a concrete crab, raised on tiptoes, as if ready to scuttle away from its lumbering neighbours.

The site will be dominated at its northern end by several large blocks of flats, the money-earner to help pay for the rest, which contain 35% shared-ownership flats - but not a single genuinely affordable home. Meanwhile, costs for the East Bank project have risen from £385m to £628m, with the legacy corporation itself bearing the risk, having signed 200-year leasehold agreements with each of the future occupiers.

Boris Johnson did not respond to requests for comment for this article. Challenged in January 2015 to answer claims that the Olympic legacy was a waste of money, Boris Johnson said Olympicopolis would bring "world-class institutions to the area along with more than 3,000 jobs and £3bn of economic benefit". But there are fears that the East Bank project could end up being as much of a financial black hole as the Olympic stadium. Built at a cost of £486m, it was later converted into a permanent football stadium for £274m, bringing the total to £760m. It remains a massive loss-maker, costing the public around £10m to operate each year. Unusually, the pandemic was a blessing, as the stadium's closure led to savings. As a damning report by the London Assembly's budget and performance committee noted last year: "It is ironic that by having fewer large-scale events, thanks to Covid-19, the park is haemorrhaging less money than if it were business as usual." In the latest accounts, the stadium was listed with a value of zero.

or those lucky enough to move into one of the new Olympic legacy homes, it was a dream come true, at first. In 2019, after nine years on Newham's council housing waiting list, schoolteacher Maryam Osman and her family finally received an offer for a two-bedroom flat in Chobham Manor, the first neighbourhood to be built on the park after the games.

"It's a great place to have a family," Osman told me. "There's a real sense of community, and having the park on our doorstep has been such a bonus, especially during the pandemic. Every time I go to the park I find something new - it's full of hidden gems. When I take pictures of the wildlife and send them to my friends, no one believes it's in London."

Living on the doorstep of such an idyll comes at a price. Homes start at £465,000 for a one-bed flat, rising to around £1m for a terrace house, while Osman says the affordable rent of £260 a week is double what she paid before. She and her neighbours also complain of being tied into costly energy contracts with district-wide provider East London Energy, which has a 40-year monopoly over the entire park. Their bills recently doubled, on top of a standing charge of £30 a month. "It's been dreadful," said Cath Arnold, chair of the residents' association, who otherwise thinks Chobham is a great place to live. "And we've got no way of opting out." ( A spokesperson for East London Energy blamed the spike in wholesale energy prices, adding that, while consumers using the grid are expected to see an additional rise in October, they have a fixed price until April 2023.)

The build quality doesn't always match what you'd expect from a flagship scheme: residents complain that their flats have been riddled with defects. One told me they had to chase the housing association, L&Q, for two years to fix a broken extractor fan that had caused mould in the bathroom. Another freeholder discovered that the necessary insulation had not been fitted around heating pipes in the ceiling, which led to stratospheric bills, and the fridge had been installed without the required ventilation behind it, which was a fire risk. "L&Q said it's nothing to do with them, it's the fault of the builder, Taylor Wimpey," the freeholder said. "No one wants to take responsibility, so you're left ping-ponging between the companies." (Taylor Wimpey and L&Q said they have "acknowledged and taken remedial action for the issues raised and are working closely to resolve any outstanding concerns as soon as possible.")

Unlike their neighbours in East Village (owned by Qatari Diar Delancey), residents of the new legacy neighbourhoods (built on public land) are forced to pay a "fixed estate charge" for the upkeep of the Olympic park, currently £1,357 a year for a 3-bed freehold flat. They also pay a £2,500 service charge to L&Q. "We pay three times for some things, and we don't get much in return," said Arnold. "The communal gardens are getting overgrown and the whole place is looking a bit rundown." (L&Q acknowledged that there has been "a historical issue with the quality of our ground maintenance service" but that it is "actively putting measures in place to improve this.")

"The park charge is killing us," said Osman. "I don't know why we're paying for it, when anyone can use it." The legacy corporation insists that the charge is "fair and reasonable", adding: "These type of charges have existed for many years and have been increasingly used on large regeneration projects like ours." It is a reminder that, despite using the Queen's name, this is not a royal park, but a place that is managed like a private estate.

s a planned estate under the majority ownership of a single development corporation with supreme planning powers, you might expect the area in and around the Olympic park to have an overarching sense of coherence. There is no other part of London where so much design expertise has been focused, aided by so much public money, as here. Yet, despite all the planning, the resulting place feels oddly unplanned.

To the south, along Stratford high street, a motley row of apartment towers pokes on to the horizon, like a physical bar chart of inflated land values. Most were given planning permission on the eve of the Olympics, as developers flocked to the fringes of the site in a frantic gold-rush, each bidding to be the "gateway to the games". The parade of cheap cladding panels provides a fitting prelude to the cacophony of Stratford City, where more towers of luxury flats and offices are beginning to form a glacial wall along the eastern edge of the park.

In contrast to this brash backdrop, the more recent legacy neighbourhoods have opted for bricky restraint, dutifully following the New London Vernacular. Some blocks in the latest area of East Wick feature strained industrial allusions, including gigantic steel frames bolted on to their facades, like relics from an imaginary manufacturing past. Perhaps it's a nod to the once-gritty areas of Hackney Wick and Fish Island across the river - themselves subject to a wholesale makeover of faux-industrial loft apartments, with mostly vacant ground-floor units.

With just a couple of years to go before planning powers are handed back to the local authorities, the London Legacy Development Corporation continues to approve planning applications at full speed. To some, it sounds like a death rattle: "The whole energy at the moment is to give permission to as much as possible before the boroughs get their hands back on the site," said one former member of the planning committee. "It stinks."

As a symbol of the corporation's largely unaccountable nature, and the sense of an end-of-days feeding frenzy, it is hard to find a better example than the MSG Sphere. When images were released of this colossal entertainment venue next to Stratford station, designed as a gigantic glowing ball, as tall as Big Ben, set to shine right outside people's windows, it seemed like a joke. It was opposed by every single elected councillor, but approved by the majority of unelected members on the legacy planning committee in March this year. "It was a profoundly undemocratic business," said Nick Sharman, who described it as "one of the most disgraceful regeneration approvals that I've ever been part of." In the words of local MP, Lyn Brown: "This monstrous glowing orb makes a mockery of east London's Olympic legacy." (A legacy corporation spokesperson said the application for the sphere was subject to "robust review" by officers.)

Shortly after Sadiq Khan became mayor in 2016, he increased affordable housing targets across the capital, mandating a level of 35%, and up to 50% on publicly owned land. It has already had an effect on the final Olympic neighbourhoods of Pudding Mill and Rick Roberts Way to the south, which are planned to be denser and contain more affordable, family-oriented housing. But the new targets have also come with unintended consequences: the legacy corporation has bought several homes in Chobham Manor back from Taylor Wimpey at full market price, in a belated attempt to make up the numbers.

Piers Gough, who has served on the legacy planning committee since 2013, feels conflicted about what the quango has presided over. "Most of the housing is nicely done," he said, "but what has most vexed us on the planning committee is who it's being done for. I fear we are creating a monoculture of young professionals." (The legacy corporation insists that 64% of all homes will be "family housing", although its definition of family-size includes two-bedroom flats.)

"You can't argue the Olympics hasn't brought some economic benefits to east London," said Paul Regan, who was involved with the Olympic bid in 2004 as chair of London Citizens. "But the big failure is that we still have the worst housing conditions in the city." In the early days of the Olympic project, one of the key things that Regan, Amuzie and others fought for was the inclusion of a community land trust on part of the Olympic site, where the price of homes would be permanently tied to median local income - keeping them affordable for ever. The St Clement's community land trust, completed in 2017, was built as a test site, but Regan says the commitment has been all but abandoned by the development corporation. "It seemed they felt if they pushed it into the long grass far enough, nobody would notice," he said. Asked about levels of affordable housing, the legacy corporation said numbers were "influenced" by historic planning permissions. The corporation says it has identified a plot for new land trust homes, and a competition to develop it will be launched later this year. It did not specify how many homes will be built.

Ten years on, the legacy has resulted in a nice park dotted with impressive sports venues and high-end homes, with some cultural attractions on the way. But the poorest and most vulnerable, in what remain London's most deprived boroughs, have lost out. In terms of social engineering, says one academic, it has been a complete success, "a lovely place for those who can afford it, with people living in desperate poverty right outside it".

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'A massive betrayal': how London's Olympic legacy was sold out

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o Paul Amuzie, it seemed like a life-changing opportunity. He was 16 and living in temporary accommodation with his mother and three siblings, having moved from home to home since his parents divorced. The east London borough where he lived, Newham, was home to some of the most deprived and overcrowded wards in the country.

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What does the future hold for Broadmead? Bristol

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The Changing High Street

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Beauty salons and tattoo parlours have prospered on High Streets while the number of banks and department stores has fallen, BBC analysis shows.

Places to eat and drink have also increased - despite social distancing.

To find out how the High Streets and shopping areas near you have changed since the beginning of the pandemic, type in your postcode below.

If you can't view the postcode lookup, click here. For further detail on the Ordnance Survey data used in the postcode search above, please see full methodology at the bottom of the page.

The full extent of changes to Britain's High Streets after two years of Covid lockdowns and trading restrictions is revealed in data from Ordnance Survey.

Overall, there were 9,300 fewer retail outlets in March 2022 than March 2020, as shoppers switched to online stores.

The findings illustrate the changing face of the British High Street from a place to buy things to a place to do stuff - like get your nails done and meet friends for a coffee or a cocktail.

The figures are revealed by BBC analysis of 1.5 million records contained in the Ordnance Survey's "Points of Interest" mapping data, a comprehensive quarterly survey of businesses, facilities and services operating in England, Scotland and Wales.

Debenhams and Beales were among the landmark High Street retailers to close their doors during the pandemic, contributing to a 13.4% drop in department stores across Great Britain. Two years on from the first lockdown in 2020, there were 328 fewer such stores.

Kendal in Cumbria was one of the towns to lose its Beales store, now boarded up. But developer Geri Ward has begun turning the building into what she calls a celebration of Cumbria.

"This town was dying when Beales closed, people stopped coming here," she says, standing in the old perfume hall as a workman rips a Chanel sign from the wall.

"We are a traditional nation of small shopkeepers. We decided we would provide more of a location where tourists and locals can come to with smaller, independent retailers inside - the fantastic artisans, the entrepreneurs, the producers of Cumbrian food."

The number of clothes shops operating in Britain is down 4,300, a fall of 8.5%. The collapse of the Arcadia retail empire in 2020 saw Burtons, Dorothy Perkins, Wallis, Topshop and Miss Selfridge all disappear from our shopping streets.

More than 800 High Street banks and building societies closed their doors during the pandemic (-8.1%) along with the loss of more than 6,000 cash machines (-13.2%).

The changes suggest the pandemic accelerated the move away from physical cash-based retail to card-based online shopping.

High Streets and shopping centres have become a magnet for hair and beauty services in the past few years - an additional 5,100 premises now operate compared with pre-pandemic - an increase of 5.9%.

In the G1 and G2 postcodes of central Glasgow, hair and beauty services are now the most prevalent type of shop - overtaking pubs and bars which were the most prevalent in March 2020.

Tattoo parlours and piercing studios have proved particularly popular with 350 more in March this year than before the Covid restrictions, a rise of 8.2%. Many areas have acquired one for the first time.

Sheffield had 15 more tattoo parlours in March 2022, Kingston upon Hull had 11 more, while Stockport and Cornwall each had an extra 10. South Lakeland, straddling the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales, had more than twice as many as pre-Covid - up from four salons to 10.

There are half a dozen tattooists operating in Kendal. Tony Davis is the artist at Samsara in the High Street.

"You can't get a tattoo online. If you want a tattoo you've got to go to a tattoo parlour," he says. "Our industry is definitely mainstream now and if you go to some cities in England there are three, four, five, six studios down the same street."

The town mayor, Doug Rathbone, agrees that service-based businesses are transforming the High Street experience.

"It's about not just shopping, it's about going to the shops and having a cup of coffee as well, popping into various different places," he says. "It is so important that we celebrate and do something about the vitality of our town centres and High Streets."

However, High Streets and shopping areas appear to be evolving into more service and hospitality-based venues. And despite the restrictions of lockdowns and social distancing rules, eating and drinking establishments saw growth of almost 4%.

The Ordnance Survey data found 700 more pubs and bars were operating after the pandemic. There were also 2,000 more cafes or tea rooms and 4,600 more fast-food outlets.

The great British chippie proved its popularity during Covid - 300 more fish and chip shops were operating in March this year than two years earlier.

The government announced a number of financial support schemes for the hospitality and leisure sectors during the Covid pandemic, helping them survive the loss of trade during coronavirus restrictions. As well as "eat out to help out", the Treasury introduced a temporary business rates relief package and other measures.

Not all hospitality thrived, however. There were almost 150 fewer nightclubs post-pandemic - a fall of one in 10 - as an already-declining sector was hit by social distancing rules.

Food shops did well over the pandemic.

Independent convenience stores increased by 1,600, a rise of almost 3%. The big supermarket chains operated 194 more stores by the end of the Covid restrictions, up 2.5%. There was a similar rise in the number of organic and other speciality food shops.

In Kendal, a new local butcher has recently opened. Owner Robert Unwin says business is good because he offers a service you cannot get online.

"It's the little advice you give," he says. "All I think about is meat, literally. A lot of people want quality but they don't really know what exactly they're looking for."

The data highlights regional and local differences in the resilience of High Streets and town centres.

Scotland saw the largest growth in eating and drinking outlets, with a rise of 6%. In north-west and north-east England, the increase was around 5%. The south-west of England and Wales saw the lowest increases in eating and drinking businesses.

The variation is even more marked at local authority level. For example, Oxford saw close to a 9% fall in retail while Gravesham in Kent experienced a 6% increase.

East Dunbartonshire, Barnsley and Knowsley each saw a big rise in eating and drinking establishments, up more than 15%. The number of eating and drinking establishments on Shetland fell by more than a fifth (21.3%), while Merthyr Tydfil in South Wales experienced a 10% reduction.

Jamie Howe is Cumbria's surveyor for Ordnance Survey. He walks the county's streets to measure changes in the landscape or amenities - sometimes to the nearest centimetre. He says he has seen significant changes, for better and worse.

"A lot of shops have been closing down, but lots of other shops and local community shops have been opening up. Coffee shops, breweries, hair and beauty - and maybe the community has come closer together because of these changes."

Credits

Produced by Will Dahlgreen, Nassos Stylianou, Daniel Dunford, Callum May and Mark Easton.

Design by Jana Tauschinski and Lilly Huynh.

Development by Scott Jarvis, Alex Nicolaides, Assiz Periera, Alex Nicholas, Zoe Thomas, Kieran Crowley, Arun Bhari, Marcos Gurgel and Toby Cox.

Editing by Sarah Bell.

Methodology

The data is a combination of two datasets from Ordnance Survey (OS).

To report which businesses have opened and closed we have used the Points of Interest dataset.

This is a comprehensive, location-based directory of all public and privately-owned businesses, education and leisure services in England, Scotland and Wales. Points of Interest contains over four million records and is updated four times a year. The BBC has analysed data from a selected number of categories within the Points of Interest database.

For the purpose of this research we have used one data release in March 2020 and one in March 2022, to give a snapshot of the points of interest across Great Britain that were active at those times.

For the interactive postcode look-up, to report the number of businesses on 10 of the High Streets and shopping areas close to the postcode entered, we have used the OS Retail Geographies dataset.

This is an experimental dataset from the Ordnance Survey describing the geography of shopping across Great Britain. It clusters retail areas using street names and includes local High Streets, retail parks and shopping centres. Longer streets are divided into smaller sections where there is a change of road name or retail addresses are more then 150m apart. The resulting clusters must also meet the minimum threshold of 15 retail addresses for highly populated urban areas and five retail addresses for smaller rural areas.

To find the 10 nearest shopping areas to the postcode you have entered, we have chosen the 10 where the middle of the box surrounding the area is closest to the centre point of the postcode boundary as the crow flies. There may be some streets that are very close to the postcode, but do not quite fit this criteria; or there may be some which are very close as the crow flies as we have defined it, but may not be the easiest to travel to.

Everywhere else that we have reported the number of businesses, we have counted the number of points from the Points of Interest dataset that fall within the relevant geographic area, regardless of whether they fall within a street as defined by the Retail Geographies dataset.

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Postcode checker: how has your High Street changed since 2020?

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Beauty salons and tattoo parlours have prospered on High Streets while the number of banks and department stores has fallen, BBC analysis shows. Places to eat and drink have also increased - despite social distancing. To find out how the High Streets and shopping areas near you have changed since the beginning of the pandemic, type in your postcode below.

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First UK coal Mine approved in decades - 08/12/22

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Climate experts and some Tory MPs argued the mine would undermine UK efforts to lower emissions.

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Government policy - Levelling up
20th Jan 2023

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Dozens of schemes across the UK have been awarded funding as part of the the government's "levelling up" project. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak says its aim is "to create jobs, drive growth, and make sure that people feel enormous pride in the places that they call home".

But critics say it doesn't make up for the big cuts in local council funding under the Conservatives.

Who has received funding?

The Levelling Up Fund awarded £1.7bn to projects in October 2021 and another £2.1bn in January 2023.

The North West of England got the most money in both rounds of funding.

In the latest round, the South East came second, prompting questions about why it was benefitting.

The government has highlighted funding per head of the population. If you look at the funding awards this way, the North of England clearly does better than the South of England.

On this measure, Wales comes out on top followed by the North West and North East of England.

London and the South of England come bottom, with Yorkshire and the Humber also faring badly in the second round.

How fair is the process?

Areas were invited to bid for investment in transport, cultural, town centre and regeneration projects.

Local MPs were allowed to give their formal support to two bids before the proposals were judged by officials from the Treasury, Levelling Up Department and Department for Transport.

Assessing how fair this is, is not straightforward. Some projects - such as transport for example - may spread across several constituencies, represented by MPs from different parties.

For the projects that can be allocated to a single party, we can say that more money was allocated to Conservative constituencies than to Labour ones. But there are significantly more Conservative ones.

BBC analysis of the latest round of funding found:

52% of successful bids that can be allocated to a party were in Conservative constituencies (the Conservatives won 56% of seats in the Commons in 2019)

24% of them were in Labour areas (Labour won 31% of the seats in 2019)

Projects in Tory constituencies were awarded a total of £1.21bn, compared with £471m in Labour ones.

There was one successful bid in a Lib Dem constituency, seven for the SNP, five for the DUP, three for Sinn Fein, and one each for the Alliance Party and Plaid Cymru.

Areas have also been competing for money under the government's Towns Fund. In that contest, of the 56 constituencies that won, 47 had Conservative MPs.

What about deprived areas?

On the second round of funding, Rishi Sunak said: "two thirds of all the levelling up funding is going to the most deprived parts of our country".

That analysis excludes a small number of awards that were given to areas covering multiple local authorities.

We asked the Levelling Up department about Mr Sunak's claim. It said it was not based on the government's index of multiple deprivation but was instead based on measures involving productivity, employment, vacancy rates, lack of skills and transport links.

What have critics said?

Labour said the money awarded was dwarfed by the cuts to local authority funding since 2010, with Alex Norris telling MPs: "the government have nicked a tenner from our wallets and expect us to be grateful for getting less than two quid back."

He suggested the money would have been allocated better by local decision-makers than civil servants in London.

It was because the traditional model of comparing the benefits of a project to its cost made it easier to allocate funding to places with high population density and high property prices, such as South East England.

Many organisations have put forward suggestions of things that need to be addressed such as employment rates, pay, health and formal education, but there seems to be fairly broad agreement that one of the central issues is the differences in productivity between regions - that's the amount of value created (GVA) per hour worked.

One of the factors cited as having caused this productivity gap is that government and universities spend more on research and development in the south-east of England.

The government proposes to increase public investment in research and development outside the South East of England by 40%, by 2030.

Having 22,000 civil servants based outside London by the end of the decade, with a target for 25% of roles to be outside London by 2025

The government wants to level up skills with an extra £126m announced in March 2021 to fund work placements and training for 16 to 24-year-olds in England

Eight freeports have been set up in England, with two planned in Scotland and one more in Wales.

Update 15 February: An earlier version of this piece did not mention that one successful bid in the second round of the Levelling Up Fund had been from a Plaid Cymru constituency.

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What is levelling up and who is it helping?

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The government has awarded funding to projects all over the country as part of its "levelling up" plan.

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Government policy - Freeports
31st Jan 2023

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Critics of the freeport system say it encourages companies to relocate existing resources rather than creating new investment, but Stephen Crabb, Conservative MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire, insisted this bid was different.

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Celtic Freeport bid could create 16,000 jobs, say backers

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Critics of the freeport system say it encourages companies to relocate existing resources rather than creating new investment, but Stephen Crabb, Conservative MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire, insisted this bid was different.

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Superpowers - Race to conquer the Arctic

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Superpowers - Race to conquer the Arctic

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12 March 2018

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On 14 December 2017 Vladimir Putin gave his annual end-of-year media conference, which lasted nearly four hours and was televised across Russia. The British and American media focused on Putin's unsurprising announcement that he was going to run for re-election in 2018. A far more interesting story went largely unreported.

Only a few days earlier Putin had returned from the frozen wastes of Siberia, nearly 400 miles north of the Arctic Circle. He had just opened the £19bn Yamal liquefied natural gas plant. Yamal LNG was built by Novatek, Russia's biggest privately owned gas-producer, with loans from state banks (£2.8bn), the Russian National Wealth Fund (£1.6bn) and, most significantly, £8.5bn from Chinese banks.

Novatek owns 50.1 per cent of Yamal LNG. France's oil-giant Total and China's National Petroleum Corporation each hold 20 per cent, while China's state-controlled Silk Road Fund has a 9.9 per cent share. With Yamal's sister plant, Arctic LNG 2, due to come on stream in 2023, Russia aims to topple Qatar as the world's biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas within less than a decade.

In front of the world's media at the Kremlin, Putin quoted the 18th-century Russian scientist and polymath Mikhail Lomonosov, who had said that Russia would expand through Siberia. Putin brought this line up to date for our age: "Now Russia should expand through the Arctic," he said.

Climate change is the crucial precondition. In August 2017, the Russian-owned Christophe de Margerie, the world's first ice-breaking LNG tanker, accomplished a world-record voyage from Norway to South Korea in only 19 days by taking the Northern Sea Route (along Russia's Arctic coast from Murmansk to the Bering Strait). Had it followed the usual route via the Suez Canal and the Indian Ocean, the journey would have taken almost a month. But the recent melting of the Arctic ice cap is transforming global shipping and international geopolitics.

The Russians are constructing 15 new LNG supertankers, each with built-in ice-breaker capacity - to add to their existing fleet of 40 ice-breakers. And they aren't the only ones. At the end of the 19th century the great powers engaged in a scramble for Africa. Now, in the 21st century, a scramble for the Arctic is unfolding. Across one of the bleakest landscapes of the world, the race is on for gas, oil and fish and to control the emerging shipping lanes of the High North.

The Arctic is at issue, above all, because nobody owns it. Unlike Antarctica - governed since 1959 by the Antarctic Treaty, which established the continent as a scientific preserve and banned military activity - the polar region of the north is one of the least regulated places on earth. There are more rules even in outer space. All the Arctic states are now jockeying for position as the region literally opens up. And several non-Arctic states are seeking influence, with the big money and real strategic vision coming from Beijing. It's time for the West to pay attention.

How has this come about? A century ago, the High North was still the unknown unknown - an epic adventure playground for explorers such as Fridtjof Nansen and Roald Amundsen; home to indigenous Inuit hunter-fishermen in Greenland and North America, and nomadic reindeer herders in Lapland and Siberia. After 1945, however, these icy backwaters gained strategic importance. In fact, during the Cold War the Arctic ranked near the top of the security agenda.

The initial arming of the region began as both superpowers developed strategic bombers and then ballistic missiles, capable of delivering nuclear weapons across the North Pole. In the process the empty lands started to be developed. Soon the US and Canadian military had established a major military presence, with a string of high-tech radar stations from Alaska to Newfoundland. Nato also built bases in Greenland, Iceland and Norway. A second wave followed from the late 1970s due to the deployment of air- and sea-launched cruise missiles and their testing in the West's polar territories. Meanwhile, between 1955 and 1990, the USSR conducted 130 underground nuclear tests at its so-called North Test Site on the Novaya Zemlya archipelago.

By the 1980s the often ice-covered Arctic seas became the main operational arena for a new generation of nuclear-powered attack submarines. Indeed, 60 per cent of Russia's submarine-based strategic nuclear forces were based or operating in the vicinity of the Kola Peninsula, very close to Norway. As a result, superpower tensions rose to new heights in the European polar waters.

Mikhail Gorbachev's years in power between 1985 and 1991 saw historic change but left ambiguous legacies. On one hand, despite all the deals on arms reduction and heady hopes about a new world order after the USSR collapsed, the Arctic itself was never disarmed. Russian and US nuclear submarines and bombers equipped with cruise missiles continued to lurk there, playing their cat-and-mouse games. And neither country realigned its Arctic missile launchers away from their Cold War targets. What's more, many Soviet bombers formerly stationed in eastern Europe, as well as ships from the Soviet Black Sea fleet evicted from the Crimea, were merely shifted to Russia's north. The frozen lands and icy seas above the Arctic Circle became the last potential battlefront.

Yet there was another side to Gorbachev's legacy - his Murmansk initiative of 1987. He wanted to transform the Arctic into an international "zone of peace", calling for nuclear-free areas and restrictions on naval activities. He urged joint development of resources, environmental co-operation and the opening of the Northern Sea Route to foreign ships. Gorbachev's initiative fitted neatly with the concerns of the green movement in the West and with mounting awareness of the effects of climate change, not least the visible melting of the polar ice cap.

And so in the 1990s, although the Arctic remained full of the military relics of the Cold War, it also became the testing ground for a more co-operative approach to international relations. In 1991 the eight Arctic countries (those with terrain above the Arctic Circle) - Norway, Sweden, Finland, Russia, the US, Canada, Denmark and Iceland - got together with representatives of the indigenous peoples and signed the Arctic Environmental Protection Strategy. Five years later this grew into the Arctic Council - a forum to promote co-operative governance in the region while emphatically not engaging with military issues.

Over the past decade, the Arctic Council has risen in political importance because the Arctic Ocean has been thawing at a record rate. The expanse of ice in September 2017 was 25 per cent smaller than in the end-of-summer averages between 1981 and 2010. Yet this geophysical calamity is also an economic opportunity for developed countries, opening up new prospects for fishing and shipping. As a result, more countries have sought entry to the Arctic Council. The eight founding states, which form the council's permanent members, have conceded observer status to several European and east Asian states. For instance, Britain - a permanent observer to the council since 1998 - has designated itself "the Arctic's nearest neighbour", though it is not clear if there is substance behind the rhetoric. Not to be outdone, China, a permanent observer since 2013, calls itself a "near-Arctic" nation, even though its northernmost point is about 900 miles south of the Arctic Circle.

For now, the co-operative mood in the Arctic Council still holds. On 30 November 2017, the five nations with Arctic coastlines - Canada, Greenland (Denmark), Norway, Russia and the US - as well as China, Japan, South Korea, Iceland and the EU, completed negotiations in Washington, DC. They agreed to ban for 16 years unregulated fishing in newly ice-free international waters of the high Arctic - equivalent to the size of the Mediterranean - or at least until scientists are able to analyse the ecology of the quickly thawing ocean and put into place a plan for sustainable fishing.

This deal still has to be signed and ratified - no easy task given Trump's denial of climate change - but the successful negotiations are seen as a major step in conservation efforts and an example of what diplomats call "Arctic exceptionalism", meaning a willingness in Moscow and Washington to set aside some of their geopolitical differences for the sake of common interests.

Icy waters by the Lukoil terminal in Russia's Nenets autonomous region, which serves tankers using the Arctic route between Europe and Asia. Credit: Justin Jin/ Panos

Agreeing about water is one thing but terrain is something different. There is an enormous amount at stake. In 2008, the US Geological Survey estimated that the Arctic holds 13 per cent of the world's undiscovered oil, and 30 per cent of its natural gas. That is worth about £12trn in today's prices, roughly equivalent to the entire US economy. In other words, the prospect of an unfrozen Arctic Ocean opens up the remarkable riches of the North Pole.

Competition is already fierce. Russia, Canada, Norway and Greenland have all set their sights on the Lomonosov Ridge - an underwater mountain chain that stretches for 1,240 miles almost directly across the centre of the Arctic Ocean and through the North Pole. It is under and around this formation that nearly a quarter of the Earth's remaining fossil fuel resources lies.

The UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (Unclos) came into force in 1994 - regulating the 200-nautical-mile national economic zones offshore within which a nation has exclusive rights to fish the waters and tap the minerals under the sea bed. Beyond this limit, the states with Arctic coastlines are not permitted to fish or drill. Yet a nation can lobby for a zone of up to 350 nautical miles from the shore, or even more - if it can prove the existence of an underwater formation that is an extension of its dry land mass. Such claims are decided by the UN Commission on the Limits of the Continental Shelf, established under Unclos.

Nearly 170 countries have acceded to or ratified the treaty. The US signed Unclos under President Bill Clinton but the treaty has never been ratified by the US Senate. Republican senators in particular contend that the agreement subjugates US military and business interest to UN control, which they detest. Among all the Arctic countries, America is the odd one out.

Others, however, have used the convention to their advantage, as they seek to prove the extent of their continental shelf and thereby stake their claim under Unclos to a slice of the Arctic. In 2001, Russia asserted that it owned not only the North Pole but also an area amounting to half of the Arctic - 1,325,000 square kilometres of international seabed. Six years later, to dramatise their claim, the Russians cut a hole in the ice, launched a mini submarine and at the North Pole ceremonially planted a rust-proof titanium Russian tricolour on the ocean floor 4,300 metres down. Artur Chilingarov - a noted explorer and also deputy speaker of the Duma - was on board and he was hailed as a national hero. "If a hundred or a thousand years from now someone goes down to where we were, they will see the Russian flag," he said.

These flag theatrics raised an international outcry. "This isn't the 15th century," Peter MacKay, the Canadian foreign minister, declared. "You can't go around the world and just plant flags and say, 'We're claiming this territory.'" Russia's foreign minister, Sergey Lavrov, responded: "Whenever explorers reach some sort of point that no one else has explored, they plant a flag... That's how it was on the moon, by the way."

So far Russia and Denmark have submitted full claims to the North Pole and the
Lomonosov Ridge, while Canada is expected to make its complete claim in 2018. Of the other two littoral states, the US has ruled itself out of the game because of its failure to ratify the Unclos treaty, while Norway has no geographical grounds to make a bid. Russia has recently tried to press Denmark into talks about a bilateral northern carve-up.

But the Danes want to stay within the UN process, even if this proves lengthy and cumbersome, not least because they took 12 years to gather the scientific data, at a cost of £35m. They see the process as an incentive for the Arctic countries to resolve their territorial issues peacefully and also to exclude potential predator states, notably China.

***

Russia has played it both ways - engaging in co-operative diplomacy in the Arctic Council and over territorial questions via the UN Law of the Seas, while constantly seeking to assert itself on the world stage. Putin's long-term strategy has been to rebuild Russia's international position since its humiliating crash at the end of the Cold War. Over the past decade, having restored political and economic stability at home, Putin has been testing the West - exploiting opportunities in Crimea, Ukraine and Syria. In 2009, the government's national security strategy until 2020 was proclaimed simply as "transforming Russia into a world power".

The Arctic is a keystone of that policy,
because only here - as Putin said last December - is there real scope for territorial expansion and resource acquisition. This builds on and deepens the main asset of Russia's unbalanced economy - its continued heavy reliance on the extraction and export of raw materials, especially oil and gas - which no modern leader of the country has been able to change.

The natural resources in Russia's Arctic region already account for a fifth of the country's GDP. The oil and gas under the North Pole opens up the prospect of huge additional wealth but it will take time, money and technology to exploit, not to mention much international haggling. Somewhat easier pickings are opening up on the thawing northern rim of Siberia - 14,000 miles of coastline from Murmansk to the Bering Strait - both on land and in Russia's territorial waters.

De-icing opens up new opportunities for mining some of the world's most valuable minerals, including gold, silver, graphite, nickel, titanium and uranium, as well as
oil and gas. The thawing Northern Sea Route along Russia's shores also creates a lucrative shipping lane, which the Kremlin will be in a strong position to control. In November, Putin made a point of stating that only vessels under the Russian flag could use this trade route.

Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping yearn to push the US from its post-Cold War pedestal​. Credit: Carlos Barria/ AFP/ Getty images

Complementing this economic scenario, Russia has developed a security policy for the Arctic, involving bases and ice-breakers. In December 2014, Russia announced that Moscow intended to station military units all along its Arctic coast, and began pouring money into airfields, ports, radar stations and barracks. The new infrastructure includes two huge complexes: the Northern Shamrock on Kotelny Island and the Arctic Trefoil on Franz Josef Land - a mere 620 miles from the North Pole.

Taken together, Russia's six biggest Arctic bases in the High North will be home to about a thousand soldiers serving there for up to 18 months at a time in constant snow, permanently sub-zero temperatures from October until June, and no daylight for nearly half the year. Moscow is now concentrating on making airfields accessible year-round. Under Gorbachev and Yeltsin, "our Arctic border areas were stripped bare", Professor Pavel Makarevich, a member of the Russian Geographical Society, said last year. "Now they are being restored."

No other country has militarised its Arctic North to anything like this extent. And none can match Russia's 40-strong ice-breaker fleet, which is used to clear channels for military and civilian use. Three nuclear-powered ice-breakers, including the world's largest, are now under construction to complement the six already in operation. Russia is also giving its naval warships an ice-breaking capacity. By 2020 the Northern Fleet, based near Murmansk, is due to get two ice-capable corvettes, armed with cruise missiles.

To be clear about the scale of Russia's endeavour: next on the ice-breaker list are Finland (eight vessels), Canada (seven), Sweden (four), China (three) and then America (two). The US response is spearheaded by the US Coast Guard, whose two vessels are several decades old, primarily intended for scientific research and have to operate in both the Arctic and Antarctic. "A new robust Western response to the Russian military buildup in the Arctic is necessary," declared Admiral Paul Zukunft, commandant of the US Coast Guard, last December. Asking whether the Russian goal was "to create chaos in the Arctic" and to "make this an area that the United States would be denied access", he said they had to assume the answer was "yes".

We are not talking about Cold War-era militarisation. The Soviet military packed much more firepower in the Arctic and was geared to wage nuclear war with the United States. Arctic bases were staging posts for long-range bombers to fly to the US. Now, in an era when a slow-motion battle for the Arctic's energy reserves is unfolding, Russia is creating a permanent and nimble conventional military presence in small packets that is highly mobile and capable of rapid reaction.

However, the scale of Russia's Arctic ambitions is not in doubt. In March 2015, Moscow conducted the largest full-scale readiness exercise in the Arctic since the collapse of the USSR. It deployed 45,000 soldiers, 3,360 vehicles, 110 aircraft, 41 naval vessels and 15 submarines, according to the Russian ministry of defence. And on Navy Day on 30 July 2017, Russia made a point of showing off its naval might across the world, from Tartus in Syria to Sebastopol and Vladivostok, and, above all, in the Baltic waters of St Petersburg under the approving eye of Putin. Up to a point Putin's naval show that day represented a Potemkin village. Russia's 2018 defence budget of £32bn billion is small compared to America's spending of £500bn, and even China's £140bn. Yet it would be an error to write off the resurgent Russian fleet as mere bluff and bluster.

Members of the Russian Navy Northern Fleet take part in training in Murmansk Oblast, in the Russian region of the Arctic, 2017. Credit: Lev FEdoseyev\ Tass via Getty images

Perceptions matter as much as crude power projection. In this vein, the Kremlin regularly releases pictures of President Putin in snow gear, of ice-breakers in the Arctic Ocean, and of troops training in white fatigues - brandishing assault rifles as they zip along on sleighs pulled by reindeer. And now that Russia's military forces can move with agility to deliver precise and deadly strikes, they are far more useful.

Such forces need not be enormous. If cleverly deployed, even a small military hand can deliver a big blow with success - as Russia did in the Ukraine and Syria, calling America's bluff and outmanoeuvring the West. Through its new presence and military build-up, Russia can also deny others access to polar terrain - just as China has managed to do in the East and South China seas.

Still, to realise its ambitions, Russia has to crack the Potemkin problem. It still lacks the necessary technology and finance to open up the new Arctic, onshore and offshore. Deep-sea ports and supply stations need to be built along the Northern Sea Route, as well long-distance railway lines, motorways and undersea fibre-optic data cable networks. Because of US and EU sanctions since 2014, Russia cannot rely primarily on investment from the West. That is why it has begun to turn to China for money and markets.

To President Xi Jinping, Russia's Arctic ambitions present an opportunity for China to use its economic might to increase its global influence. Xi, like Putin, sees the Arctic as a crucial element of the country's geopolitical vision. Now that the People's Republic is no longer an introspective "developing state", Xi declared in his December 2017 New Year's Eve speech, it intends to become the "keeper of international order".

So, the Sino-Russian Arctic alliance is not simply the consequence of climate change, but also a product of realpolitik. And the bond has grown tighter thanks to Donald Trump's arrival in the White House. Moscow and Beijing have long yearned to push the US from its post-Cold War pedestal as the world's self-styled "hegemon" and "sole superpower". America's abstention from Arctic power politics is offering them an unexpected gift.

The scale of Xi's vision is remarkable. In 2013 China embarked on the "One Belt, One Road" initiative, the most expensive foreign infrastructure plan in history. It is a two-pronged development strategy, encompassing the "Silk Road Economic Belt" and the "21st Century Maritime Silk Road", which together map out a highly integrated set of land-based and maritime economic corridors linking thousands of miles of markets from Asia to western Europe. Late last year Xi called for close Sino-Russian co-operation on the Northern Sea Route in order to realise what he called a "Silk Road on Ice". While cast in terms of mutual benefit, the Belt and Road Initiative is a means to strengthen China's influence and security along its strategically important periphery.

By making the infrastructure plan an integral part of its constitution and announcing that by 2050 China would be a "leading global power", Xi has shown long-term thinking on a grand scale. He has done so by arousing genuine excitement about the future - so different in tone from the small-minded negativism about lost greatness that emanates from Trump.

Indeed, this is the kind of visionary leadership that Washington has not shown since the early Cold War era, when it set out to rebuild western Europe in the American way. And once the Belt and Road initiative reaches its predicted spending of $1trn, it will be almost eight times the value in real terms of America's Marshall Plan.

Xi's grand global vision is combined with shrewd diplomatic tactics. His string of state visits in May 2017 to Finland, Alaska and Iceland was no coincidence. Finland was just about to take over the rotating chairmanship of the Arctic Council from the US, to be followed by Iceland two years later. But Xi also saw his visit to Finland as a chance to shore up support in Europe, China's biggest trading partner. In Iceland - situated at the crossroads of the transatlantic shipping lanes and the gateway to the Arctic Ocean - China had used the opportunity of the global financial recession to push a free trade agreement, concluded in 2013. The new Chinese embassy in Reykjavik is the biggest in the country.

In this systematic Arctic strategy, officially unveiled through a grand Chinese white paper entitled "Polar Silk Road" on 26 January 2018, Beijing has generally avoided locking horns directly with the US. But America, under Trump as under Obama, has not shown much interest in the region - even at the level of building ice-breakers, let alone as part of a 30-year strategy. And, in any case, China has been happy to hide behind the Russian apron. Certainly, the Beijing-Moscow axis works for the moment as a marriage of mutual convenience.

***

The Arctic has been described as the world's "last frontier," the "last white dot on the map". Now it is beginning to be coloured in. As the climate changes, its ice-scape will become a seascape. And a region that did not belong to anybody will be divvied up - through co-operation or conflict, or perhaps a mixture of both. What may prove to be the new world order - a new multipolar system of international politics - is taking shape there, as Russia and China seek to challenge an American hegemony that, in their view, has lasted for too long.

Both think big. But Xi's China has far deeper pockets and operates with much greater diplomatic shrewdness than Putin's Russia. This combination of vision, money and finesse is nowhere to be seen in the Western world - certainly not in Trump's Washington. As for Brexit Britain, supposedly entering a new global era, it seems barely able to raise its eyes beyond the power politics of Westminster. l

Kristina Spohr is an associate professor in international history at the London School of Economics

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The race to conquer the Arctic - the world's final frontier

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On 14 December 2017 Vladimir Putin gave his annual end-of-year media conference, which lasted nearly four hours and was televised across Russia. The British and American media focused on Putin's unsurprising announcement that he was going to run for re-election in 2018. A far more interesting story went largely unreported.

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Taiwan: ‘Record number’ of China jets enter air zone

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Beijing sends 25 military aircraft into Taiwan as the US warns against an ‘increasingly aggressive’ China.

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Superpowers - Australia China Sourth China Sea dispute

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Superpowers - Australia China Sourth China Sea dispute

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25/07/2020

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Superpowers - China will not surpass America

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Superpowers - China will not surpass America

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19 Feb 2019

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Behind President Donald Trump's trade war with China lies a deeper issue. Many in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats, fear that the rise of China will spell the end of the American era. This exaggerated fear can itself become a cause of conflict.

First, China's current economic challenge is not as serious as suggested. "Purchasing power parity", often used to suggest that the Chinese economy became larger than the American economy in 2014, is an economist's measure for comparing estimates of welfare. It is not appropriate for measuring power. During a recent trip to Beijing, several business people told me that they thought real growth was less than half the official figure. So while many economists expect China eventually to pass the US as the world's largest economy, the estimated date varies from 2030 to 2040 and depends on future Chinese growth rates. Official numbers show them slowing.

Economic might, however, is not the only measure of geopolitical importance. China is also well behind the US in military and soft-power indices. American military expenditure is three times that of China, and while Chinese military capabilities have been increasing in recent years, analysts who look carefully at the military balance conclude that China will not be able to exclude the US from the western Pacific. Meanwhile, the " Soft Power 30 " index published by Portlands ranks China in 27th place, while the US is placed in the top four.

No country - including China - is about to usurp the US's place in the world in terms of overall power. Russia is in demographic decline and is heavily dependent on energy exports; India and Brazil, each with $2tn economies, remain developing countries. And while a tactical alliance of convenience exists between Russia and China, a real alliance of authoritarians such as existed in the 1950s is not likely. Thus, while rapid Asian economic growth has meant a power shift in the region, Chinese power inside Asia is balanced by Japan, India and Australia, among others. And the US will remain crucial to that balance.

Another exaggerated fear is that, as China's power grows, it will not contribute to an international order that it did not help to create. In this vein, the Trump administration has labelled China a revisionist power.

But this overstates the "not invented here" problem. China has benefited from and contributed to the post-1945 international order. It is now the second-largest funder of UN peacekeeping forces and participated in UN initiatives related to Ebola and climate change. China has also benefited greatly from economic institutions such as the World Trade Organization. On the other hand, it has not practised full reciprocity as a market economy, and rejected a 2016 UN tribunal ruling on its territorial claims in the South China Sea.

Overall, Chinese behaviour does not suggest that it is trying to overthrow a world order from which it benefits, but is rather seeking to increase its influence in it. However, this could change as Chinese power grows.

In other words, while pushback is warranted against Chinese manipulation of the trade system and forced intellectual property transfer, exaggerated fears can be damaging. Moreover, analogies with the beginning of the 20th century are misleading. A rising Germany had already passed Britain in industrial production well before 1914.

However, the growth of Chinese power means that the American liberal world order will have to shift, and that production of global public goods will need to be shared. Because of this I suggest the following changes. First, it would be wise to discard the terms "liberal" and "American" and refer instead to the prospects of an "open international and rules-based international order". While China may not be replacing the US, the growth of the Chinese, Indian and other economies means the US share of the world economy will inevitably shrink.

Second, while American leadership will be important, success in tackling a range of transnational issues will require the co-operation of others. It will not be enough to think in terms of the US exercising power over others. We must start thinking in terms of the power to accomplish joint goals, which involves sharing power.

For example, the US benefits if China improves its energy efficiency and emits less carbon dioxide. In today's world, networks and connectedness are an important source of power. Currently, the US comes first in the Lowy Institute 's ranking of nations by number of embassies, consulates and missions. Washington also has more than 60 treaty allies, whereas China has few.

Mr Trump's weakening of alliances is a self-inflicted wound that poses as much of a threat to American interests as the rise of China does. If the US were to maintain its alliances, the prospects are slight that China could drive it from the western Pacific, much less dominate the world.
The writer is a professor at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government This article is based on a recent contribution to 'International Affairs'
Letter in response to this article:
Power is exercised by the deployment of resources / From Nils Junge, Washington, DC, US

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China will not surpass America any time soon

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Behind President Donald Trump's trade war with China lies a deeper issue. Many in Washington, both Republicans and Democrats, fear that the rise of China will spell the end of the American era. This exaggerated fear can itself become a cause of conflict. First, China's current economic challenge is not as serious as suggested.

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Superpowers - Coronavirus: US -China battle

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Superpowers - Coronavirus: US -China battle

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24 March 2020

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It is clearly not a good time for the world and it is not a good time for relations between the US and China. President Donald Trump has repeatedly chosen to call the coronavirus the "Chinese virus". His hawkish Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls it the "Wuhan virus", something that causes huge offence in Beijing.

The president and secretary of state have both denounced China for its failings in the initial handling of the outbreak. But Chinese spokesmen have utterly rejected any idea that they were less than transparent about what was going on. Meanwhile, social media in China has spread stories that the pandemic has been caused by a US military germ warfare programme; rumours that gained considerable traction. Scientists have demonstrated that the virus structure is entirely natural in origin.

But this is not just a war of words, something more fundamental is going on.

Earlier this month, when the US announced that it was closing its borders to travellers from many EU countries, including Italy, the Chinese government announced that it was sending medical teams and supplies to Italy, the country at the leading edge of the coronavirus pandemic. It has sent help to Iran and Serbia too.

It was a moment of huge symbolism. And it was an indication of the information battle that is being waged behind the scenes, with China eager to emerge from this crisis with renewed status as a global player. Indeed, it is a battle which the US - at the moment - is losing hands down. And the belated despatch of a small mobile US Air Force medical facility to Italy is hardly going to alter the equation.

This is a moment when the administrative and political systems of all countries are being stress-tested like never before. Leadership will be at a premium. Existing political leaders will ultimately be judged by how they seized the moment; the clarity of their discourse; and the efficiency with which they marshalled their countries' resources to respond to the pandemic.

The pandemic has hit at a time when US-China relations were already at a low ebb. A partial trade deal has barely plastered over the commercial tensions between the two countries. Both China and the US are re-arming, openly preparing for a potential future conflict in the Asia-Pacific. China has already emerged, at least in regional terms, as a military super-power in its own right. And China now is eager for the wider status that it believes its international position requires.

The pandemic then threatens to pitch US-China relations into an even more difficult period. This could have an important bearing upon both the course of this crisis and the world that emerges from it. When the virus is defeated, China's economic resurgence is going to play a critical role in helping to rebuild the shattered global economy.

But for now, Chinese assistance is essential in combating the coronavirus. Medical data and experiences need to continue to be shared. China is also a huge manufacturer of medical equipment and disposable items like masks and protective suits, essential to handling infected patients and items that are required in astronomical numbers.

China is in many ways the medical manufacturing workshop of the world, capable of expanding production in ways few other countries can. China is seizing an opportunity but, according to many of President Trump's critics, it is he who has dropped the ball.

The Trump administration initially failed to accept the seriousness of this crisis, seeing it as another opportunity to assert "America First" and the supposed superiority of its system. But what is at stake now is global leadership.

As two Asia experts, Kurt M Campbell - who served as assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs in the Obama administration - and Rush Doshi, note in a recent article for Foreign Affairs: "The status of the United States as a global leader over the past seven decades has been built not just on wealth and power but also, and just as important, on the legitimacy that flows from the United States' domestic governance, provision of global public goods, and ability and willingness to muster and coordinate a global response to crises."

The coronavirus pandemic, they say, "is testing all three elements of US leadership. So far, Washington is failing the test. As Washington falters, Beijing is moving quickly and adeptly to take advantage of the opening created by US mistakes, filling the vacuum to present itself as the global leader in pandemic response."

It is easy to be cynical. Many might wonder how China could seek advantage at this time - Campbell and Doshi call it "Chutzpah" - given that it is in China that this pandemic appears to have originated. Beijing's initial response to the developing crisis in Wuhan was secretive. However, since then, it has marshalled its vast resources effectively and impressively.

As Suzanne Nossel, the CEO of the press freedom organisation PEN America, writes in an article on the Foreign Policy website: "Fearful that the initial denial and mismanagement of the outbreak could trigger social unrest, Beijing has now mounted an aggressive domestic and global propaganda campaign to tout its draconian approach to the epidemic, downplay its role in sparking the global outbreak, and contrast its efforts favourably against those of Western governments and particularly the United States."

Many western commentators see China becoming more authoritarian and more nationalist and fear that these trends will be accelerated by the impact of the pandemic and the resulting economic slowdown. But the impact upon Washington's global standing could be even greater.

America's allies are taking note. They may not criticise the Trump administration openly, but many have clear differences with it over attitudes to China; the security of Chinese technology (the Huawei controversy); and over Iran and other regional issues.

China is using its outreach on the pandemic to try to establish the parameters for a different relationship in the future - one perhaps where China fast becomes the "essential power". Link-ups in the counter-coronavirus campaign with its near neighbours - Japan and South Korea - and the provision of vital health equipment to the EU, can be seen in this light.

Campbell and Doshi, in their Foreign Affairs piece, make an explicit comparison with Britain's decline. They say that the botched British operation in 1956 to seize the Suez Canal "laid bare the decay in British power and marked the end of the United Kingdom's reign as a global power".

"Today," they say, "US policymakers should recognize that if the United States does not rise to meet the moment, the coronavirus pandemic could mark another 'Suez moment'."

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US-China contagion: The battle behind the scenes

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It is clearly not a good time for the world and it is not a good time for relations between the US and China. President Donald Trump has repeatedly chosen to call the coronavirus the "Chinese virus". His hawkish Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls it the "Wuhan virus", something that causes huge offence in Beijing.

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Superpowers - Five flashpoints to watch - USA China relations 

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Superpowers - Five flashpoints to watch - USA China relations 

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21 May 2020

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Health, Human Rights and Development - Deportation of man against human rights 

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Health, Human Rights and Development - Deportation of man against human rights 

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29 April 2020

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Deportation of man with HIV to Zimbabwe blocked by UK Supreme Court

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The 33-year-old offender, known only as AM, came to the UK as a teenager and since then has been convicted and jailed for serious offences, including battery and possession of a firearm. He is married to a British woman and they have a child.

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How reliant is Australia on China?
17/06/2020

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Australia's relationship with China is not a happy one at the moment. Canberra's push for answers on the pandemic's origins has angered Beijing. In the past month it has put in place some bruising sanctions and travel warnings. Many have urged Australia to reduce its economic reliance on China, but is this really an option?

"I love the Chinese," says Chris Kelly, an Australian who's sown barley on his family farm for decades.

"Love them. Every barley grower in Australia loves the Chinese because they've made us wealthy."

Last year Australia produced over 8 million tonnes of the golden grain used in beer and pig feed. China bought more than half - at a premium price.

But last month, China imposed an 80% tariff on Australian barley. It came after Canberra, echoing the US, called for an investigation into Covid-19's origins - a move that Beijing labelled "politically motivated".

China has since suspended some major Australian beef imports, and warned students and tourists against travelling to the "racist" country. This week, in a secretive process, it sentenced an Australian man to death for drug smuggling.

It's fuelled frenzied discussion in Australia: Is China retaliating against accusations it mishandled the coronavirus? Could this be the start of a trade war like that seen between the US and China?

Australia's dependence on China

Like other liberal democracies, Australia is increasingly challenged by the need to balance its economic dependence on China and its own values and interests.

In recent times, Canberra has raised concerns about human rights in Xinjiang and Hong Kong, banned Chinese firm Huawei from building Australia's 5G network, and debated allegations of Beijing interfering in domestic affairs.

This friction isn't unique to Australia. Canada, Japan and South Korea - among others - have seen economic pushback from China, allegedly for political reasons.

But Australia's economic dependence on China is greater than many nations.

For the past decade, China has been Australia's largest trading partner and now accounts for 32.6% of its exports.

Australia's mines have delivered iron ore, coal and gas to fuel China's growth - preferred to rivals in Brazil for their quality and geographic proximity. It's a deal that benefits both nations.

Other sectors - education, tourism, agriculture, wine - have also flourished in the Chinese market. But like barley, they are not as exclusive to Australia and so more vulnerable to political tension, economists say.

Push to explore other options

This has all intensified debate over whether Australia has become too reliant on China and should look to other trading partners.

It needs to drastically strengthen relations with its Asian neighbours, says Dr Lai-Ha Chan, a political scientist at the University of Technology, Sydney.

It has made efforts, she says, noting Prime Minister Scott Morrison had scheduled a trip to India this year and made repeated entreaties to PM Narendra Modi. His visit to Vietnam last year - the first by an Australian leader in 25 years - was recognition of its rising star as a market economy, she adds. Australia's ecotourism and university sectors have been actively courting both nations.

Dr Chan suggests Australia could rely on a combination of those countries - plus Indonesia, Japan and South Korea - to lessen reliance on China.

Not all are among Australia's top 10 trading partners currently; in many cases, there is no existing free trade agreement.

But economists dispute the idea that the Chinese market can easily be replaced.

India is often cited for its potential. Australia has set a goal to send A$45bn (£25bn; $31bn) in annual exports to India by 2035. But last year, it sold more than A$160bn to China alone.

"There are no other options that come anywhere near to making up China's numbers," says Prof Jane Golley, a China economy specialist at the Australian National University.

Government attempts at intervention (a practice seen in Japan), would just be a waste of money, economists say.

"It's a bit strange for the government to tell companies you can't sell to the Chinese or you have to sell more to other countries when other countries simply aren't trying to buy," Dr Shiro Armstrong, an East Asia specialist, told the BBC.

Australian companies are already working hard to reduce reliance on China, adds Dirk van der Kley, from policy research group China Matters, citing universities in particular.

"Sure, they've made a little difference on the edges. But it's the market which matters here."

Even more opportunities with China?

Prof Golley says she finds calls by some security analysts to turn away from China - covered heavily by the media - "depressing".

"I wonder if the man on the street who reads the headline and thinks we need to diversify from China - I always wonder if they think through what that could mean and how it might lead to them or their children not having jobs in the future."

Australia would be better served looking at the bigger picture, she and others argue.

It is far less reliant on exports (20% of GDP) than many nations. But those proceeds flow directly into jobs and welfare, making China a significant driver of Australian prosperity.

Richard Maude, a former foreign policy head in the Australian government, says it is vital that Australia can co-operate with China on food security, energy and climate change.

Mr Van Der Kley predicts others markets will also emerge for Australia as China's middle class ages, particularly in sectors such as health care and nursing.

The significant Chinese diaspora in Australia should not be overlooked, others say. Australia is home to more than 1.2 million people of Chinese ancestry, many of whom only migrated in the last decade - ensuring deep community links. Chinese consumers continue to favour Australia for education and tourism, partly for this reason.

But on the political level, there's a consensus that Canberra-Beijing relations have sunk to their lowest ebb in decades. It has been three years since a bilateral meeting of leaders, despite Australia's repeated requests.

Prof Golley says the government should work hard to help Australian businesses engage with Chinese counterparts, but fears this is being damaged by the "deteriorating" political relationship.

Others say Australia needs to be more strategic in its diplomacy - for example it could criticise China from within a group of like-minded nations rather than striking out on its own. They also suggest hawks within the government should be reined in by Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

Ultimately, though, slick diplomacy is just "packaging", says Mr Maude, the former diplomat: "China will still often object to what's inside, no matter how well wrapped."

Mr Morrison has said: "We're just being Australians. We have done nothing nor sought to do anything that is inconsistent with our values, or have sought to be in any way hostile to our partnership with China."

Australia hasn't changed but China fundamentally has, says Mr Maude. He argues that Beijing has become more assertive and authoritarian. Canberra - like other democracies - can no longer overlook political reality for economic gains.

"The risk of economic retaliation will be a permanent feature of the 'new normal' in the relationship," he says. "We can't have our cake and eat it too."

But for Mr Kelly on his barley farm, he feels like the proverbial canary down a gold mine.

"We've been feeling anxious for years - this has been going on for a while," he says. "It just feels like the worst-case scenario has arrived."

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Australia's relationship with China is not a happy one at the moment. Canberra's push for answers on the pandemic's origins has angered Beijing. In the past month it has put in place some bruising sanctions and travel warnings. Many have urged Australia to reduce its economic reliance on China, but is this really an option?

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Superpowers - Prisoners of Geography podcast - an interview with the author

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Superpowers - Prisoners of Geography podcast - an interview with the author

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15 April 2020

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Ask the Geographer - A conversation with Tim Marshall, author of the seminal book Prisoners of Geography

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A conversation with Tim Marshall, author of the seminal book Prisoners of Geography by Royal Geographical Society (with IBG)

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Superpowers- a change in global leadership 

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Superpowers- a change in global leadership 

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01-11-20

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trump's america first presidency all but ended us global leadership. the world was outgrowing it anyway - cnn

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Analysis: America's role as global leader all but died under Trump. The world was outgrowing it anyway

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In his four years as president, Donald Trump has challenged the post-war spirit of cooperation more aggressively than any leader before him. But the global instruments Trump deserted haven't crumbled, nor is the world crashing and burning.

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Health, Human Rights and intervention
Wealth increase of 10 men could buy vaccines for all

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"We think that this is ... an opportunity to do something radical about building back fairer to think about wealth taxes, to think about corporation taxes, to think about increasing the basic social floor for every citizen," Danny Sriskandarajah, Chief Executive of Oxfam GB, told the BBC.

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Earnings of wealthiest 10 men during pandemic 'could buy vaccines for all'

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"We think that this is ... an opportunity to do something radical about building back fairer to think about wealth taxes, to think about corporation taxes, to think about increasing the basic social floor for every citizen," Danny Sriskandarajah, Chief Executive of Oxfam GB, told the BBC.

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Shell Nigeria ordered to pay compensation
31-01-2021

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A Dutch appeals court has ruled that the Nigerian branch of oil giant Shell is responsible for damage caused by leaks in the Niger Delta.

The court ordered Shell Nigeria to pay compensation to Nigerian farmers, while the subsidiary and its Anglo-Dutch parent company were told to install equipment to prevent future damage.

A group of farmers launched the case in 2008, alleging widespread pollution.

Shell says the leaks were the result of "sabotage".

In a statement on Friday, Royal Dutch Shell said it was "disappointed" with the verdict.

The ruling can be appealed against.

The judgment could have implications beyond Nigeria, in terms of corporate responsibility and the duty of care multinationals have to the people in the places where they operate, reports the BBC's Anna Holligan from The Hague.

While the oil spills in this case happened from 2004 to 2007, pollution from leaking pipelines continues to be a major issue in the Niger Delta.

The court said Shell had not proven "beyond reasonable doubt" that saboteurs were responsible for the leaks affecting the villages of Goi and Oruma, rather than poor maintenance.

"This makes Shell Nigeria responsible for the damage caused by the leaks" in these areas, it said. It added that the amount of compensation would be "determined at a later stage".

'Justice has prevailed'

The court found that a leak in Ikot Ada Udo village was a result of sabotage, but said it needed more time to resolve the case.

The four farmers who launched the case - Barizaa Dooh, Elder Friday Alfred Akpan, Chief Fidelis A Oguru and Alali Efanga - said the leaks from underground oil pipelines had cost them their livelihoods by contaminating land and waterways. Mr Efanga and Mr Dooh have died since the case was first filed in 2008 so their sons pursued the case instead.

"I'm very happy - the common man in Nigeria now has hope," Princewill Efanga told the BBC.

James Oguru, son of Chief Oguru, said "justice had prevailed" but urged Shell to "do the necessary" so they could start farming again.

The farmers were backed by environmental group Friends of the Earth.

"Tears of joy here. After 13 years, we've won," the group's Dutch branch tweeted following the ruling.

Nigerians hope it will be different this time

Kunle Falayi, BBC News, Lagos

This is the first time individual farmers who have had their sources of livelihood taken away by the environmental destruction in the Niger Delta hope to get justice.

It is being received with excitement among environmental activists, as it may open a floodgate of more litigation against Shell and other corporations involved in oil exploration in the region.

Kentebbe Ebiarido, who represents some of the farmers, said people in the area had been "cheated environmentally and economically" and that no matter how much the multinationals had misbehaved in the past, the communities now have hope.

For many years, Shell has been accused of being responsible for the contamination of the region through leaks from oil exploration - allegations it has always denied.

There have been settlements in the past. But in those instances - like in 2005 when Shell agreed to an $84m (£60m) deal for fishermen in the Bodo community - thousands of residents of the Niger Delta were lumped together. When such settlements eventually got to each of them, it did not amount to much.

But this time, even though no-one knows what the compensation will be, there is little doubt that it will different to before.

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Shell Nigeria ordered to pay compensation for oil spills

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A Dutch appeals court has ruled that the Nigerian branch of oil giant Shell is responsible for damage caused by leaks in the Niger Delta. The court ordered Shell Nigeria to pay compensation to Nigerian farmers, while the subsidiary and its Anglo-Dutch parent company were told to install equipment to prevent future damage.

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Myanmar's coup - Why now and what's next?

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Myanmar's military has announced it has taken control of the country, a decade after agreeing to hand power to a civilian government.

The coup has sent a shudder of fear through the country, which endured almost 50 years of rule under oppressive military regimes before the move towards democratic rule in 2011. The early morning arrests of Aung San Suu Kyi and other politicians were all too reminiscent of days many hoped they had left behind.

For the past five years, Suu Kyi and her once-banned National League for Democracy (NLD) party led the country after being elected in 2015 in the freest and fairest vote seen in 25 years. On Monday morning, the party should have begun its second term in office.

But behind the scenes, the military has kept a relatively tight grip on Myanmar (also known as Burma), thanks to a constitution which guarantees it a quarter of all seats in parliament and control of the country's most powerful ministries.

Which raises the question why did it seize power now - and more to the point, what happens next?

'Trumpian' fraud allegations

The exact timing is easily explained, as the BBC's South East Asia correspondent Jonathan Head points out: Monday morning should have been the first session of parliament, which in turn would have enshrined the result. This now won't happen.

Elections in November saw the NLD win more than 80% of the vote, remaining hugely popular even in the face of allegations of genocide against the country's Rohingya Muslims.

The military-backed opposition immediately began making accusations of fraud after the vote. The allegation was repeated in a signed statement released by the newly-instated acting president to justify the imposition of the year-long state of emergency.

"The UEC [election commission] failed to solve huge voter list irregularities in the multi-party general election which was held on 8 November 2020," Myint Swe, a former general who had been vice-president, said.

But there has been little evidence to support the allegation.

"Obviously Aung San Suu Kyi won a resounding election victory," Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch (HRW) in Asia, tells the BBC. "There have been allegations of electoral fraud. It is somewhat Trumpian - all these allegations of fraud with no evidence."

Even so, Mr Robertson describes the takeover as "inexplicable".

"Did [the vote] mean a loss of power? The answer is no."

November's vote may have seen the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) win a fraction of the vote, but the military still holds massive sway over the government thanks to a controversial 2008 constitution drawn up during junta rule.

It not only gives the military a quarter of parliamentary seats automatically, but also hands it control of three key ministries - home affairs, defence and border affairs.

So, as long as the constitution remains the same, the military retains some control. But could the NLD, with its majority, have amended the constitution?

Unlikely, says Jonathan Head, as that requires the support of 75% of the parliament - an almost impossible task when the military controls at least 25%.

Aye Min Thant, a former journalist and tech educator, suggests there may be another reason for today's action: embarrassment on the part of the military.

"They weren't expecting to lose," she tells the BBC from Yangon (Rangoon). "People whose families were in the military must have voted against them."

Of course, it is far more than that.

"You need to understand how the army views its position in the country," Aye Min Thant adds. "International media are quite used to referring to Aung San Suu Kyi as 'mother'. The army considers itself the 'father' of the nation."

As a result, it feels a sense of "obligation and entitlement" when it comes to ruling - and in recent years, as the country has become more open to international trade, it has not liked what it has seen.

"They view outsiders especially as a danger."

The pandemic and international concerns over the Rohingya being disenfranchised in the November vote may have emboldened the military to act now, Aye Min Thant suggests. All the same, it still took her by surprise.

What does the future hold?

Indeed, experts appear unsure of exactly why the military acted now, as there seems little to gain.

"It is worth remembering that the current system is tremendously beneficial for the army: it has complete command autonomy, sizeable international investment in its commercial interests and political cover from civilians for war crimes," Gerard McCarthy, a postdoctoral fellow at the National University of Singapore's Asia Research Institute, tells the BBC.

"Seizing power for a year as it has announced will isolate non-Chinese international partners, harm the military's commercial interests and provoke escalating resistance from millions of people who placed Suu Kyi and the NLD in power for in another term of government."

Perhaps, he says, they hope to improve the USDP's standings in future elections, but the risks of such a move "are significant".

HRW's Phil Robertson points out the move puts Myanmar in danger of becoming a "pariah state" once more, while angering the people at home.

"I do not think the people of Myanmar are going to take this lying down," he adds. "They do not want to head back to a military future. They see Suu Kyi as a bulwark against a return to military power."

There are still hopes that this can be resolved through negotiation, he says, but adds: "If we start seeing major protests beginning, then we are into a major crisis."

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Myanmar's coup: Why now - and what's next?

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Myanmar's military has announced it has taken control of the country, a decade after agreeing to hand power to a civilian government. The coup has sent a shudder of fear through the country, which endured almost 50 years of rule under oppressive military regimes before the move towards democratic rule in 2011.

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Remittances and their importance

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With 270m migrants around the world, the money they send home now exceeds foreign direct investment

© FT

Every month Joy Kyakwita presses a button on her phone and does something in common with millions of other people across the globe: she sends money home.

Ms Kyakwita, a London-based lawyer, gives a third of her salary to her family back home in Uganda, including paying money for school fees for her brothers and nephews.

"I believe that when you pay for them to go on a good course, then there is a good chance of them becoming employable," she says. "And if they are employed then they will be able to help their siblings as well."

Ms Kyakwita is just one of an estimated 270m migrants around the world who will send a combined $689bn back home this year, the World Bank estimates. That figure marks a landmark moment: this year remittances will overtake foreign direct investment as the biggest inflow of foreign capital to developing countries.

Remittances were once viewed by many economists as a secondary issue for developing economies behind FDI and equity investments. Yet because of their sheer volume and consistent and resilient nature, these flows are now "the most important game in town when it comes to financing development", says Dilip Ratha, head of the World Bank's global knowledge partnership on migration and development.

The number of people in the world who live outside the country of their birth has risen from 153m in 1990 to 270m last year according to the World Bank, swelling global remittance payments from a trickle to a flood. As migration has increased, these financial snail-trails have become one of the defining trends of the past quarter-century of globalisation - the private, informal, personal face of global capital flows.

For many developing economies, it is a lifeline.

"In times of economic downturn, natural disaster or political crisis, private capital tends to leave and even official aid is hard to administer," says Mr Ratha. "Remittances are the first form of help to arrive, and they keep rising."

Remittance inflows help boost countries' balance of payments and therefore their credit ratings, lowering the borrowing costs of governments, companies and households. In the Philippines, for example, this year's remittances inflows of $34bn will help reduce what would otherwise be a current account deficit of more than 10 per cent of gross domestic product to a deficit of just 1.5 per cent of GDP.

Remittances are "a relatively stable source of foreign currency in the current account, and that feeds directly into our sovereign ratings", says James McCormack of Fitch Ratings. "In the case of a country like the Philippines, Egypt or Nigeria, their current account positions would be much weaker in the absence of remittance flows."

Some governments have sought to channel remittances into development efforts; Indonesia is the latest country to considera " diaspora bond " in a bid to tap the savings of its wealthier overseas residents.

But remittances have economic downsides too. By helping to subsidise low incomes at home they provide a cushion against the impact of slow growth, which eases pressure on governments to reform their policies.

And, by channelling capital into consumer spending, remittances boost imports - which, some economists say, holds back the development of domestic manufacturing.

"No country is ever going to get rich from remittances," says Gareth Leather of Capital Economics, a consultancy. "I don't think any government would want to get rid of them, but many would like to get to the point where they are no longer needed."

Mr Ratha at the World Bank argues, however, that this understates the importance of remittances. "Is consumption bad?" he asks. "Not really. Without it we'd be dead. Investment can wait, consumption can't." As incomes rise, he added, people put money into housing, health and education. "This is human capital formation. That's a great investment in any economy."

Remittances are also one of the key transmission mechanisms of global economic stress. People move in search of opportunities, so emigration rises when an economy is doing badly. When their host country is doing well and migrants prosper, they send more money home - a countercyclical boost to the struggling economy at home.

But when host countries hit hard times, the shock is transmitted back to migrants' families in the form of lower remittances. This can export the slowdown to the recipient country, fuelling economic instability on a global scale.

One example is the recent fall in oil prices. It was a blow not only to oil producing countries but also to families across south-east Asia and elsewhere who have breadwinners working in the Gulf.

It proved to be a structural shock for Lebanon, a small economy in which families and the banking system are heavily dependent on inflows from the diaspora.

"We've been watching Lebanon closely because remittances have really declined in the past decade, by almost 12 per cent of GDP," says Frank Gill of S&P Global, one of the big three rating agencies. "This is a key source of funding for the public sector and it's a major worry for a rating agency, for obvious reasons."

In May S&P lowered its outlook for Lebanon's sovereign rating to negative, citing slowing inflows from non-residents as a threat to the country's fiscal stability.

Although remittances have become one of the chief characteristics of the current era of globalisation, political shifts including the rise of populism raise the question of whether their economic importance will prove short-lived.

The backlash against globalisation is growing and anti-immigration sentiment is rising in many developed countries. So it is possible that both migration and the capital flows that it drives could begin to ebb.

But the World Bank expects 550m people to join the workforces of low and middle-income countries between now and 2030. And the gaping income disparity between developed and low-income countries - $43,000 a year per capita in the former, and $800 a year in the latter - is set to persist.

That means job opportunities abroad will continue to look attractive.

"The structural trends in the world are towards more migration, not less," says Mr Leather.

And the push from poor countries will be met by a pull from rich ones.

"The western world is ageing, and it's going to be increasingly reliant on imported labour," says S&P's Mr Gill. "I don't see why that isn't going to continue."

Meanwhile, other flows of capital into developing economies are becoming less reliable. FDI, traditionally a key driver of development, is in retreat. Outward FDI from the five principal global sources in recent years - the US, China, Germany, Japan and the UK - fell by two thirds between 2017 and 2018, according to OECD data.

And as a global economic slowdown looms on the horizon, speculative investment flows are also likely to become more volatile.

That leaves the cobweb of remittance flows around the world as one of the main systems by which global capital circulates. And even if migration tails off, the high existing stock of migrants around the world means those flows are likely to continue for decades to come.

In Staines-upon-Thames, the town in Surrey where she lives, Joy Kyakwita has no plans to move back to Uganda. "Now I'm not thinking about that, because I have a big dream in this country," she says. "I have children who were born here."

She studied and qualified as a lawyer thanks to financial help from her sister, who came to the UK to work as a nurse. Now she wants to pass that good fortune on to the next generation of her family.

Returning home, she says, has become "no longer about me, but also about my children as well ... I would rather support [my wider family] from here".

Statistics on Tongan and Mexican remittances follow below. Scroll down to select remittance flows by country

The following countries were excluded from the interactive graphic because inbound bilateral remittance flow data was unavailable: American Samoa, Andorra, Bahamas, Bahrain, British Virgin Islands, Brunei, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Chad, Channel Islands, Cuba, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, French Polynesia, Gabon, Gibraltar, Greenland, Guam, Isle of Man, Libya, Liechtenstein, Mauritania, Monaco, Nauru, New Caledonia, North Korea, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, Republic of Congo, San Marino, Singapore, Sint Maarten (Dutch part), Somalia, South Sudan, St. Martin (French part), Turks and Caicos Islands, US Virgin Islands, United Arab Emirates and Zimbabwe Additional design and development by Cale Tilford, Martin Stabe and Adrienne Klasa

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Remittances become biggest capital flow into emerging economies

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With 270m migrants around the world, the money they send home now exceeds foreign direct investment Every month Joy Kyakwita presses a button on her phone and does something in common with millions of other people across the globe: she sends money home.

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Afghanistan War: How can the West fight terrorism after leaving?

25/04/21

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US, British and Nato combat forces are leaving Afghanistan this summer. The Taliban are growing stronger by the day while al-Qaeda and Islamic State groups are conducting ever more brazen attacks. So how can they be contained now that the West will no longer have military resources in the country?

Western intelligence officials believe they still aspire to plot international terrorist attacks from their Afghan hideouts, just as Osama Bin Laden did with 9/11.

It is a problem that is starting to vex UK policy chiefs as the deadline of 11 September for US President Joe Biden's withdrawal draws closer. As the British chief of defence staff, General Sir Nick Carter, said recently: "This was not the outcome we had hoped for." There is now a serious risk that the gains made in counter-terrorism over the last 20 years, at enormous cost, could be undone as Afghanistan's future takes an uncertain turn.

"The problem," says John Raine, a regional security expert at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), "is the situation's potential for morphing at a speed and into something with which the Afghan government, even remotely reinforced by the US, can't keep up."

Yet this, for President Biden, was always the plan. When he visited the country as vice-president in the Obama administration in 2009 and 2011 he concluded that nation-building there was a waste of time and instead the US should focus on a standoff approach to counter-terrorism using air strikes and Special Forces raids. The Pentagon disagreed and the former US Defence Secretary Robert Gates described Mr Biden in his memoir as being "wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades".

So what will Western counter-terrorism in Afghanistan look like in practice after September?

Drone strikes

These could well increase. The use of drones, or to give them their full name, Remotely Piloted Aircraft (RPAs) or Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), was heavily endorsed by the Obama administration in which Joe Biden served as vice-president.

In the remote, tribal areas of Pakistan bordering Afghanistan, and in the wilder regions of Yemen, where in both cases senior al-Qaeda leaders were hiding out, successive drone strikes had "a chilling effect" on the group's operations, according to intelligence officers. They forced commanders to stay constantly on the move, never staying more than a night or two in one place, restricting their ability to communicate and never quite knowing whether the departure of a visitor would be followed by a Hellfire missile, fired by an unseen enemy.

But drone strikes are controversial. They can be risky - not for the operator, of course, who tends to be sitting in an air-conditioned shipping container thousands of miles away on an airbase in Nevada or Lincolnshire - but for civilians in the area.

Despite the remarkable detail visible on the operators' consoles there is always the risk of "collateral damage", of a last-minute arrival of civilians on the scene, as has happened in Iraq and Syria. More than once the Americans had the IS executioner Mohammed Emwazi, aka "Jihadi John", in their sights only to have to abort the strike when civilians were spotted in close proximity. In Yemen, drone strikes are deeply unpopular with human rights activists who claim harmless tribal gatherings have frequently been mistaken for armed insurgents. Yet across the Red Sea in Djibouti, the foreign minister there told me he welcomed their use against neighbouring Somalia's al-Shabab militants and he was prepared to say so on-camera.

Intelligence networks

Over the last 20 years the CIA, MI6 and other intelligence agencies have built up a close working relationship with Afghanistan's own NDS agency, helping it to identify and head off threats, while also trying to restrain some individuals' more brutal methods. "We will still be able to give meaningful help to the NDS," said a western security official this week, "it's just that our operating model will have to adapt."

It is a fair assumption that the Taliban will eventually form a part of a future Afghan government. So would the West ever be prepared to share intelligence with them after all these years of fighting them? "That," said the official, "would be very hard to imagine."

The key question is whether the Taliban actually meant it when they told peace negotiators in Doha that they had severed their ties to al-Qaeda. Those ties in some cases are historic, marital and tribal, predating the 9/11 attacks by several years. The Taliban are savvy enough to know that if they are going to become a part of a future Afghan government that enjoys international recognition, then they cannot be seen to be in the same camp as proscribed terror groups. Yet Gavin McNicoll, the director of the UK thinktank Eden Intelligence, believes it would be naïve to trust them.

"The US administration," he says, "seems to be living in an impossible dream world, that the Taliban have cut their ties to al-Qaeda and IS and will not allow them to return. They are not, will not and can never be taken for their word."

Special Forces raids

The night raids conducted by small teams of SBS or US Special Forces, acting on intelligence gathered first-hand on the ground, took a huge toll on insurgent commanders and their networks. Often arriving by helicopter some way off in the dead of night and then patrolling in on foot, these "capture or kill" teams worked in close partnership with Afghan Special Forces, preventing numerous attacks.

But after September these raids - if they continue at all - will mostly have to be launched or at least planned from outside the country. The risk of time delay and advance warning being leaked to others will inevitably be greater. And the task of finding new locations to launch them from is not something that can be fixed overnight.

Finding new bases

The secret, classified base in eastern Afghanistan that US Special Forces have been using as a springboard for operations against "high-value targets" is being closed down. This will be good news for al-Qaeda and IS who will now have less to fear from the unexpected arrival of several very large and heavily armed Americans in the middle of the night. So where in the region could now provide a suitable alternative?

Pakistan is the most obvious candidate geographically but there is a profound suspicion in the West that Pakistan's secretive Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) has elements with links to violent Islamist groups. When the CIA launched Operation Neptune Spear to kill or capture Osama Bin Laden in May 2011, the US chose not to inform Pakistan as the teams of Navy SEALs flew by stealth helicopter into Pakistani airspace. They feared someone would give Bin Laden the tipoff to escape.

Instead, Oman is a likely substitute. With its stable, pro-Western government, the Sultanate already hosts major bases used by Britain at Thumrayt and more recently at Duqm on the Indian Ocean coast. Duqm is still over 1000 miles away from the Afghan border and any troop-carrying aircraft would still need to overfly Pakistan. Bahrain is another possibility, where the UK already has a small naval base - HMS Juffair - and the US Navy's 5th Fleet has a very big one.

Then there is always Central Asia, which borders Afghanistan to the north. In the immediate years following 9/11, the US military used an old Soviet base in south-eastern Uzbekistan called Karshi-Khanabad or "K2". But it pulled out in 2005 after relations between the two countries worsened and returning, even with an invitation, would be controversial since the base was reported to be heavily contaminated with chemicals and radioactive material.

The bald fact is that "containing" both al-Qaeda and IS in the wilder parts of Afghanistan is about to get a whole lot harder. There is no easy substitute for having the resources on the ground and being able to summon them up at very short notice. Much will now depend on the willingness and effectiveness of ongoing Afghan governments to confront these proscribed transnational terror groups.

John Raine, who previously worked at a senior level in the British government, paints a pessimistic picture of where things are going: "Given not only the quantum of extremism in Afghanistan, but also the strategic advantage which external players will see in having terrorist capabilities there, there could be a return to near greenhouse conditions for the next generation of counter-terrorism threats."

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Afghanistan War: How can the West fight terrorism after leaving?

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US, British and Nato combat forces are leaving Afghanistan this summer. The Taliban are growing stronger by the day while al-Qaeda and Islamic State groups are conducting ever more brazen attacks. So how can they be contained now that the West will no longer have military resources in the country?

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HMS Defender: What will be the fallout from Black Sea incident?

24/06/21

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A needless provocation by the Royal Navy or the legitimate exercising of a right of passage at sea?

That depends on your viewpoint.

Britain, strongly supported by Ukraine, insists that HMS Defender was taking the shortest, most direct route across the Black Sea, from Odessa, in Ukraine, to Georgia.

But that route passes just a few miles from the shores of the Crimean peninsula which was annexed by Russia in 2014 in a move condemned by the West and never internationally recognised.

That is not how Moscow sees it.

Despite a raft of sanctions imposed at the time, it has portrayed its annexation of Crimea, with its significant population of ethnic Russians, as returning the peninsula to its rightful owner: Mother Russia.

The port of Sevastopol, close to Wednesday's incident, is home to a major Russian naval base and its Black Sea fleet.

So when a modern, Type-45 destroyer from a "hostile" Nato state (Britain) travels over 6,000 miles (9,656km) from its home port to sail through what Moscow considers are its own territorial waters then Russia sees that as an aggressive provocation.

Hence its angry warnings over the ship's radio and the close-proximity buzzing of the Royal Navy destroyer by Su-24 jets.

Was Britain taken aback by the force of Russia's reaction?

Not really, say defence sources, as they did something similar last year.

But it would be unwise to downplay an incident like this.

Relations between Britain and Russia are already at rock bottom, following accusations - denied by Russia - that it sent two GRU intelligence officers to Salisbury in 2018 to poison a former spy with Novichok nerve agent.

Coupled with the earlier poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko with polonium, Russia's annexation of Crimea, its alleged cyber attacks and the hacking of Western democratic institutions, there is almost zero trust between the two countries.

A recent Whitehall report described Russia as the greatest military threat facing this country.

It is important to bear in mind that Russia considers the whole of Ukraine, the Black Sea and the Crimea peninsula as its "near abroad" - its own back yard.

With the former KGB Col Vladimir Putin firmly ensconced in the Kremlin, there is a permanent paranoia about the West's intentions.

Just 30 years ago Russia was at the heart of a massive empire, the Soviet Union, which, together with its Warsaw Pact allies, stretched all the way from the borders of Germany to Afghanistan and beyond.

Today, many of those former territories and allied states, such as Poland and the Baltic states, have joined Nato.

So Russia feels surrounded, and that is a dangerous place to be.

Yet as dramatic as Wednesday's events appear, this could end up being just a dress rehearsal for a bigger test to come.

HMS Defender is part of the Carrier Strike Force, spearheaded by the Royal Navy's new aircraft carrier HMS Queen Elizabeth.

It peeled off earlier this month to make this Black Sea visit while the rest of the force exercised in the Mediterranean.

As part of the UK's new "forward-leaning" foreign and defence policy outlined in the government's recent Integrated Review, the strike force will soon be heading eastwards to the South China Sea.

There, together with other nations, it will be challenging China's claims to a vast contested area of sea bordering several countries.

Chinese air and sea patrols, often operating from artificially built reefs, have been warning shipping away from this area which Beijing considers it to be part of its own territorial waters.

The West, and other countries in the region, disagree as an international ruling found against the Chinese move.

But when the carrier strike force sails through the South China Sea there will be a lot of people holding their breath to see how China reacts.

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HMS Defender: What will be the fallout from Black Sea incident?

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A needless provocation by the Royal Navy or the legitimate exercising of a right of passage at sea? That depends on your viewpoint. Britain, strongly supported by Ukraine, insists that HMS Defender was taking the shortest, most direct route across the Black Sea, from Odessa, in Ukraine, to Georgia.

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China Taiwan relations

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Ros Atkins on… China-Taiwan tensions - BBC News

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China and Africa relations

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China's investment in Africa: Everything you need to know - BBC Africa

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The Global shift and its impact -economic restructuring 08/12/22

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When Jennifer Honn lost her job as a forklift truck driver in Kentland, Indiana, she knew where the blame lay.

In 2005 her employer, food packaging company Viskase, moved its factory to Mexico.

"A lot of factories and jobs like mine went out of America to other countries after the Nafta [North American Free Trade Agreement] deal was signed," she says.

President Donald Trump has also long said that the 1994 agreement between the US, Canada and Mexico was the cause of such factory transfers, and resulting job losses like Ms Honn's.

As a result, he last month signed a replacement deal called the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which is set to come into force as soon as Canada ratifies it. It remains to be seen whether this will keep more jobs in the US.

Nonetheless, his decision to rip up existing trade deals - be they with America's neighbours, the EU or China - has reignited the debate over how to help those left behind by globalisation.

What is less well-known is that in both the US and the EU, help is already at hand for workers who have lost their jobs as a result of factory closures caused by global market forces.

In the US, financial aid for those who lost their jobs because of foreign competition has been available since the 1960s through a programme called Trade Adjustment Assistance (TAA).

Workers can get up to three years of unemployment benefits, and help to start a new career, such as government grants to retrain. In 2018, there were 76,902 people who qualified for the $800m (£618m) a year programme.

Ms Honn, 47, accessed the scheme back in 2005 to spend two years studying business management.

She says free tuition was a huge benefit at a time when her two daughters were aged just six and nine. After Ms Honn graduated, she got a job at a pharmacy.

"If I didn't go back to school I'd probably still be in a dead-end factory job or something in retail," she says.

The EU started a similar scheme in 2006 called the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund (EGF). In the past five years, hundreds of millions of euros have helped workers at Air France, Carrefour in Belgium and Sweden's Volvo to find new work.

Among other things, the money has been spent on training, careers advice and help for people setting up their own business.

Kirsi Junnilainen got help from the scheme in 2012, when telecoms giant Nokia decided to close a big factory in Salo, south west Finland.

Ms Junnilainen had worked there for 16 years, rising from the assembly line to supervisor. The strain on a town of just of 50,000 people was immense, she says.

"Fortunately my husband was working, and my children were already teenagers. But many people were forced to sell their homes."

Unlike in the US, applications for funding are led by EU member states, not workers or companies. Countries submit a plan and can ask for up to 60% of the total cost of a back-to-work programme. So far 21 nations have accessed the fund, but the UK - which has now left the EU - was not one of them.

The European Commission, which assess applications, said the unemployment rate in Salo would have jumped from 6% to 17% if nothing was done.

With the help of EGF money, Ms Junnilainen was able to stay in work - initially helping her former colleagues to find new jobs - before she found employment at an IT consultancy.

"For those who started training programmes it was also really important, especially for those who were a bit older," she says. "If they had nowhere to go everyday they may not have returned to work for years."

While initiatives like these have helped tens of thousands of people on both sides of the Atlantic, Ms Junnilainen says EGF's focus on big companies created tension in her town.

"It would have been good if the scheme helped other companies in our town that were affected by the downturn, not just Nokia. People felt that if you weren't working for Nokia then you weren't worthy."

The EU is listening. Next year, if 250 jobs are being cut in any company, workers will be considered for the aid, down from a threshold of 500. Jobs lost to automation could soon be covered by the programme too, as might firms affected by the UK leaving the EU.

Back in the US, data published by the US Department of Labor suggests that TAA has not been a universal success. In 2018, 22% of those helped failed to find a job within six months.

And while most workers under 40 end up with higher pay compared with their old jobs, those over 60 earn just under two thirds of their previous salaries.

Jennifer Honn says that after finishing her degree, she took a 10% pay cut, though she says her qualifications mean she now earns double what she did at the factory.

Ms Junnilainen also admits the adjustment was tough. "My monthly pay went down by thousands of euros," she says. But she too is now earning more than from her old job.

Esther Duflo, the Nobel prize-winning economist, has long argued that TAA funding is too small to have a meaningful impact in the US.

Global Trade

And Penny Goldberg, chief economist of the World Bank, thinks governments should be ploughing money into whole communities rather than handing it to individuals.

"Traditionally, these policies are viewed with great suspicion by economists," she says.

"But it's entire regions, entire communities that are affected by these issues, and that calls for policies that address the challenges that these communities face."

Ms Junnilainen is in no doubt about the benefits of the European scheme.

"I remember seeing one lady who used to work on the production line now driving a bus.

"The money she was earning was coming back to the community because she was able to keep working. I remember she was so happy, and that's why I will carry this programme with me for the rest of my life."

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'My job went abroad because of globalisation'

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When Jennifer Honn lost her job as a forklift truck driver in Kentland, Indiana, she knew where the blame lay. In 2005 her employer, food packaging company Viskase, moved its factory to Mexico. "A lot of factories and jobs like mine went out of America to other countries after the Nafta [North American Free Trade Agreement] deal was signed," she says.

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China USA relations
06th Feb 2023

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You can track the trajectory of China's response to its balloon just as the Pentagon was tracking the trajectory of a high-altitude piece of equipment destined to be blown out of the sky.

We're investigating; we regret that it is our weather balloon blown off course; we think US politicians and media are hyping this up; everyone stay calm; the US attack on this airship is a serious violation of international practice.

With Antony Blinken - the US's top diplomat - scheduled to visit China this week, Beijing had initially tried to reassure Washington this had all been an accident.

But once it became clear that the secretary of state wasn't coming, and that the balloon was not coming back either, the gloves were off.

It is a long way from where the Chinese government wanted things to be at this moment.

The US Secretary of State was supposed to be here building bridges or at least trying to stop those that still exist from being destroyed.

Make no mistake. Chinese President Xi Jinping had great hopes for this visit and was, reportedly, even going to meet Mr Blinken himself.

So what balloon-gathered intelligence could be so good that it was worth scuppering this process?

The short answer is none. Which is why many analysts think that, even if it was to some extent spying, the deployment of this balloon, in this way, at this time, had to have been an error on the Chinese side.

And, if that is the case, somebody is getting hauled over the coals for it, especially given that there are now two of these high-altitude balloons in play, with another floating above Latin America. There has been no word whether it too is supposed to have been blown wildly off course, given its "limited self-steering capability".

Internationally, many seem to imagine that China's Communist Party is an all-knowing, locked in, organ of power - something along the lines of a giant, efficient, supercomputer with Xi Jinping toggling the controls.

It is a massive, sprawling organisation, that is certain. However, it is also made up of departments and power blocks competing for influence, at times hoarding information and even deliberately not foreshadowing their actions lest a rival gain some unwanted advantage.

When a clearly visible, equipment-carrying balloon started floating close to US nuclear missile siloes, the assumption from some had been not only that it was spying but that it must have been sent as a message to the Biden administration.

But when you consider the damage it has done in terms of derailing a visit that the Chinese government, right up to the very top, wanted to happen, it is hard to see how this analysis stacks up.

We know that the Blinken trip was important here because we saw how Beijing tried to save it using quite conciliatory language.

"The Chinese side regrets the unintended entry of the airship into US airspace due to force majeure," a foreign ministry spokesperson was quoted as saying.

The extent to which it was deployed to study the weather or spy doesn't really matter in terms of understanding how crushing this incident has been for those on both sides who have been looking for ways to ease US-China tensions.

An enormous breakthrough was not expected from Mr Blinken's meetings in Beijing. The meetings themselves were to be the breakthrough.

They would have spoken about moves towards a set of "guard rails", means of communication and lines not to cross in an attempt to prevent a drift towards armed conflict.

President Xi also wanted it because he's looking for some big signs back at home that his administration knows what it is doing when it comes to steering China into the future.

A sudden and embarrassing retreat from the zero-Covid approach came just months after China's leader had declared at the Party Congress that there would be no swerving from it.

Then the speed of the about-face led to overcrowded hospital emergency rooms, medicine shortages and an unknown Covid death toll.

The government now needs to put all this behind it and encourage an image of a China which is turning around economically and opening up again.

A high-level US visit would have been quite useful in this regard.

Examine the protestations from the major superpowers this week.

Washington has said this was a "clear violation of US sovereignty" but we all know that it has plenty of its own very sophisticated means of spying on China.

Beijing has condemned this US "attack on a civilian unmanned airship" but we all know that if a US surveillance balloon flew into Chinese airspace the People's Liberation Army would have it down in no time.

In a way, this means that the outrage from both sides contains a fair bit of theatre.

The upside is that, now the balloon is no more, they will be able to move on from it and reschedule a Beijing visit by Mr Blinken at a time when people are asking each other, "hey do you remember that whole balloon thing?".

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Balloon saga deflates efforts to mend US-China relations

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You can track the trajectory of China's response to its balloon just as the Pentagon was tracking the trajectory of a high-altitude piece of equipment destined to be blown out of the sky.

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Western intervention

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he longest, most pointless and unsuccessful war that Britain has fought in the past 70 years - its intervention in Afghanistan - is to end in September. I doubt anyone will notice. Nations celebrate victories, not defeats.

Twenty years ago the United States decided to relieve its 9/11 agony not just by blasting Osama bin Laden's base in the Afghan mountains, but by toppling the entire Afghan regime. This was despite young Taliban moderates declaring Bin Laden an "unwelcome guest" and the regime demanding he leave.The US then decided not just to blast Kabul but invited Nato to launder its action as a matter of global security. Britain had no dog in this fight and only joined because Tony Blair liked George W Bush.

American and British troops roamed the country, signing up warlords or setting up new governors. Visiting Kabul at the time, I was told of Nato's ambition to wipe out terror, build a new democracy, liberate women and create a "friend in the region". I had an eerie sense of Britain in 1839 embarking on the First Afghan War.

Most Americans at the time wanted to get out, and concentrate on nation-building in Iraq. It was the British who were eager to stay. Blair even sent a minister, Clare Short, to eliminate the poppy crop. Whatever she did, it increased production from six provinces to 28, and raised poppy revenue to a record $2.3bn (£1.7bn).

Spin forward to 2005, and the British army was in full imperial mode, itching to march south with 3,400 troops and conquer Pashtun Helmand. The British commander, General David Richards, was adamant that it would be just a matter of winning hearts and minds in friendly "inkspot" towns. His defence secretary, John Reid, hoped this would be achieved "without firing one shot". They had fun giving their operations names such as Achilles, Pickaxe-Handle, Sledgehammer Hit, Eagle's Eye, Red Dagger and Blue Sword.

Everything in Helmand went wrong. The expedition had to be salvaged by 10,000 American marines. Four hundred and fifty-four Britons died.

The Russians, who had been forced out of Afghanistan a decade before, were privately amazed at the ineptitude of the western operations - and publicly delighted. Gordon Brown, by then prime minister, was forced implausibly to explain in 2009 that British troops were dying in Helmand to make Britain's streets safe.

Since then, most of Nato has retreated, hoping against hope that diplomacy would rescue the Kabul government and the west from abject humiliation. Three US presidents have pledged various forms of "surge and depart", but lacked the political nerve to go through with them. Even Joe Biden has extended a May deadline to September. Each has done just enough to keep the puppet regime in Kabul safe without returning to full-scale imperial rule.

America's 2,300 troops and their air support will now leave, as will Britain's 750 (as one senior UK defence source told the Guardian: "If they [the US] go, we'll all have to go,"). For the US, the cost has been high: 2,216 dead and more than $2tn spent. Billions in "aid" are said to have left Afghanistan, much of it to the Dubai property market. The cost to Afghan civilians has been appalling, put at between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths over the two decades, all in retaliation for "hosting" the 9/11 attackers. Is that what we call western values?

As a senior US official said this week, when President Biden fixed his new deadline: "The threat against the homeland from Afghanistan is at a level we can address." That has surely been the case for years in Britain as in America, yet we are still there.

The latest peace talks in Qatar are going nowhere. The reason is obvious: that the Taliban need only to wait for September, when they can do as they choose. The current regime may hold Kabul for a while, but if it can barely govern with American help, it can hardly do so alone.

Left alone back in 2001, the Taliban leadership - with which US intelligence was already liaising - would have dealt with Bin Laden. It would have been held in check by its local warlords and by the Pakistani army. Instead, the Pashtun have been left to rampage for two decades, financed by western heroin users. The worst it has suffered is the decimation of its senior figures by US drones, to absolutely no effect. Afghanistan will need these people to contain another product of Nato intervention: the country is now a focus of Islamic State activity.

What has the US and UK intervention achieved? The military theorist Gen Sir Rupert Smith, in his book The Utility of Force, has pointed out that modern armies are almost useless in counter-insurgency wars. They have roamed the Middle East from Afghanistan to Libya, "creating one ruined nation after another". Britain's sole justification is the hoary Foreign Office cliche about having influence, deterring terror and standing tall in the world. They are neo-imperialist vacuities. In a world of apologies, some mighty big ones are due in September.

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What did 20 years of western intervention in Afghanistan achieve? Ruination | Simon Jenkins

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he longest, most pointless and unsuccessful war that Britain has fought in the past 70 years - its intervention in Afghanistan - is to end in September. I doubt anyone will notice. Nations celebrate victories, not defeats.

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Hybrid warfare - Superpower powers
06/02/23

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Mysterious underwater explosions, anonymous cyber attacks and subtle online campaigns to undermine Western democracies - these are all "hybrid threats". The BBC visited a centre dedicated to targeting a relatively new form of warfare which is increasingly concerning Nato and the EU.

"It is about manipulation of the information space. It's about attacks on critical infrastructure," explains Teija Tillikainen, when asked to define hybrid warfare.

She is director of the European Centre of Excellence for Countering Hybrid Threats (Hybrid CoE), which was established in Helsinki, Finland, six years ago.

Ms Tillikainen says it is an ambiguous threat format, which is something nations find very difficult to counter and protect themselves against.

But these threats are very real.

Last September, powerful underwater explosions beneath the Baltic Sea ripped gaping holes in the Nord Stream gas pipelines between the coasts of Denmark and Sweden. The pipelines were constructed to carry Russian gas to northern Germany.

Moscow was quick to deny any responsibility, but Western suspicions centred around a potential Russian motive to further starve the West of energy, as punishment for backing Ukraine after Russia's invasion last February.

Then there is electoral interference. Few people realised at the time, but after the 2016 US elections, investigators concluded there had been concerted Russian interference - again, denied by Moscow - with the aim of damaging Hillary Clinton's chances, in favour of Donald Trump.

This was allegedly conducted using online "bots" - artificial online accounts on social media controlled by state-backed cyber activists, working out of "troll factories" in St Petersburg.

Another method is disinformation - the deliberate propagating of an alternative, false narrative, often one that appeals to certain more receptive sections of a population. This phenomenon has accelerated since Russia's invasion of Ukraine, with millions of citizens - not just in Russia but even in Western countries - accepting the Kremlin's line that the invasion was a necessary act of self-defence.

The Russian narrative is the Arctic is outside of conflicts [but it's] building up its military there.

Teija Tillikainen
Director, Hybrid CoE

To help Western governments identify and protect themselves against these threats, Nato and the EU set up the Hybrid CoE in Finland. The country is an interesting and perhaps natural choice for such a centre. For decades, it has stayed officially neutral, ever since it lost a short winter war with Russia in 1940.

But the two countries share a border which is 1,300km (807 miles) long, and a nervous Finland has been drawing ever closer to the West, culminating in its application to join Nato last year.

On a cold, snowy morning, I visited the centre, housed in an office block close to the defence ministry and just a short distance from the grey, Soviet-era Russian embassy building.

There, director Teija Tillikainen leads a team of around 40 analysts and subject-matter experts drawn from a number of Nato and EU countries, including a Briton on loan from the Ministry of Defence.

She explains that a current area of focus is in the Arctic, where they have mapped a lot of hybrid threat potential.

"There are new energy sources emerging," she explains. "There are new possibilities for great powers to protect their interests. There's also a lot of manipulation of information.

"The Russian narrative is the Arctic is a special region outside of conflicts where nothing bad is happening - and still Russia is building up its military there."

Perhaps the key distinguishing features of hybrid threats are that they almost never involve an actual "kinetic" attack - someone opening fire with a weapon. They are much more subtle, but often no less dangerous. They are also non-attributable in nature, meaning it is usually hard to determine who was behind these acts, such as the 2007 massive cyber attack on Estonia, or last year's gas pipeline explosions under the Baltic. The perpetrators take care to leave as few clues as possible.

There are numerous ways one state can damage another short of direct military action.

This is illustrated by a handbook drawn up by the centre, outlining maritime hybrid threats - containing 10 imaginary but highly-plausible scenarios. They range from the clandestine use of underwater weapons to declaring a control zone around an island, plus the blocking of narrow straits.

One real scenario they have examined in detail was Russia's actions in the Sea of Azov prior to its invasion of Ukraine. From October 2018 onwards, in order for Ukrainian ships to progress from their home ports of Mariupol and Berdyansk through the Kerch Strait and out into the Black Sea, they first had to queue for inspection by Russian officials. These delays, says Jukka Savolainen, the director of vulnerabilities and resilience, could stretch into days or even up to two weeks, inflicting economic damage on Ukraine.

But it is in the field of disinformation that the centre's experts have found the most surprising results. After collating and assessing numerous opinion polls across Europe, they have come to the conclusion that in several Nato countries, Russia is winning the information war amongst substantial portions of the population.

In Germany, for example, the Kremlin's narrative that its attack on Ukraine was a necessary reaction to Nato provocation has been gaining popularity as the war continues. In Slovakia, more than 30% of those polled believed the Ukraine war was deliberately provoked by the West. In Hungary, 18% blamed "the oppression of the Russian-speaking population in Ukraine" for the war.

Jakub Kalensky, a senior analyst from the Czech Republic, uses the analogy of water to illustrate the need to suppress Moscow's disinformation campaign.

"I wouldn't evaluate Russian disinformation as particularly sophisticated," he explains. "It's not about the attractiveness of the message, but the way they achieve success is through sheer numbers. There's no reason to give these people access to social media platforms. Everyone wants to have access to fresh water, but we don't allow them to poison the water."

Ms Tillikainen says it is not the centre's role to undertake measures to counter hybrid threats - but to assess, inform and then train others to do what needs to be done to protect Europe from this growing phenomenon.

Listen to Frank's visit to Hybrid CoE on our podcast 5 Minute On

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Inside the centre dedicated to combating unseen war threats

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Mysterious underwater explosions, anonymous cyber attacks and subtle online campaigns to undermine Western democracies - these are all "hybrid threats". The BBC visited a centre dedicated to targeting a relatively new form of warfare which is increasingly concerning Nato and the EU. "It is about manipulation of the information space.

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Globalisation - Developing world economies hit hardest

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Globalisation - Developing world economies hit hardest

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23 April 2020

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The world is experiencing a sharp deterioration in economic performance, due to the continuing coronavirus pandemic.

Developing countries are certain to be hit hard by what the International Monetary Fund, and others, warn will be the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Almost every country on the planet is being affected. The IMF expects 170 nations - rich and poor - to experience a decline in economic activity per person this year. That means falling average living standards.

Developing economies are being hit in distinctive ways by the pandemic:

Commodity prices

Many are exporters of commodities used by industry. The shutdown of many factories around the world means there is less demand for those commodities, so their prices have fallen, sharply in some cases.

Oil is the starkest example. The loss of demand has been especially severe, as the crisis has led to a massive reduction in demand for transport fuels, more than 90% of which are made from crude oil.

The situation was exacerbated for a period by what was in effect a price war between the two biggest exporters, Russia and Saudi Arabia. There has been an extraordinary situation where some oil prices have been below zero.

It is not a general feature of the oil market, but it does highlight the huge imbalance between supply and demand.

Other commodities have also seen sharp price falls, although not generally on the scale of oil. Copper, for example, is now about 18% cheaper than it was in mid-January, and zinc's price is more than 20% lower.

These price falls are hitting businesses and government revenues in countries that export these commodities.

International investment

Developing countries have also had to contend with international investors pulling money out. The IMF's chief economist Gita Gopinath says the appetite for risk among international investors has waned.

This means they are more inclined to sell investments seen as relatively risky, including bonds and shares in emerging markets, and pull money back to what they regard as safer bets, such as the US, Europe or Japan. She says the result has been "unprecedented reversals in capital flows".

In a blog published by the Brussels think thank Bruegel, Marek Dombrowski and Marta Domínguez-Jiménez set out a number of financial indicators showing the strains that have built rapidly in some emerging economies.

They show how the difference between bond yields - which are a measure of borrowing costs in financial markets - in the US and in developing nations has widened in many cases. This is often a sign that investors believe there is an increased risk of borrowers, including governments, defaulting on their debts.

Another sign of this is the increased cost of getting insurance against a default (that is, the price of financial instruments called credit default swaps).

And then there have been sharp declines in currency values for many countries. That is another sign of investors wanting to get their money out.

Foreign debt

That also raises another issue - foreign debt. A decline in the value of a national currency makes it more expensive to repay, or pay interest on, debts in other currencies.

At a time when developing country government budgets are under pressure to deal with the health crisis and its economic consequences, debt payments could be a serious diversion of scarce resources.

So there is a vigorous campaign to address developing countries' debt problems.

The IMF and the world's leading economies have taken some steps to ease this burden, by providing relief from the burden of debt interest and repayments over the next few months.

The IMF agreed to cover the payments due from 25 countries, mostly in Africa, over the next six months, from a trust fund financed by donations from member countries, including a recent pledge of $185m (£150m) by the UK. In effect those payments have been cancelled.

The G20 leading economic powers agreed to defer - not cancel - debt payments from May to the end of the year for a larger group of the poorest nations. This decision covers debt payments to G20 governments from a total of 77 countries.

It means that cash can be diverted in the coming months to dealing with the crisis rather than making those payments. But it does mean they will need to make the payments in the future.

So campaigners for developing country debt relief think the G20 and others should go further.

The Jubilee Debt Campaign, for example, described the G20 move as a first step, but called for the payment obligations to be cancelled altogether.

They also point out that the G20 deal does not address payments to private sector lenders. The G20 merely encouraged those creditors to offer similar payment deferral to the poorest countries.

The Jubilee Debt Campaign wants the rich countries to make changes to the law to prevent private creditors using the courts to sue poor countries that miss payments. It is particularly relevant to New York and the UK whose laws govern most developing country debt contracts.

Informal work

Dealing with the health issues presents particular problems in densely populated urban areas in developing countries. Social distancing is especially difficult in that context.

So is staying at home for people who work in what's called the informal economy. Many need to go out to work to feed themselves and their families.

Oksana Abbouda runs StreetNet International, an organisation that represents street vendors around the world. She recently spoke to the BBC's Business Daily radio programme about what the people the organisation represents are saying about their situation.

"We have to make this horrible choice, either to put ourselves at risk [from infection] and continue our informal job, or put our families at risk because they will be starving," she says. "This is the reality for billions of people around the world... informal is normal in developing countries."

Remittances

Developing countries are also likely to be affected through a decline in money that migrant workers send to their families at home. These remittances, as they are known, are often sent from rich to poorer countries, and they can be a very important support to a family's standard of living.

Global Trade

More from the BBC's series taking an international perspective on trade:

A new report by the World Bank warns that they are likely to fall by as much as 20% this year due to the pandemic. Migrant workers, the bank says, tend to be particularly vulnerable to losing jobs and incomes.

It adds that remittances enable people to eat better, to spend more on education and to reduce child labour.

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Developing world economies hit hard by coronavirus

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The world is experiencing a sharp deterioration in economic performance, due to the continuing coronavirus pandemic. Developing countries are certain to be hit hard by what the International Monetary Fund, and others, warn will be the worst downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Almost every country on the planet is being affected.

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Hunger Games salute: The symbol of protest against Asia’s military regimes

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As thousands of protesters in Myanmar continue to demonstrate against the military coup, one hand gesture has emerged as the movement's defining symbol - the three finger salute.

Popularised by the Hollywood film series and books The Hunger Games, the salute - which also has roots in the Scout movement - has been adopted widely in Thailand as well in activists' protests against their military government.

But what does the gesture really mean, and what does its journey from the big screen to real life tell us about the power of protest symbols?
Video by Tessa Wong. Additional footage by BBC Burmese, Danny Bull and Nik Millard.

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Why Hunger Games salute is Asia's latest protest symbol

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As thousands of protesters in Myanmar continue to demonstrate against the military coup, one hand gesture has emerged as the movement's defining symbol - the three finger salute. Popularised by the Hollywood film series and books The Hunger Games, the salute - which also has roots in the Scout movement - has been adopted widely in Thailand as well in activists' protests against their military government.

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Global groupings

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rance is furious. Theresa May is worried. The announcement of the new Australia-UK-US alliance (Aukus) and the ditching of a previous French-Australian submarine deal has led France's foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to term the pact " a stab in the back", while the former British prime minister is concerned about Britain being dragged into a war over the future of Taiwan.

Oddly enough, Beijing's reaction has been rather muted. Yes, it has accused the west of a "cold war mentality", and Xi Jinping has warned foreigners not to interfere in the region, but its warning that China would "closely monitor the situation" was close to a "cut and paste" outrage.

Aukus is more significant for what it reveals about the three partners' thinking than the actual content of the pact. Some observers are calling it a "nuclear" deal when it is nothing of the sort; the submarines are not the nuclear weapon-carrying Tridents seen on the BBC drama Vigil, but vessels powered by nuclear energy, giving them longer range. For the west, Aukus shows the real fear that the next president of the US might be either Donald Trump or one of his apostles. Boris Johnson has spoken in firm tones about Aukus lasting for "decades": the unstated implication is, regardless of who the presidents of the US are over that period, Aukus is about binding the US into Asia-Pacific security for the long term.

Less obviously, it is also about binding the US into European security in a world where Nato may be less relevant. This week France has every reason to be angry about losing its Australian alliance and submarine contract. But over the next decade, expect to see a rather different arrangement: the UK and France will both be pillars of a European security order (along with a nascent EU force). And association with Aukus brings the most important stabilising prize - the presence of the US allied firmly to a major European power (albeit a non-EU one).

China's rhetoric about the cold war misses an important point: the structures of that era were binary and rigid. But Aukus suggests that the liberal order can reconstitute itself through "minilateral" deals, in which different constellations of powers act together over different issues. The "Quad" of Japan, Australia, India and the US is the best-known example of this so far, but Aukus may be a sign of more to come. Those deals may anger individual members of that order in the short term (British anger at the US over Afghanistan, French anger at Australia over Aukus), but they actually show that the liberal order is more robust than surface noise suggests. It's not a cold war, but a series of constantly changing adaptations.

Beijing seems to know this, which may be why its response has sounded so half-hearted. China will be less concerned about the specifics of Aukus, as there is plenty of western military hardware in the region already. The real challenge to China is, why do so few of its neighbours back its complaints about the new pact? Singapore, a country that has spent decades balancing between the US and China in the region, expressed hopes that Aukus would " complement the regional architecture ", which made it sound more like an elegant Georgian fireplace than a deal over deadly weapons. China's failure over the past two decades has not been its failure to remove the US from the region, but its continuing inability to persuade local countries that American departure would be a good idea.

The achilles heel of Aukus may not be in security, but in a different area: trade. China is the biggest partner for all its neighbours and is outside only one major trading bloc in the region, the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership. A British Foreign Policy Group report this week, which I co-authored, predicted that a move to join the CPTPP would be part of China's strategy to improve the regional narrative around itself. The day after Aukus was announced, Beijing declared its formal bid to join the partnership.

This is a smart move but also a risky one. The CPTPP demands a range of standards for trade and, crucially, labour, which are certainly weaker than EU rules but still more exacting than those in China itself. Beijing has heft, and may be able to negotiate its own terms more freely than smaller members. But its entry may well include discussions with what seems likely to be the partnership's newest member in 2022 - the UK, which will be, after Japan, the second biggest economy in this grouping. If the UK can work out how to contribute to a process that moves China into higher standards of trade and labour rights, at the same time as keeping Aukus alive, that would be a genuine contribution to the idea of "global Britain".

It was Donald Trump who took the US out of the TPP, the pact's predecessor. China's attempt at entry might just tempt the Americans back in; which would mean that the greatest irony of Aukus could be that the world's two biggest economies become more divided on security, and simultaneously more thoroughly entwined through trade.

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The Aukus pact is a sign of a new global order | Rana Mitter

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rance is furious. Theresa May is worried. The announcement of the new Australia-UK-US alliance (Aukus) and the ditching of a previous French-Australian submarine deal has led France's foreign minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, to term the pact " a stab in the back", while the former British prime minister is concerned about Britain being dragged into a war over the future of Taiwan.

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Superpowers - The blueprint for world domination

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Superpowers - The blueprint for world domination

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The blueprint for world domination that spooked America - BBC Ideas

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Watch the "The blueprint for world domination that spooked America" video at BBC Ideas. Explore other related content via our curated "Ideas that shaped the world" playlist.

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Superpowers - Rivals in the scramble to be the 21st Centuries superpower

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Superpowers - Rivals in the scramble to be the 21st Centuries superpower

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19 Oct 2019

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he US troop withdrawal from Syria, the betrayal of the west's Kurdish allies, and subsequent advances by Russian, Iranian and Syrian regime forces have been widely interpreted as a dramatic "watershed moment" both for the Middle East and for American global influence.

Excited analysts claimed that last week's Syrian upheaval foreshadowed an end to US regional leadership, even to Washington's international dominance. A commentator for The Hill, a website reporting on American politics, compared the withdrawal to another famous turning point - Britain's "east of Suez" retreat in 1968.

Syrian developments were also taken by some observers as proof that an increasingly isolationist America is turning in on itself and giving way - as failing empires inevitably do - to a successor world order shaped by emerging global powers, principally China.

But is the Syrian crisis really a watershed moment? And if it is, who are the contenders for America's crown as no 1 global superpower - and what are their own strengths and weaknesses?

The perception of gradual, broad US international disengagement is widely held. But as historians know, it is hard to tell exactly when a specific, definitive turning point is reached. Contemporary observers, caught up in fast-moving events, are often the least qualified to do so.

The Syrian upheaval provides evidence that the global balance of power is shifting in ways that are not yet understood.

Identifying such transformative tipping points can still be problematic hundreds of years later. Asked about the significance of the 1789 French revolution, Zhou Enlai, the former Chinese Communist party leader, reportedly quipped: "It's too soon to say." Permanent changes in the strategic and geopolitical balance of power rarely come out of the blue. With hindsight, such shifts are frequently seen as the long-signalled culmination of preceding policy decisions, unconnected political and military moves, mishaps and miscalculations.

By general agreement, 1945 was a watershed year, marking the final defeat of fascism and the creation, through the UN, of what is known as the "rules-based international order". In much the same way, 1989 is seen, in the US at least, as the year when the west "won" the cold war with the Soviet Union.

Yet it can be argued (as Russians do) that the battle of Stalingrad, which concluded in 1943 with a decisive Red Army victory over the invading Nazis, was the true turning point of the second world war. Likewise, some say the cold war merely paused in 1989, only to resume a decade later in a different guise.

Looking back in time, the true significance of other big moments, trumpeted as critical turning points when they occurred, appears similarly open to question. For example, Britain's post-imperial "east of Suez" retreat was initially triggered by India's independence in 1947. By 1968, it was already long under way.

In 1992, the Maastricht treaty creating the European Union was cheered, and condemned, as opening the door to a federal Europe - an aspiration unfulfilled more than a quarter of a century later. Tony Blair's New Labour landslide in 1997 was hailed as a bright new dawn, but quickly clouded over. In the Middle East, the "historic" 2011 Arab spring pro-democracy revolts, source of much instantaneous hope and joy, proved to be a cruelly deceptive mirage - precursors of a new epoch of intensifying, region-wide conflict and repression, typified by Syria.

The early rebel failure to topple Bashar al-Assad, Syria's president, when combined with Donald Trump's 2016 pledge to end US involvement in "endless" foreign wars" and age-old Turkish-Kurdish enmity, arguably predetermined events that led predictably, if not inevitably, to last week's ultimate strategic crunch.

Nor do the Syrian regime's advances represent a sudden, unexpected twist. Assad has been steadily re-establishing control over the main populated areas in recent years. Neighbouring Arab leaders have been mending fences in the belief that Assad has won the war. European governments mostly share this view, though they do not say so publicly.

The bigger claim - that the latest developments amount to a pivotal moment for expanding Russian influence in the Middle East - is also contentious. Since intervening in Syria in 2015, Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has ably exploited ambivalent and confused US policies. While Trump has recklessly stoked confrontation with Iran, Putin has cautiously cultivated cordial working relationships with the main regional actors and adversaries, including Israel, Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Egypt, based on shared interests in counter-terrorism, arms sales, and oil and gas production.

In other words, Russia's influence across the Middle East has been growing for some time. That is partly the result of US strategic incoherence, partly of Putin's diplomatic acuity. Russia's latest success in Syria follows this trend. While it's significant, it probably does not amount, by itself, to a "watershed moment". What the Syrian upheaval does do, however, is provide additional, confirmatory evidence that the global balance of power is slowly and incrementally shifting in ways that are not yet fully understood and with consequences not yet glimpsed.

This process resembles not so much a sudden earthquake as a long-drawn-out series of tremors and shocks. And while it's clear that the grip of the old, post-1945 US-dominated international order is weakening, it is unclear what will replace it - and who will come out on top. The main global contenders - the US, China, Russia and Europe and their respective allies, dependents and satraps - remain the same. But the relative ability, and desire, of each power bloc to shape and lead the 21st century by outmanoeuvring and outperforming rivals may be fundamentally changing.

Whether last week was a watershed moment or not, it's plain that the new world order is coming up for grabs.

Although the US remains, by most measures, the world's most influential and powerful country, the advent of Donald Trump has encouraged talk of an end to its global dominance. Yet if this is indeed happening, the change began not with Trump but as far back as the 1989-93 presidency of George HW Bush.

By declaring victory in the cold war and promising a domestic peace dividend paid through reduced military spending, Bush helped nurture a delusional mindset that believed US global hegemony and the newly found status of the US as sole superpower were forever set in stone. The idea gained ground that America could, and should, do exactly as it pleased. Such complacent thinking was given superficial intellectual weight by Francis Fukuyama's much-mangled thesis, The End of History?, first published as an essay in 1989. Part of its attraction lay in its connections to the original isolationist, unilateralist "America First" era that died a sudden death at Pearl Harbor in 1941.

The illusion that the US could stand apart, and stand above, the world was shattered for a second time on 11 September 2001. But since then, unlike in the post-1945 period, US foreign policy and war-making have been essentially defensive, self-interested and reactive in nature. The proactive, exemplary global vision of democracy, prosperity and freedom, delivered to the world from a "shining city upon a hill", as Ronald Reagan put it in 1989, has been obscured. With its perspectives and instincts fatally distorted by the "war on terror", America has lost its sense of mission. Swingeing cuts to foreign aid budgets, hostility to the UN and multilateralism in general, and an ideologically driven, post-Iraq aversion to "nation-building", symbolise this change.

In this respect, Trump is but the crude, know-nothing legatee of a regressive process long in the making. Relative US economic decline arising from globalisation, deindustrialisation and increased competition for resources and markets have helped narrow US horizons. Trump's dislike of costly "foreign entanglements" such as Syria oddly echoes the Founding Fathers and White House predecessors such as James Monroe. All the same, he is a modern aberration whose vow to "make America great again" is having the opposite effect.

The US still leads, mostly, in key areas such as digital, cyber, AI, medical science, tech innovation and space exploration. Its wealth is unmatched. It recently became the top global producer of oil and gas. And it remains the foremost military power. It is said that Trumpism has permanently changed America's outlook. That may be true but it's a fair bet that his successors, whoever they are, will try to halt America's retreat. Future presidents will not cede global leadership to others, as he has done, and may move aggressively to restore America's reputation and leading role in the 21st century world.

The European Union is good at values: it stands for individual human and civil rights, inclusive democratic governance, equality of opportunity and multilateralism - meaning a collective, collaborative approach to global problems such as the climate crisis and migration.

Many of these values, promulgated by 18th-century Enlightenment thinkers, were enshrined in the US constitution, and bind the Old World to the New. Europe and the US appear natural partners. Yet the story of recent years is one of growing division and rivalry.

There have been damaging splits and rows over issues such as the Iraq war, trade protectionism, the importance of international institutions such as the United Nations, the future of Nato, transnational justice, health and food standards, and environmental policy.

The EU is divided from within, too, over the way the eurozone operates, budget fairness and French-led plans for a more integrated, federal Europe. There are also east-west and north-south splits, dramatised by the rise of hard-right populists in Italy and by Poland's and Hungary's governance disputes with Brussels.

Recent polling suggests most people in most member countries support the EU, but there are wide divergences over what it is for and what it should do. Voters believe that Europe carries more clout in the world if it acts in unison. But that often proves difficult. Last week saw the EU split over a proposed arms embargo on Turkey. Meanwhile, Britain's defection prospectively weakens its ability to influence events.

EU enthusiasts argue that the bloc should do more to boost Europe's standing as a key player on the world stage. But even if all its divisions were somehow magically healed, the idea that the EU may one day be in a position to challenge American or Chinese global leadership still seems far-fetched.

Given the chaotic post-communist legacy bequeathed by Boris Yeltsin, Vladimir Putin, Russia's president, has made the best of a bad job. The former KGB spy once bemoaned the collapse of the Soviet empire as the "greatest geopolitical catastrophe" of the last century. In contrast, Russia in the 21st century punches above its weight.

Yet Putin's diplomatic, military and strategic successes, notably in the Middle East, cannot disguise fundamental domestic weaknesses: chronic underinvestment, overreliance on energy export revenues, poor infrastructure and social provision, endemic corruption, rising political discontent, and a pervasive, fearful sense of state lawlessness. Putin has largely defined his foreign policy in disruptive opposition to the US and the EU - by slavishly befriending China, courting Eurosceptic east Europeans, meddling in the Balkans, backing outlier regimes such as Iran, selling arms to anybody who asks, manipulating other people's elections (and his own), and generally subverting democratic states.

But as a plausible alternative to either the US or China in terms of global leadership, Russia is outmatched and outclassed. Putin lacks a positive, constructive vision for his own country, let alone the world - and, opposition leader Alexei Navalny apart, there is no sign yet of a Russian leader who has one.

Xi Jinping, China's president, makes no secret of his ambition to restore the Middle Kingdom to its once unchallenged leadership position at the centre of international events.

His oddly named Belt & Road Initiative, involving infrastructure development and capital investment in more than 150 countries, is probably the most rapidly expansionist global strategy ever devised by a single state.

In previous eras, Britain and other imperial powers used superior military might, physical control of territory, and divide-and-rule tactics to project their national interests around the globe. Xi's empire-building is less adversarial, primarily economic and financial in nature. China calls it a win-win strategy. Critics call it ruthless debt diplomacy. Under Xi's leadership, China has grown increasingly assertive and competitive in its relations with other powers, principally the US. Large Chinese companies such as Huawei, ultimately subject to state control, are successfully challenging equivalent American and European businesses in growth areas such as telecoms and nuclear power.

China's military capabilities are growing rapidly, too, notably its "blue water" naval surface and submarine fleet whose evident aim is to challenge American control in the western Pacific.

This looks certain to increase tensions with western powers around flashpoints such as Taiwan and disputed areas of the South China Sea.

Xi's China also offers the world an alternative governance model - an authoritarian, paternalistic system, reinforced by mass surveillance, that ostensibly guarantees the wellbeing and safety of citizens in return for their political acquiescence and public silence.

This model is plainly not working in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. As China's middle class grows, it may not work much longer in mainland cities, either.

China's dramatic economic growth has slowed. While this may be temporary, the Communist party's lack of democratic legitimacy and the absence of consent pose the biggest long-term threat to China's 21st-century global ambitions.

If Xi can overcome that obstacle, there may be no stopping him.

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Rivals in the scramble to be the world's 21st-century superpower

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he US troop withdrawal from Syria, the betrayal of the west's Kurdish allies, and subsequent advances by Russian, Iranian and Syrian regime forces have been widely interpreted as a dramatic "watershed moment" both for the Middle East and for American global influence.

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What did 20 years of western intervention in Afghanistan achieve?

April 2021

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he longest, most pointless and unsuccessful war that Britain has fought in the past 70 years - its intervention in Afghanistan - is to end in September. I doubt anyone will notice. Nations celebrate victories, not defeats.

Twenty years ago the United States decided to relieve its 9/11 agony not just by blasting Osama bin Laden's base in the Afghan mountains, but by toppling the entire Afghan regime. This was despite young Taliban moderates declaring Bin Laden an "unwelcome guest" and the regime demanding he leave.The US then decided not just to blast Kabul but invited Nato to launder its action as a matter of global security. Britain had no dog in this fight and only joined because Tony Blair liked George W Bush.

American and British troops roamed the country, signing up warlords or setting up new governors. Visiting Kabul at the time, I was told of Nato's ambition to wipe out terror, build a new democracy, liberate women and create a "friend in the region". I had an eerie sense of Britain in 1839 embarking on the First Afghan War.

Most Americans at the time wanted to get out, and concentrate on nation-building in Iraq. It was the British who were eager to stay. Blair even sent a minister, Clare Short, to eliminate the poppy crop. Whatever she did, it increased production from six provinces to 28, and raised poppy revenue to a record $2.3bn (£1.7bn).

Spin forward to 2005, and the British army was in full imperial mode, itching to march south with 3,400 troops and conquer Pashtun Helmand. The British commander, General David Richards, was adamant that it would be just a matter of winning hearts and minds in friendly "inkspot" towns. His defence secretary, John Reid, hoped this would be achieved "without firing one shot". They had fun giving their operations names such as Achilles, Pickaxe-Handle, Sledgehammer Hit, Eagle's Eye, Red Dagger and Blue Sword.

Everything in Helmand went wrong. The expedition had to be salvaged by 10,000 American marines. Four hundred and fifty-four Britons died.

The Russians, who had been forced out of Afghanistan a decade before, were privately amazed at the ineptitude of the western operations - and publicly delighted. Gordon Brown, by then prime minister, was forced implausibly to explain in 2009 that British troops were dying in Helmand to make Britain's streets safe.

Since then, most of Nato has retreated, hoping against hope that diplomacy would rescue the Kabul government and the west from abject humiliation. Three US presidents have pledged various forms of "surge and depart", but lacked the political nerve to go through with them. Even Joe Biden has extended a May deadline to September. Each has done just enough to keep the puppet regime in Kabul safe without returning to full-scale imperial rule.

America's 2,300 troops and their air support will now leave, as will Britain's 750 (as one senior UK defence source told the Guardian: "If they [the US] go, we'll all have to go,"). For the US, the cost has been high: 2,216 dead and more than $2tn spent. Billions in "aid" are said to have left Afghanistan, much of it to the Dubai property market. The cost to Afghan civilians has been appalling, put at between 50,000 and 100,000 deaths over the two decades, all in retaliation for "hosting" the 9/11 attackers. Is that what we call western values?

As a senior US official said this week, when President Biden fixed his new deadline: "The threat against the homeland from Afghanistan is at a level we can address." That has surely been the case for years in Britain as in America, yet we are still there.

The latest peace talks in Qatar are going nowhere. The reason is obvious: that the Taliban need only to wait for September, when they can do as they choose. The current regime may hold Kabul for a while, but if it can barely govern with American help, it can hardly do so alone.

Left alone back in 2001, the Taliban leadership - with which US intelligence was already liaising - would have dealt with Bin Laden. It would have been held in check by its local warlords and by the Pakistani army. Instead, the Pashtun have been left to rampage for two decades, financed by western heroin users. The worst it has suffered is the decimation of its senior figures by US drones, to absolutely no effect. Afghanistan will need these people to contain another product of Nato intervention: the country is now a focus of Islamic State activity.

What has the US and UK intervention achieved? The military theorist Gen Sir Rupert Smith, in his book The Utility of Force, has pointed out that modern armies are almost useless in counter-insurgency wars. They have roamed the Middle East from Afghanistan to Libya, "creating one ruined nation after another". Britain's sole justification is the hoary Foreign Office cliche about having influence, deterring terror and standing tall in the world. They are neo-imperialist vacuities. In a world of apologies, some mighty big ones are due in September.

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What did 20 years of western intervention in Afghanistan achieve? Ruination | Simon Jenkins

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he longest, most pointless and unsuccessful war that Britain has fought in the past 70 years - its intervention in Afghanistan - is to end in September. I doubt anyone will notice. Nations celebrate victories, not defeats.

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Superpowers - Is the US still Asia's only military superpower?

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Superpowers - Is the US still Asia's only military superpower?

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25 Aug 2019

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US pre-eminence in the Pacific is no more.

For a long time experts have been speaking about China's rapid military modernisation referring to it as "a rising power".

But this analysis may be out of date. China is not so much a rising power; it has risen; and in many ways it now challenges the US across a number of military domains.

This is the conclusion of a new report from the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney in Australia.

It warns that US defence strategy in the Indo-Pacific region "is in the throes of an unprecedented crisis" and that Washington might struggle to defend its allies against China.

"America no longer enjoys military primacy in the Indo-Pacific", it notes, "and its capacity to uphold a favourable balance of power is increasingly uncertain."

The report points to Beijing's extraordinary arsenal of missiles that threaten the key bases of the US and its allies. These installations, it asserts, "could be rendered useless by precision strikes in the opening hours of a conflict".

China is not a global superpower like the United States. Indeed it is doubtful if its military ambitions extend that far (though this too may be changing as it slowly develops a network of ports and bases abroad).

For now its global reach depends much more on the power of its economy. China lacks the "proselytising zeal" - the sense of over-seas mission, that over the twentieth century saw the US strive for global dominance.

It also has nothing like the soft-power pull of the United States - no equivalent to blue jeans, Hollywood or burgers - to encourage people to share its values.

Indeed according to many indices Washington's raw military punch still greatly out-weighs that of Beijing. Washington's nuclear arsenal (and indeed Moscow's) is significantly larger than that available to Beijing.

The US still retains a technological edge in key areas like intelligence collection; ballistic missile defence; and the latest generation warplanes. The US can also rely upon a deeply entrenched network of alliances both in Asia and through Nato in Europe.

China has nothing like this kind of alliance system. But it is fast eroding Washington's technical edge. And in any case what matters to China is Asia and what it sees in expansive terms as its own back-yard. Two key factors - focus and proximity - mean that in Asia, China is already a superpower to rival the US.

China has studied US capabilities and warfighting and has come up with an effective strategy to mitigate the traditional sources of US military power, not least the US Navy's powerful carrier battle groups, the central element of Washington's ability to project military force.

Dubbed in military-speak, an "anti-access and area denial" approach, China has single-mindedly focused on a range of sensors and weapons systems that it hopes will compel US forces to operate as far away from its own shores as possible.

At the outset this was inherently a defensive posture. But increasingly analysts see China's capabilities as enabling it to seize the initiative, confident that it can deter and cope with any likely US response.

"Chinese counter-intervention systems," the Australian study notes, "have undermined America's ability to project power into the Indo-pacific, raising the risk that China could use limited force to achieve a fait accompli victory before America can respond, challenging US security guarantees in the process."

China's goal is in a time of crisis is to deny the US access to the area within the "first island chain" (the South China Sea bounded by a line running from the bottom of Japan, encompassing Taiwan, and passing to the west of the Philippines).

But it also seeks to restrict access to the outer "second island chain" with weapons that can reach as far as the US bases on Guam. This overall strategy can be bolstered by Chinese land-based aircraft and missiles.

Of course, it is not as if the Pentagon is unaware of the China challenge. After decades of counter-insurgency warfare the US military is being re-structured and re-equipped for renewed big-power competition. In the Cold War the focus was the Soviet Union. Today it is largely China.

However the Sydney University report questions whether Washington is sufficiently focused on the task in hand. It says that "an outdated superpower mindset in the (US) foreign policy establishment is likely to limit Washington's ability to scale back other global commitments or to make the strategic trade-offs required to succeed in the Indo-Pacific."

Money is going into new weaponry and research. But the task is huge.

"America has an atrophying force that is not sufficiently ready, equipped or postured for great power competition" and the report warns that a back-log of simultaneous modernisation priorities "will likely outstrip its budget capacity."

It is a sobering document written by a prestigious institution from one of Washington's closest allies in the region.

China clearly feels empowered - you can see this from the tone of its recently published defence white paper.

President Xi Jinping has decided not just to stand up to President Trump in the ongoing trade war but to take a much more assertive position, whether it be towards the pro-democracy demonstrations in Hong Kong or to China's long-standing claims over Taiwan.

China's military rise to match its growing economic muscle was inevitable. But some analysts fear that President Trump has made a difficult situation worse.

Many in the US feel it was time to stand-up to China on trade - but the way the US is going about it leads several experts to fear that Washington may simply lose the trade war.

Overall the Trump Administration's foreign policy often lacks a clear strategic aspect and is prone to the whims of the Presidential twitter feed and bizarre distractions like his apparent desire to purchase Greenland.

In contrast China knows exactly where it wants to go and it has the strategy and the means to get there. Indeed, for all intents and purposes, it may have already arrived.

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Is the US still Asia's only military superpower?

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US pre-eminence in the Pacific is no more. For a long time experts have been speaking about China's rapid military modernisation referring to it as "a rising power". But this analysis may be out of date. China is not so much a rising power; it has risen; and in many ways it now challenges the US across a number of military domains.

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China owed $385bn – including ‘hidden debt’ from poorer nations, says report

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Researchers have identified debts of at least $385bn (£286bn) owed by 165 countries to China for "Belt and road initiative" (BRI) projects, with loans systematically underreported to international bodies such as the World Bank.

The four-year study by US-based research lab AidData said the debt burdens were kept off the public balance sheets through the use of special purpose and semi-private loans, and were "substantially larger than research institutions, credit rating agencies, or intergovernmental organisations with surveillance responsibilities previously understood".

It found 42 low-to-middle income countries (LMICs) had debt exposure to China exceeding 10% of their GDP, including Laos, Papua New Guinea, the Maldives, Brunei, Cambodia and Myanmar.

Laos had significant proportions of its debt classed by AidData as "hidden", the report revealed. The $5.9bn China-Laos railway project is funded entirely with unofficial debt equivalent to about a third of its GDP.

The BRI was launched in 2013 as Xi Jinping's signature international investment programme. Hundreds of predominately low-to-middle income countries have signed up for Chinese loans towards massive infrastructure projects, but it is now facing competition from the G7's " build back better world" infrastructure initiative.

In the report, AidData examined more than 13,000 BRI projects worth more than $843bn in 165 countries between 2000 and 2017. It found China's overseas lending had dramatically shifted from government-to-government loans during the pre-BRI era, to almost 70% now going to state-owned companies and banks, joint ventures, private institutions, and special purpose vehicles (SPVs).

This had led to extensive underreporting of repayment obligations - to an estimated $385bn - because the primary borrowers are no longer central government institutions with stricter reporting requirements.

"These debts, for the most part, do not appear on government balance sheets in LMICs," the report said. "However, most of them benefit from explicit or implicit forms of host government liability protection, which has blurred the distinction between private and public debt and introduced major public financial management challenges to LMICs."

AidData said global organisations such as the World Bank and International Monetary Fund were aware of the problem generally but the report quantified the alarming scale.

Egypt's new administrative capital, partly funded by the BRI, east of Cairo. Photograph: Khaled Elfiqi/EPA

Amid growing controversy around the initiative, and pushback from some governments that have sought to scrap or renegotiate projects, BRI lending has slowed in recent years, but the earlier debts remain. In 2019, Xi pledged to increase transparency and financial stability in the programme, and to have a "zero tolerance for corruption".

While more than 100 countries have signed up to the BRI, there have been long-running concerns about transparency, and suggestions that massive loans to high-risk countries were enabling "debt book diplomacy" in some - but not all - regions, forcing them to cede ownership or control of major assets to Beijing in lieu of repayment.

However, the report noted asset seizure in lieu of repayment was only allowed in direct government loans, while the increasingly frequent arrangements made via SPVs and other semi-private mechanisms saw repayments taken from the revenue generated by the funded projects.

The shift towards the latter increased the risk to Chinese lenders, but the report said it was a "necessary work-around" if the lenders wanted to fulfil Xi's BRI goals, because many countries were already laden with debt and not officially able to take on much more.

"Many poor governments could not take on any more loans," AidData executive director Brad Parks told AFP. "So [China] got creative."

Peter Cai, a research fellow at the Australia-based Lowy Institute, said it would be difficult to enforce the debt repayments, particularly where there was civil unrest or poor governance. "There's always a problem of enforceability," he said.

The report also found China had rapidly scaled up its provision of loans to resource-rich countries that have high levels of corruption, and 35% of BRI projects had faced issues of corruption, labour violations, environmental pollution and public protests.

"Beijing is more willing to bankroll projects in risky countries than other official creditors, but it is also more aggressive than its peers at positioning itself at the front of the repayment line (via collateralisation)," the report said, noting 40 of the 50 largest loans were collateralised, often against future commodity exports.

Russia secured loans and export credits worth $125bn, mostly contracted by Russian state-owned oil and gas enterprises, collateralised with the proceeds from oil and gas sales to China. Venezuela secured $86bn in non-concessional and semi-concessional debt from China's state-owned policy and commercial banks, mostly through loans collateralised against future oil exports.

AidData said a separate but related finding showed Beijing was disproportionately lending to countries that performed poorly on conventional measures of credit worthiness, in contrast to other international lenders, but demanded far higher interest rates with shorter repayment periods.

Cai noted the case of Pakistan, which Asia Nikkei reported had Chinese loans with average interest rates of 3.76%, compared with a typical OECD-linked loan's rate of 1.1%.

"A lot of banks wouldn't even lend to Pakistan. If you're able to secure a loan you have to pay the higher risk premium," he said.

China's foreign ministry said in a statement that "not all debts are unsustainable", adding that since its launch the BRI had "consistently upheld principles of shared consultation, shared contributions and shared benefits".
Additional reporting by AFP

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China owed $385bn - including 'hidden debt' from poorer nations, says report

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Researchers have identified debts of at least $385bn (£286bn) owed by 165 countries to China for "Belt and road initiative" (BRI) projects, with loans systematically underreported to international bodies such as the World Bank.

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How to see the world

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe must be released 'permanently', says PM

07/03/21

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Boris Johnson has called for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman jailed in Iran on spying charges, to be released "permanently" so she can be reunited with her family in the UK.

She has had her ankle tag removed at the end of her five-year sentence.

However, her husband Richard Ratcliffe has been told a new court case against her is scheduled for next Sunday.

The PM said he was "pleased" about her tag, but "her continued confinement remains totally unacceptable".

He wrote in a tweet: "She must be released permanently so she can return to her family in the UK, and we continue to do all we can to achieve this."

The charity worker had been under house arrest in Tehran since being moved from jail last March. She has always denied the charges against her.

Speaking after her ankle tag was removed on Sunday, Mr Ratcliffe said told the PA news agency it was "a mixed day for us" and "Nazanin is genuinely happy" to be free of her electronic bracelet.

"I'm a bit more guarded - it feels to me like they have made one blockage just as they have removed another, and we very clearly remain in the middle of this government game of chess," he said.

He told the BBC that his wife had gone to see her grandmother and was "determined to enjoy the afternoon and not think about what it all means".

"I don't think we expected something clean but how muddy this is I'm not quite sure yet," he said.

Earlier, Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab said Iran "continues to put her and her family through a cruel and an intolerable ordeal".

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe, 42, had been out of prison since last spring due to the coronavirus pandemic but had been confined to her parent's house. Her sentence was due to end on Sunday.

She was arrested in April 2016 while travelling to visit her parents in Iran with her young British-born daughter, Gabriella, who is now six years old.

The dual national was sentenced to five years in prison over allegations of plotting to overthrow the Iranian government, which she denies.

She has not yet had her British passport returned to her, according to Tulip Siddiq, the Labour MP for the Hampstead and Kilburn constituency in London where her family live.

Ms Siddiq told the BBC: "She does have to go back to court and we don't know what awaits her there.

"Nazanin is quite worried because there was talk of another case being put against her which may of course mean another sentence, and we don't know how long for."

However Ms Siddiq said the removal of her ankle tag meant she could visit her elderly grandmother "which is the thing she mentions every time I speak to her".

"So on one hand they are celebrating that she has some elements of freedom in terms of not having the tracker anymore, but we just don't know what's going to happen in the court case," she added.

"I know her daughter has been counting down the days on her calendar at home for her mother to return."

Jeremy Hunt, who served as foreign secretary while Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe was in jail, said Iran's actions were "totally and utterly inhumane".

"At the centre of this is an innocent woman, her husband and her daughter," he told the BBC, adding that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe should be allowed to return home to the UK.

Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy said there had been "an increasing use of this totally unacceptable hostage diplomacy from Iran", and that the government was right to condemn the use of individuals such as Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe "as a bargaining chip in this wider political game".

Meanwhile, the Liberal Democrat's spokeswoman for foreign affairs, Layla Moran, has called for the UK to impose sanctions if she is sentenced for a second time.

"Strong words must be backed by the threat of real action if the Iranian authorities do not do the right thing," she said.

Antonio Zappulla, chief executive of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's employer at the time of her arrest, said he had spoken to her on Sunday and she was "ecstatic" to be able to have a coffee in a café.

"Nazanin should be allowed her permanent liberty and to walk away from this appalling affront to justice; instead, for all intents and purposes, she is still held hostage," he said.

And Kate Allen, director at Amnesty International UK, said the news that Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's ankle tag had been removed was "bittersweet" and "yet another example of the calculated cruelty of the Iranian authorities".

"Nazanin was convicted after a deeply unfair trial the first time around and this spurious new charge and possible trial is clearly designed to delay her release and exert yet more pressure on Nazanin and her family," she said.

"This won't be over until Nazanin has her passport and is on a flight heading home to the UK," she added, urging the government to take "serious diplomatic action".

Mrs Zaghari-Ratcliffe's sentence has included eight months of solitary confinement, blindfolded interrogations and hunger strikes to press for medical treatment.

Prior to her arrest, she lived in London with her husband and child.

In November, she was taken to court on fresh charges of spreading propaganda against the Iranian regime.

Her family and the UK government have always maintained her innocence and she has been given diplomatic protection by the Foreign Office - meaning the case is treated as a formal, legal dispute between Britain and Iran.

Mr Ratcliffe believes his wife and other dual nationals are being held hostage because Iran wants the UK to pay a decades-old debt over an arms deal that was never fulfilled.

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Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe must be released 'permanently', says PM

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Boris Johnson has called for Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman jailed in Iran on spying charges, to be released "permanently" so she can be reunited with her family in the UK. She has had her ankle tag removed at the end of her five-year sentence.

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Iraq war 20 years on: How invasion plunged country into decades of chaos March 2023

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The invasion of March 2003 was a catastrophe for Iraq and its people.

More proof of that, measured in broken lives, was at a suspected site of a mass grave in the desert outside Sinjar, not far from the border with Syria.

Survivors of one of Iraq's damaged communities, the Yazidis, looked on as the earth in a marble quarry was excavated. On a wire fence around the site were photos of dozens of people, mostly men, who had been killed by jihadists from the Islamic State group. They were from Zile-li, a village near the quarry, where 1,800 men were taken and killed on 3 August 2014.

The Yazidis revere both the Quran and the Bible; their religion is influenced by both Christianity and Islam. Islamic State considered them to be infidels and carried out a genocidal assault. It happened after the Americans and British had ended their occupation, but a direct line links the massacre to the invasion, and the disastrous years that followed.

Among those watching the excavation was Naif Jasso, the Sheikh of Kocho, a Yazidi community that suffered an even worse attack than Zile-li. He said that in Kocho, 517 people out of a population of 1,250 were killed by jihadists from IS, also known as ISIS or Daesh.

In Zile-li, men were separated from their families at gunpoint and shot dead at the quarry. Sofian Saleh, who was 16 at the time, was among the crowd at the excavation. He is one of only two men from Zile-li who survived. As he waited for death with his father, brother and 20 to 30 other men, he saw another group shot dead. Their bodies tumbled down a cliff into the quarry. Then it was their turn.

"They tied our hands from behind before the shooting. They took us and threw us on the ground," he said.

Sofian's father and brother were killed, but he survived because bodies fell on him, covering him up.

Islamic State was using its favourite tactic. First, they killed the men, then took the women as slaves. Children were removed from their mothers to be indoctrinated as IS recruits. A mother sitting near the suspected grave wept as she remembered the baby ripped from her and given to a jihadist family.

Next to the wire fence around the site, Suad Daoud Chatto, a woman in her 20s, stood with a poster. On it were the faces of nine men from her extended family who were killed, and two missing female relatives. She said jihadists captured her in 2014 when she was 16, along with many other women and girls, and held her in Syria. She remained until 2019, when she was rescued as the Caliphate collapsed.

"They were like barbarians, they kept us in handcuffs for a long time. Our hands were still tied even during the meals," she said.

"They married me off many times... they were marrying the slaves. They did not spare anyone. We were all raped. They were killing people before our eyes. They killed all the Yazidi men - they killed eight of my uncles. They destroyed many families."

In the end, only a few bags of human bones were found at the site. Dozens of others are still to excavated.

By the time IS rampaged through Iraq in the summer of 2014, the US and the UK had ended their occupation. Jihadist ideology existed long before the invasion, and had inspired the 9/11 attacks.

But far from destroying the ideology of Osama Bin Laden and the jihadist extremists, the years of chaos and brutality set off in 2003 turbo-charged murderous jihadist violence. Al-Qaeda, broken for a while by an alliance between the Americans and Sunni tribes, regenerated into the even more barbarous IS.

Iraq is more stable so far this year than it has been for a long while. Baghdad, Mosul and other cities are much safer. But Iraqis feel the results of the invasion every day. Its consequences have shaped and blighted millions of lives and changed their country profoundly.

It is a grim irony that the invasion has dropped out of political and public debate in the US, which conceived and led it, and in the UK, its closest ally in the coalition. The Americans and British bear a heavy responsibility for what happened after the invasion, and its consequences also affect them.

Iraq's tyrant, Saddam Hussein, was well worth overthrowing - he had imprisoned and killed thousands of Iraqis, even using chemical weapons against rebellious Kurds. The problem was how it was done, the way the US and UK ignored international law, and the violence that gripped Iraq after the Bush administration failed to make a plan to fill the power vacuum created by regime change.

The past 20 years since the invasion, coming on top of Saddam's dictatorship, add up to almost half a century of torture for the Iraqi people.

Even for those who were there, it is hard to recreate the febrile atmosphere of "fear, power and hubris", as one historian put it recently, that gripped the US in the 18 months between al-Qaeda's 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the invasion of Iraq.

I was in New York a few days after the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center were destroyed, as F-15 jets patrolled above Manhattan. It was a visible demonstration of American force, as the biggest military power on the planet worked out how to respond.

The shock of the attacks swiftly produced George W Bush's declaration of "war on terror" against al-Qaeda and its jihadist fellow travellers. UK Prime Minister Tony Blair chartered Concorde to cross the Atlantic to offer support. He believed Britain's best guarantee of influence in the world was to stay close to the White House.

They moved fast against al-Qaeda's network in Afghanistan. Before the end of the year, a US-led coalition removed the Taliban regime from power when it refused to give up al-Qaeda's leader, Osama Bin Laden. Kabul was not enough for America.

President Bush and his advisors saw a global threat to the US. They thought states that opposed them could make deadly alliances with al-Qaeda and its imitators. The biggest target in their sights was Iraq. Saddam Hussein had been a thorn in America's side ever since he sent his army into Kuwait in 1990. Without any evidence, the Americans tried to manufacture a link between Saddam and al-Qaeda when none existed. In reality the Iraqi leader, a secular dictator, saw religious extremists as a threat.

The president's father, George HW Bush, decided not to remove Saddam from power in Baghdad after the Iraqi occupiers were driven out of Kuwait by an international coalition assembled by the US in 1991. The first President Bush and his advisors saw trouble ahead if they continued to Baghdad. A long, belligerent occupation of Iraq looked like a morass and they had no UN authorisation to topple the regime.

I was in Baghdad when the ceasefire was declared. Regime officials I knew could not believe that Saddam's dictatorship had survived.

Twelve years later, by 2003, America's rage and arrogance of power blinded the second President Bush to the realities that had constrained his father. When the US and UK could not persuade the UN Security Council to pass a resolution explicitly authorising invasion and regime change, Messrs Bush and Blair claimed earlier resolutions gave them the authority they needed.

Among many who did not buy their argument was the UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In a BBC interview 18 months after the invasion, he said it was "not in conformity" with the UN Charter - in other words, illegal. France and other Nato allies refused to join the invasion. Tony Blair ignored huge protests in the UK. His decision to go to war dogged the rest of his political career.

No president or prime minister faces a bigger decision than going to war. George Bush and Tony Blair embarked on a war of choice that killed hundreds of thousands of people. The justifications for the invasion were soon shown to be untrue. The weapons of mass destruction that Tony Blair insisted, eloquently, made Saddam a clear and present danger, turned out not to exist. It was a failure not just of intelligence but of leadership.

The Americans called the huge air raids that started their offensive "shock and awe". Neo-conservatives around George W Bush deluded themselves that democracy, and regional stability, could be imposed through the barrel of a gun. Overwhelming US force would not just safeguard America, it would stabilise the Middle East too, and democracy would spread through Syria, Iran and beyond, like a good virus.

Saddam was removed within weeks. Iraqis were in no mood to be grateful. In Saddam's last decade as leader, the vast majority of them had been impoverished by sanctions authorised by the UN, but driven hardest by the US and UK. The Americans, the British and their allies were unable to bring peace to the streets. Nightmarish years started with wholesale looting, revenge attacks and crime.

An insurgency against the occupation turned into a sectarian civil war. Iraqis turned against each other as the Americans imposed a system of government that split power along ethnic and sectarian lines - between the country's three main groups, Shia Muslims, Kurds and Sunni Muslims. Armed militias fought each other, the occupiers, and killed each other's civilians.

Jihadist groups moved in to exploit the chaos and kill foreigners. Before the Americans managed to kill him, a brutal Sunni extremist from Jordan, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, targeted attacks to turn the insurgency against the occupation into a sectarian civil war. Shia death squads retaliated with their own reign of terror.

No-one knows exactly how many Iraqis have died as a result of the 2003 invasion. Estimates are all in the hundreds of thousands. The tide of violent sectarianism continues to rumble around the Middle East.

The geopolitical legacy of the invasion is still shaping events. Unwittingly, the Americans turned the balance of power in Iraq in Iran's favour by overthrowing Saddam Hussein, who was considered a Sunni bulwark against the Islamic Republic. Removing him empowered Shia politicians who were close to Tehran. Militias armed and trained by Iran are among the most powerful forces in Iraq and have representatives in government.

The US and UK's fear of causing another disaster hamstrung their response to the Arab uprisings of 2011, and especially the war against his own people launched by President Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

Disorder in Iraq, where the population is growing fast, fuels the trade in people-smuggling to Europe. According to the British Home Office, Iraqis are the fourth largest national group crossing the English Channel in small boats. The UK Refugee Council says the vast majority whose cases have been processed are granted asylum as refugees.

American and British leaders do not dwell on the invasion these days, but others have not forgotten. One reason why much of the global south stayed neutral after Russia invaded Ukraine, ignoring appeals to uphold international law, was the memory of how the US, the UK and Western allies who joined the coalition ignored it as they steamrollered opposition to their invasion of Iraq.

It is a sign of how bad the past 20 years have been that Saddam nostalgia is well established in Iraq, not just among his own Sunni community. People complain that at least you knew where you were with the old dictator. He was an equal opportunities killer of anyone he saw as an enemy, including his own son-in-law.

In a queue for diesel in a camp near Mosul, a 48-year-old Sunni named Mohammed, raged against the Shia-led government in Baghdad and against the years of sectarian killing that followed the invasion.

"We wish that Saddam's rule could come back, even for one day. Saddam was a dictator, and it was one man's rule - correct. But he was not killing the people based on whether they were Shia, Sunni, Kurdish, or Yazidi."

Iraq has signs of hope. Parts of towns and villages are still in ruins, but they feel safer, even though Iraqis still face threats that would be considered a national crisis in the West. Well-trained anti-terrorist units are containing IS jihadist cells, who still manage to carry out bombings and ambushes. Even so, shopkeepers are hoping for a bumper Ramadan, their busiest time of the year.

Longer term, the biggest legacy of the invasion for Iraq might be the political system that the Americans instigated, which divides power along ethnic and sectarian lines. As developed by Iraqi politicians, it has offered prodigious chances for corruption.

Estimates of the amount stolen since 2003 range from $150bn (£124bn) to $320bn (£264bn). Most Iraqis, of all sects, who have not benefited from the bonanza of theft, face constant power cuts, bad water, and inadequate medical care, in hospitals that were once considered to be as good as ones in Europe. Walk down most streets and you will see children working or begging, instead of going to school. Iraq used to have one of the best educational systems in the Middle East.

Iraq's latest prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, has promised a new start. His biggest challenge is keeping his promise to tackle corruption, the cancer that is eating the country from within. He even did a broadcast surrounded by piles of confiscated banknotes that were being returned to Iraq's treasury.

But the people that matter most are the innocent victims. Not just the dead, but millions of Iraqis, and others in the Middle East whose lives were made much worse because of the invasion and its consequences.

At the mass grave near Sinjar, Yazidi activists appealed for international protection. Survivors said that the IS jihadists who carried out the genocidal massacres in 2014 had Iraqi accents, some from Tel Afar, a nearby town.

Farhad Barakat, a 25-year-old Yazidi activist who survived because he managed to escape to Mount Sinjar, said they were still scared of their neighbours. The killers, he said, were from their "surrounding clans or tribes, Arab clans. So how it that possible? The ones who killed us, raped the Yazidi women, they were Iraqis."

The BBC's security correspondent Gordon Corera seeks to find new answers to why the Iraq war happened, what it meant, and its legacy today.

Listen at 13:45 BST each weekday or stream or download all 10 episodes on BBC Sounds

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Iraq war 20 years on: How invasion plunged country into decades of chaos

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The invasion of March 2003 was a catastrophe for Iraq and its people. More proof of that, measured in broken lives, was at a suspected site of a mass grave in the desert outside Sinjar, not far from the border with Syria.

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AuKus military Alliances March 2023

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The leaders of the US, UK and Australia have unveiled new details of their plan to create a fleet of next generation nuclear-powered submarines.

Under the Aukus agreement, Australia will first receive at least three nuclear-powered submarines from the US.

The allies will also work together to create a new fleet using cutting-edge technology, including reactors made by Rolls-Royce.

The pact is aimed at countering China's influence in the Indo-Pacific region.

Speaking with the other leaders in San Diego, California, US President Joe Biden stressed that the boats would not have nuclear weapons and would not jeopardise Australia's commitment to being a nuclear-free country.

Under the deal outlined on Monday, members of the Royal Australian Navy (RAN) will be embedded at US and UK submarine bases from this year to gain the necessary skills to use the submarines.

From 2027, the US and UK will base a small number of nuclear subs at a RAN base in Perth, Western Australia, before Australia buys three American Virginia-class submarines in the early 2030s - with options to purchase two more.

After that, the plan is to design and build an entirely new nuclear-powered submarine for the UK and Australian navies, called SSN-AUKUS.

This attack craft will be built in Britain and Australia to a British design, but use technology from all three countries.

President Biden said all three countries were committed to ensuring that the region would remain free and open. He was flanked by the prime ministers of Australia and the UK - Anthony Albanese and Rishi Sunak, respectively.

"Forging this new partnership, we're showing again how democracies can deliver our own security and prosperity... not just for us but for the entire world," he said.

As part of Monday's announcement, the US has also pledged a total of $4.6bn (£3.7bn) over the next few years to build its submarine construction capacity and to improve maintenance of its Virginia-class submarines.

Australia's Anthony Albanese said the submarine plan would create thousands of new jobs and marked the "biggest single investment in Australia's defence capability in all of its history".

"This will be an Australian sovereign capability, commanded by the royal Australian navy and - sustained by Australian workers in Australian shipyards with construction to begin this decade," said Mr Albanese.

He also noted that the agreement marks the first time in 65 years and only the second time in history that the US has shared its nuclear propulsion technology.

UK Prime Minister Sunak said that in the 18 months since the pact was unveiled, the challenges to global stability had only grown.

"Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine, China's growing assertiveness, the destabilising behaviour of Iran and north Korea - all threaten to create a world codefined by danger, disorder and division."

As part of his visit to the US, Mr Sunak has also pledged to increase defence spending by nearly £5bn ($6bn) over the next two years to counter threats from hostile states.

The pact has repeatedly drawn criticism from China. Beijing's foreign ministry spokesperson, Mao Ning, last week reiterated Beijing's position that the pact risked creating an arms race and "undermines peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region".

"We urge the United States, Britain and Australia to abandon the Cold War mentality and zero-sum game, faithfully fulfil their international obligations, and do more to contribute to regional peace and stability," he said.

Touching on the concern about the West boosting its military presence in the Indo-Pacific, US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan insisted that Washington had no intention of creating a new Nato-like alliance.

While all three leaders have been keen to stress how the deal will strengthen their co-operation and contribute to global stability, it hasn't been without its political fallout.

In 2021, Australia scrapped a multi-million dollar submarine agreement with France in favour of the trilateral agreement - causing a political rift with Paris.

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Aukus deal: US, UK and Australia agree on nuclear submarine project

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The leaders of the US, UK and Australia have unveiled new details of their plan to create a fleet of next generation nuclear-powered submarines. Under the Aukus agreement, Australia will first receive at least three nuclear-powered submarines from the US. The allies will also work together to create a new fleet using cutting-edge technology, including reactors made by Rolls-Royce.

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Superpowers

Jan 2024

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Iran and Saudi Arabia join BRICS bloc | DW Business

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Superpower - regional tensions 2023

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An Indian navy ship passing the Kerala coast. Image: Shutterstock

India has just launched the US$3 billion-over budget INS Vikrant. But are expensive aircraft carriers the answer to the threat China poses? Tim Marshall looks at the tensions between the two emerging superpowers

We're gonna need a bigger boat' as the Indian navy said to the New Delhi government in 2009. Thirteen years later, six years behind schedule, and only US$3 billion over budget, India's first domestically built aircraft carrier has finally been commissioned, meaning it has been placed in active service.

The INS Vikrant (Courageous) is big: 262 metres long, 62 metres wide, 18 storeys high, and with a kitchen built to serve up 16,000 chapattis a day for the 1,600-strong crew (yes, some people do eat ten or more a day...). A different sort of fuel gives the carrier a top speed of 28 knots and a range of 7,500 nautical miles. This means it could travel across the Indian and Atlantic oceans to South America without having to dock.

But why did they need a bigger boat in an age of increased threats to aircraft carriers from long-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles? Some military analysts argue that carriers have had their day, others believe that 'big surface platform' ships remain relevant because of the power projection they deliver. In India, the UK, USA, and Japan, carriers have certainly carried the latter argument. Oh, and in China as well - and if China has them, India wants them.

Tensions between the two countries along their 3,800-kilometre-long land border occasionally make headlines, such as when four Chinese and 20 Indian troops died during a clash in the Himalaya in 2020, but their growing rivalry at sea goes almost unnoticed. Earlier this year China launched its third aircraft carrier and the People's Liberation Army Navy now has about 355 vessels, almost three times as many as India. Since 2008 China has maintained a naval presence in the Indian Ocean with several vessels continuously on patrol. The Indians have refrained from aggressively shadowing them so as not to raise tensions to the levels seen along the land border, but the more assertive China becomes, the more India will have to respond.

An example came last month when a Chinese vessel, the Yuan Wang 5, docked at the strategically significant, and Chinese-built, Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka. Its arrival had been delayed for several days after India raised security concerns about the ship. Beijing insists it is only used for scientific research, but the Indians (and the USA) believe it is a military ship with the capability to track satellites and missile launches. New Delhi suspects the Yuan Wang 5's tracking targets were India's spaceport in Sriharikota and a missile test range in Odisha. There was an irritable and public exchange of views between the two countries about the incident.

New Delhi permanently deploys warships at five choke points in the Indian Ocean between the Gulf of Aden and the Malacca Strait. The INS Vikrant shows how the country is now factoring in a far-ranging maritime strategy to its defence posture which has traditionally been focused on land-based conflicts. The navy conducts exercises in the western Pacific with its three partners in the 'Quad' group of nations - the USA, Japan and Australia. Now, with the ability to deploy a carrier on both its eastern and western flanks it will be able to contribute one to the exercises and still have the other in the Indian Ocean. As he launched the INS Vikrant, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: 'In the past, security concerns in the Indo-Pacific region and the Indian Ocean have long been ignored, but today this area is a major defence priority of the country for us.'

The launch was part of the country's celebration of 75 years of independence from British rule and at the ceremony, the new ensign of the Indian Navy was unveiled. Out went the dominating St George's cross, oddly left on after the British had run away, and in came the seal of the great Maratha emperor Chhatrapati Shivaji (1674-1680) who built a naval fleet of 60 fighting ships and 'secured the coastline against external aggression'.

China reacted to the Vikrant with an article in the Global Times warning India not to be fooled by Western 'flattery'. Apparently, India's second carrier, and plans for a third, were part of a western plot against China: 'Their intention couldn't be any clearer... they want to instigate tension and even confrontation between China and India.' It was important, said the article, that India did not regard China as its main rival because if so, it would 'only become a cannon fodder'. That third Indian aircraft carrier looks likely.

More geopolitics...

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We're gonna need a bigger boat' as the Indian navy said to the New Delhi government in 2009. Thirteen years later, six years behind schedule, and only US$3 billion over budget, India's first domestically built aircraft carrier has finally been commissioned, meaning it has been placed in active service.

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Superpowers Sept 2023

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An Indian navy ship passing the Kerala coast. Image: Shutterstock

India has just launched the US$3 billion-over budget INS Vikrant. But are expensive aircraft carriers the answer to the threat China poses? Tim Marshall looks at the tensions between the two emerging superpowers

We're gonna need a bigger boat' as the Indian navy said to the New Delhi government in 2009. Thirteen years later, six years behind schedule, and only US$3 billion over budget, India's first domestically built aircraft carrier has finally been commissioned, meaning it has been placed in active service.

The INS Vikrant (Courageous) is big: 262 metres long, 62 metres wide, 18 storeys high, and with a kitchen built to serve up 16,000 chapattis a day for the 1,600-strong crew (yes, some people do eat ten or more a day...). A different sort of fuel gives the carrier a top speed of 28 knots and a range of 7,500 nautical miles. This means it could travel across the Indian and Atlantic oceans to South America without having to dock.

But why did they need a bigger boat in an age of increased threats to aircraft carriers from long-range missiles and unmanned aerial vehicles? Some military analysts argue that carriers have had their day, others believe that 'big surface platform' ships remain relevant because of the power projection they deliver. In India, the UK, USA, and Japan, carriers have certainly carried the latter argument. Oh, and in China as well - and if China has them, India wants them.

Tensions between the two countries along their 3,800-kilometre-long land border occasionally make headlines, such as when four Chinese and 20 Indian troops died during a clash in the Himalaya in 2020, but their growing rivalry at sea goes almost unnoticed. Earlier this year China launched its third aircraft carrier and the People's Liberation Army Navy now has about 355 vessels, almost three times as many as India. Since 2008 China has maintained a naval presence in the Indian Ocean with several vessels continuously on patrol. The Indians have refrained from aggressively shadowing them so as not to raise tensions to the levels seen along the land border, but the more assertive China becomes, the more India will have to respond.

An example came last month when a Chinese vessel, the Yuan Wang 5, docked at the strategically significant, and Chinese-built, Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka. Its arrival had been delayed for several days after India raised security concerns about the ship. Beijing insists it is only used for scientific research, but the Indians (and the USA) believe it is a military ship with the capability to track satellites and missile launches. New Delhi suspects the Yuan Wang 5's tracking targets were India's spaceport in Sriharikota and a missile test range in Odisha. There was an irritable and public exchange of views between the two countries about the incident.

New Delhi permanently deploys warships at five choke points in the Indian Ocean between the Gulf of Aden and the Malacca Strait. The INS Vikrant shows how the country is now factoring in a far-ranging maritime strategy to its defence posture which has traditionally been focused on land-based conflicts. The navy conducts exercises in the western Pacific with its three partners in the 'Quad' group of nations - the USA, Japan and Australia. Now, with the ability to deploy a carrier on both its eastern and western flanks it will be able to contribute one to the exercises and still have the other in the Indian Ocean. As he launched the INS Vikrant, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: 'In the past, security concerns in the Indo-Pacific region and the Indian Ocean have long been ignored, but today this area is a major defence priority of the country for us.'

The launch was part of the country's celebration of 75 years of independence from British rule and at the ceremony, the new ensign of the Indian Navy was unveiled. Out went the dominating St George's cross, oddly left on after the British had run away, and in came the seal of the great Maratha emperor Chhatrapati Shivaji (1674-1680) who built a naval fleet of 60 fighting ships and 'secured the coastline against external aggression'.

China reacted to the Vikrant with an article in the Global Times warning India not to be fooled by Western 'flattery'. Apparently, India's second carrier, and plans for a third, were part of a western plot against China: 'Their intention couldn't be any clearer... they want to instigate tension and even confrontation between China and India.' It was important, said the article, that India did not regard China as its main rival because if so, it would 'only become a cannon fodder'. That third Indian aircraft carrier looks likely.

More geopolitics...

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
We're gonna need a bigger boat' as the Indian navy said to the New Delhi government in 2009. Thirteen years later, six years behind schedule, and only US$3 billion over budget, India's first domestically built aircraft carrier has finally been commissioned, meaning it has been placed in active service.