分类： 新闻动态

06.MAR.2020 . 7 MIN READ

A Heated Debate

Europe depends on Russia for natural gas, the fossil fuel critical for heating homes, generating electricity, and powering the European economy. As the continent’s domestic gas production declines, Europe’s demand for gas is increasing as it transitions away from coal, oil, and nuclear energy. In 2018, Europe imported 321 billion cubic meters (bcm), 54 percent of the natural gas it consumed. Russia maintained its place as the continent’s preeminent supplier, accounting for over two-thirds of Europe’s gas imports.

European relations with Russia have soured, however, leading to calls for Europe to diversify its energy supply. The gas crises of 2006 and 2009 culminated in Gazprom, the majority Russian state-owned natural gas giant, momentarily ending gas exports intended for Ukraine in the middle of the winter due to a collapse in contract negotiations. Ukraine responded by siphoning off gas intended for other recipients in Europe, harming its reputation as a reliable transit country. Tensions continued escalating after Russia annexed Crimea in 2015, meddled in European elections, and conducted cyberattacks against Eastern European states. Amidst these controversies, some European politicians worry that Russia could threaten to withhold gas supplies in exchange for political concessions.

The most contentious issue of late is the Nord Stream 2 pipeline (NS2), which would circumvent Ukraine to provide 55 bcm of natural gas to Germany. While German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others see the pipeline as a means to providing energy security and meeting climate goals, Eastern European and American politicians largely see it as a means for Russia to control European politics via Gazprom. Estonia's Foreign Minister warned that gas suppliers such as Russia should be prevented from using “energy as a tool for political pressure." Meanwhile, Polish officials referred to NS2 as “a new hybrid weapon” and a “poisoned pill of European security.” Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky agrees, claiming that dependence on Russia would weaken Europe’s political power.

On the other hand, Gazprom insists that it has no intention of weaponizing energy against its clients. Its management notes that Russia and Gazprom are heavily reliant on Europe, which accounts for the overwhelming majority of its gas exports––and 20 percent of the Russian state budget. European energy and utility companies such as ENI or E.ON have had longstanding relationships with Gazprom, and their management reflect in interviews that Gazprom has been a reliable partner. With the exceptions of the two gas crises, which can be interpreted as the result of Ukraine refusing to pay higher prices, there is little evidence that Gazprom has acted as anything but a normal profit-maximizing company in its international markets. However, there is stronger evidence that Gazprom acts a political tool within Russia.

Injecting itself into the conversation, the American government took an extraordinary measure to sanction Nord Stream 2, thereby halting its construction. American opposition to the pipeline is vehement and bipartisan: a letter from 40 senators described Russia’s gas business in Europe as “coercion and malign influence” and Rick Perry, former Secretary of Energy, called NS2 “a stake through the heart of European stability and security.”

A Supercooled Entrant

Amidst the heated debate around NS2, liquefied natural gas (LNG) has fundamentally reshaped energy markets in Europe. Traditionally, gas is transported to its customers by pipeline, the way Europe has imported gas from Russia for decades. However, gas can be supercooled to -162ºC to become a liquid, which decreases its volume by a factor of 600 and makes shipping it in special LNG tankers economically feasible.

While Europe confronted a gas shortage, the United States transformed into an energy superpower and the world’s biggest producer of oil and natural gas in the last decade. With American gas supply exceeding demand as a result of fracking, US producers sought to export their gas to Europe and Asia where gas sold for higher prices. The Trump Administration has energetically marketed and encouraged LNG, referring to it as “freedom gas” or “molecules or freedom.” American LNG exports surged by 60 percent in 2019, and the United States is expected to become the largest exporter of LNG by 2024.

Moreover, America is not the only nation with a rapidly growing LNG industry—LNG trade has surged globally, growing at a rate of 8 percent per annum. Australia, Qatar, Russia, Mozambique, and Nigeria are also leading the charge. Global export capacity meanwhile has reached 534 bcm a year, with 141 bcm under construction—together enough to fill European demand two times over.

LNG competes directly with Gazprom for the European market. Conventional wisdom asserts that US LNG is too expensive because companies have to take the extra steps of liquefaction, shipping, and regasification. Yet, Harvard Business School models show that because of Gazprom’s price discrimination, US LNG can compete in Eastern Europe with Russian gas under the right conditions such as weak Asian demand, a high price of oil, and low charter rates. Moreover, Qatari and Nigerian LNG are much less expensive to produce than American LNG and can consistently outcompete Russian piped gas on a long-term marginal cost basis.

A More Energy Secure Europe?

Despite the contentious debate surrounding Nord Stream 2, LNG has meaningfully increased the security of Europe’s energy supply.

First, LNG has contributed to changes to Gazprom’s business strategy. Traditionally, Gazprom’s contracts calculated gas prices using formulas based on the price of oil and included controversial take-or-pay clauses where customers would pay for gas they did not want to receive. These contracts were thus removed from the laws of supply and demand for natural gas. Today, Gazprom’s contracts are shorter in duration, more flexible, and increasingly determined by the price of gas at natural gas hubs instead of the price of oil. In fact, in 2018, Gazprom began selling gas by making one-time deals at natural gas hubs via its Electronic Sales Platform, thereby receiving prices based solely on European market forces. In order to compete with other sources of natural gas such as LNG, Gazprom has adjusted its sales practices in ways that make natural gas prices based on supply and demand and therefore less prone to political involvement.

Moreover, LNG has flooded the European market with gas, dramatically decreasing the price of natural gas at hubs. The excess quantity of LNG is filling Europe’s underground gas storage facilities, which act as “savings accounts” for natural gas. Gazprom itself is continuing to partner with European nations to build more underground gas storage capacity, which should increase the security of supply.

The increase in global LNG supply has also encouraged European nations to build more regasification facilities where they can transform LNG back into regular natural gas. LNG import terminals are expanding rapidly, and Europe’s regasification capacity of 241 bcm far exceeds its imports from Russia. By 2025, the Baltic nations’ regasification capacity will be 266 percent of their domestic consumption. Europe has the infrastructure to import vast quantities of LNG in the unlikely scenario of a major gas crisis with Russia.

Finally, LNG has encouraged various pipeline projects that benefit European security. One such project is the Baltic Interconnector, which links Finland with the LNG importing Baltics. Poland is racing to become a natural gas hub by selling American LNG in Eastern European markets and is supporting various transmission projects to make its dream a reality. In summary, LNG is encouraging Europe to become more interconnected in terms of gas infrastructure—and thereby more secure since each nation can supply the others around it.

LNG is not a panacea for Europe’s energy challenges. Nonetheless, LNG has reshaped European energy markets by providing a feasible alternative and reliable backup to Russian gas. Overdependence on any nation for a good as important as natural gas is unwise, but the demonization of Gazprom appears to be more based on political agendas than reality. After all, if Gazprom were to cut off supplies to Europe for political reasons, its profits would immediately plummet along with the Russian state budget. In the long-run, such a measure would lose the trust built over decades of its most important market and send the Russian economy into recession.

In addition to harming the Russian economy, any decision to weaponize energy would result in political consequences detrimental to Putin’s goals. Depriving European nations of gas for an illegitimate reason would likely unite Europe against Russian aggression and disadvantage Putin-sympathetic candidates like France’s Marine Le Pen. Moreover, such a decision could result in NATO stationing more troops in Eastern Europe, an outcome Putin has publicly criticized.

The United States’ sanctions against NS2 are unlikely to prevent the pipeline’s completion, but the sanctions are likely to further fray transatlantic relations. If the United States is concerned about Europe’s energy security, it should instead encourage Germany to proceed with its four regasification terminals to provide backups to Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2. It should also encourage the expansion of underground storage facilities. However, the United States should be cognizant of the limitations of LNG: for countries like Germany, gas from Russia is much less expensive than American LNG. The United States would be mistaken to expect Germany to snub Russia as its main supplier of natural gas in favor of the United States.

As an alternative approach, the United States could pursue domestic reforms such as banning flaring, or the burning of excess natural gas. Energy companies in Texas acquire natural gas as a byproduct of oil drilling, and they often choose to set the precious natural resource aflame. In addition to contributing to the climate crisis, the 14 bcm of natural gas the United States flared in 2018 constitutes enough energy to power the Baltics three times over. The United States government should create incentives to export this natural gas to places like Europe instead of wasting it and creating unnecessary carbon emissions.

In the end, LNG has provided a superb opportunity for Europe to increase its energy security and for the United States to assert its role as the world’s newest energy superpower. American LNG is nonetheless a small part of US-Russian relations and will not fundamentally alter the interactions between the two countries, though sanctions on NS2 undoubtedly antagonize Russia. Neither complacency nor Gazprom-phobia should dictate European energy policy. Instead, sober analysis of what LNG can and cannot accomplish will strengthen transatlantic relations and provide a more stable future for Europe’s energy economy.

This article is a continuation of a Harvard Business School case study co-written by the author.

10.OCT.2020 . 6 MIN READ

Anatoliy Amelin, Andrian Prokip and Andreas Umland

Over the last several years, the future of the European energy supply has become an increasingly geopolitical topic. It has become more and more linked to the questions of security, competing gas transportation routes, and continuously tense Ukrainian-Russian relations. In late 2019, Kyiv concluded a new and beneficial transit agreement with Moscow for the transfer of Siberian gas to the EU, in part due to fresh US sanctions against Russia’s off-shore pipeline projects. This 5-year deal is currently securing the continued use of a part of Ukraine’s large gas transportation system, and as long as Gazprom’s Nord Stream II pipeline through the Baltic Sea does not go forward, the Ukrainian gas transportation system will have some prospect, use, and income.

These well-known confrontations and negotiations concerning different routes of Russian gas supply to the EU, however, diverted attention from the potential of Ukraine’s own gas and oil reserves, as well as the associated storage facilities. The considerable natural resources in Ukraine’s energy sphere remain underexplored and underused today despite the fact that their use could spur economic growth not only in the energy sector, but also in other industries of the country.

Untapped Potential

Excluding Russia’s gas reserves in Asia, Ukraine today holds the second biggest known gas reserves in Europe. As of late 2019, known Ukrainian reserves amounted to 1.09 trillion cubic meters of natural gas, second only to Norway’s known resources of 1.53 trillion cubic meters. Yet, these enormous reserves of energy remain largely untapped. Today, Ukraine has a low annual reserve usage rate of about 2 percent. Moreover, more active exploration may yield previously undiscovered gas fields, which would further increase the overall volume of Ukraine’s deposits.

In spite of this hopeful situation, Ukraine still depends substantially on gas imports. When the USSR started large-scale gas extraction in Western Siberia in the 1970s, much of the relevant expertise and capacity in the sector of Soviet gas exploration and production were transferred from the Ukrainian to the Russian Soviet republic and some other East European states. As a result of this outflow of expertise, Ukraine’s remaining gas resources have remained insufficiently developed, largely underused, and partly unexplored.

Until recently, Ukraine’s total average annual consumption amounted to approximately 29.8 billion cubic meters (bcm). Of this entire yearly need, approximately 14.3 bcm consists of imports. Thus, unlocking its unused reserves would provide for a revolutionary future for Ukraine’s gas sector and energy consumption.

Resolute development of the already explored and accessible Ukrainian resources could result in a substantial increase of Ukrainian gas production. The boost would not only enable the country to fully cover its domestic gas needs, but also make Ukraine largely self-sufficient from an energy perspective. In a best-case scenario, increased production could even allow Ukraine to start exporting gas to or via neighboring European states. This would be feasible because Ukraine’s substantial gas transportation system means that the necessary infrastructure is already in place to bring large amounts of gas to the EU.

According to some estimates, the EU will import around 90 percent of the gas it consumes by 2030. Thus, during the next decade, Brussels will be increasingly eager to diversify the origins and routes of the European gas supply. In this context, smaller or even prospective gas exporters like Ukraine become more attractive to policymakers in Brussels: such new participants in the European market would lower EU dependency on the large players in the field, thus strengthening the European negotiating position.

Despite the enormous potential of Ukraine’s energy reserves, there are non-trivial costs to developing Ukraine’s capabilities. According to an assessment study by the Ukrainian Institute for the Future, a transformation of Ukraine into a self-sufficient energy consumer and potential exporter would require a number of investments amounting to approximately US$19.5 billion. Of this amount, about US$3.5 billion are needed for developing gas fields and building pipelines, US$14 billion would have to be invested into oil extraction, and US$2 billion would go toward oil refining.

The overall size of the investment needed to achieve the goal of full energy independence constitutes a considerable amount compared to Ukraine’s relatively small state budget and GDP. Nevertheless, the sum only equals the approximate costs for current Ukrainian energy imports over the span of two to three years. Thus, the relatively high absolute cost would amortize itself quickly.

Moreover, financial investment in Ukraine’s energy sector is increasingly attractive. Over the last few years, Ukraine has (often under IMF pressure) gradually reduced distortive governmental interventions into the gas market. Kyiv has introduced market prices for households and no longer provides subsidies for all consumers indiscriminately. This relatively new domestic market should make financial engagement in Ukrainian gas production and exploration more attractive than it had been in the past, and the investment climate will improve once European energy markets recover in the aftermath of a likely global containment of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021.

The Road Ahead

Ukraine’s gas transportation system will continue to play a key role for the future of Ukraine’s energy sector. Ukraine has one of the most well-developed and all-encompassing gas transportation infrastructures of any country in the world, in terms of both domestic deliveries and export facilities. The Ukrainian gas transit system constitutes a heritage of the Soviet energy expansion to Europe, as a partial result of the German Neue Ostpolitik (New Eastern Policy) of the 1970s. For a long time, Ukraine served as the main corridor for the transfer of Soviet and later Russian as well as Central Asian gas to numerous European states. The current usage of this capacity is much lower than a decade earlier due to the completion of the first Nord Stream pipeline in 2012, the growing introduction of renewable energy resources, and the current economic downturn; however, Ukraine’s pipelines and compressor stations are still ready to be used, and have significant capacity beyond merely delivering Russian or Turkmen gas to the EU.

A significant part of the multidimensional Ukrainian gas infrastructure is the huge underground gas storage facilities that the country controls. Only partially used, Ukrainian capacities to store natural gas amount to more than 31 bcm. If fully exploited, Ukraine could hypothetically add almost one third to the approximately 100 bcm of storage space that EU member states currently hold as a whole. Thus, it is no surprise that the energy consultancy Wood Mackenzie recently suggested that Ukraine holds the key to Europe’s gas current storage crunch. As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, world gas prices plummeted, but the EU’s storage facilities do not have enough space to take full advantage of the situation. To ease foreign concerns about investing in Ukraine, the country adopted some amendments to relevant laws and directives in late 2019—regulatory modifications that should make it easier for foreign firms to use available storage capacity. In response, during the first nine months of 2020, foreign energy firms pumped 7.9 bcm of gas to Ukraine for storage, an amount several times higher than the volume of foreign gas stored in Ukraine during the entire year of 2019.

Hydrogen is another new horizon for Ukraine’s underdeveloped energy industry. Today, various gas distribution companies are examining Ukraine’s pipeline capacities with the hope of converting some of the existing infrastructure to deliver hydrogen to their customers in the future. The EU has identified Ukraine as a priority partner for future collaboration in the use of hydrogen to enhance the Union’s energy supply and security.

Yet another energy form of high potential in Ukraine is biogas. Currently, the country has sufficient capacity to produce circa 10 bcm of biogas annually, a volume that is roughly equivalent to the amount of natural gas that Ukraine imports every year. In view of Ukraine’s currently growing agricultural sector, its capacity to produce biogas may grow further. This capacity is quite future-proof: mixing biogas with hydrogen generates biomethane, an environmentally friendly form of energy that does not contain carbon dioxide.

Boosting Ukraine’s domestic production of natural gas, biogas, hydrogen and biomethane would not only lower or even abolish Ukrainian dependence on energy imports. It would also create a new and potent export-oriented branch in Ukraine’s economy, while also providing impulses for stronger growth in other sectors. At the same time, the EU would benefit from a diversification of its gas supply sources, and from obtaining a new major energy partner in its immediate vicinity. Moreover, such cooperation would strengthen Brussels’ economic ties with Kyiv, and lower the need for Western support for the Ukrainian state. A resolute development of Ukraine’s untapped reserves in the production, export and storage of energy would be in the interest of all sides involved.

Anatoliy Amelin is one of the co-founders of the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and its Director of Economic Programs.

Andrian Prokip is an Energy Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Senior Associate of the Kennan Institute in Washington, DC.

Andreas Umland is a Senior Expert at the Ukrainian Institute for the Future in Kyiv, and Researcher with the Swedish Institute of International Affairs in Stockholm.

25.JAN.2020 . 7 MIN READ

Many nations in the modern world order have fought long and hard to earn their political independence, national self-determination, and consequently the status of citizenship for all their people. According to British sociologist T. H. Marshall, citizenship is "a status bestowed on those who are full members of a community. All who possess the status are equal with respect to the rights and duties with which the status is endowed."

Citizenship defines not only civic rights and responsibilities but also opportunities. Not all citizenships are equal: different passports grant diverse benefits ranging from freedom from discrimination to ease of international travel. There are widespread inequalities of access to the most coveted countries of the world: for example, all but 62 citizenships in the world require a visa to travel to the Schengen area in Europe. The Schengen area is a border free zone that comprises of 26 European countries in which citizens of each country can travel, work, and live without special formalities. Any person legally present on the Schengen territory can cross internal borders freely, without being subjected to border check. Having visa-free access to the zone can be desirable for both business and leisure purposes. While citizens from more economically developed nations such as the United States or Japan can easily enter the region, underdeveloped and developing nations often require a visa, with low approval prospects. More than 49 percent of Nigerian applicants for the Schengen visa are rejected, with similar numbers for countries like Iraq, Guinea, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Algeria. As immigration laws grow increasingly strict globally, the inequalities of access to certain coveted countries rise in tandem. However, circumventing the constraints of immigration is possible. Today, regardless of the country you come from, you can buy your way in.

How do you buy a citizenship?

In several countries, acquiring citizenship is relatively easy, for a price. Within the European Union, Malta’s citizenship-buying program is the most appealing for wealthy foreigners hoping to obtain the Schengen visa. Foreign buyers are required to make a donation of US$716,650 to a government fund, purchase bonds for three years, and invest in property in the country in order to receive citizenship. Being a citizen of Malta then grants its recipient all rights and privileges of being a citizen of the European Union—that is, the right to travel, live, and work in any other country in the zone.

The purchase price is not always clear-cut. Take the Israeli passport, which grants visa-free travel to Britain and costs anywhere between US$100,000 and US$2 million for non-Jewish individuals (the 1950 Israeli Law of Return grants every Jew the right to become an Isreali citizen). Roman Abramovich, Russian billionaire and owner of the Chelsea football club in England, was one such buyer who roused international debate when he turned to Israel after trouble renewing his British visa.

Why buy a citizenship?

There are many different reasons to want a second passport. Some seek refuge from instability or political persecution. Others search for better opportunities and educational prospects for their children. Sometimes, traveling businessmen from poorer countries may want to reduce the endless visa hassles that they encounter with their own passport.

For selling countries, citizenship-by-investment increases public revenue and investment, and can boost economies devastated by natural disasters. For example, since Hurricane Maria devastated Dominica in 2017, the selling of citizenship and residency now accounts for half of the government’s total revenue, as of August 2019. According to Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit, this source of income has been used to enhance different aspects of Dominican society, such as education, healthcare, housing, climate resilience, and ecotourism. This is not an isolated case; Bill Bani, government-appointed citizenship agent in the Pacific island of Vanuatu, explains: “We don't have a lot of natural resources. [Residency sales are] bringing in a lot of money to Vanuatu.” Swiss lawyer Christian Kalin, chairman of Henley & Partners, a big player in the rapidly growing market of citizenship, affirms that citizenship-by-investment reflects “a world where everything has become more fluid,” and criticizes the “outdated” notion of citizenship that limits people to their birthplace, remarking: “What is wrong with admitting talented people who will contribute?”

The risks of citizenship-by-investment

Buying a new citizenship seems like a harmless practice, limited to a wealthy and most likely beneficial demographic for the countries involved. So what are the risks associated with this business?

Diplomatic issues

First of all, countries that sell their citizenship are also selling their rights to access other countries without the latter’s approval. While deciding who is allowed access to a country’s citizenship is above all a national competence (which means that each state should have unique discretion over who it grants citizenship to), the practice of granting documentation for purely economic reasons without considering identity links, possible illegal motives, or consequences on other sovereign nations is causing distrust and tensions between historically friendly countries. For example, Canada has already revoked the visa-free access of several different nations, such as Antigua and Barbuda, for its permissiveness in its granting of citizenship: it costs only US$100,000 to get Antigua and Barbuda citizenship, and requires only 5 days lived on the island. The issue of how one country’s citizenship program affects other nation-states becomes even more problematic when it comes to the European Union, which represents a unique case of free borders. Coordinating identical immigration policies between all member-states is a vital prerequisite for the effective functioning of the Schengen Agreement. European Commissioner for Justice Vera Jourova stated in a press release on the risks of investor citizenship:

“Becoming a citizen of one Member State also means becoming an EU citizen with all its rights, including free movement and access to the internal market. People obtaining an EU nationality must have a genuine connection to the Member State concerned. We want more transparency on how nationality is granted and more cooperation between Member States. There should be no weak link in the EU, where people could shop around for the most lenient scheme.”

Jourova points out an important aspect of the issue of citizenship: European citizenship is above all a tool for creating a unique European identity, among individuals with a broader common history and culture. This includes individuals who may be from another region of the world, as long as they have a genuine connection to Europe, but it does not include individuals who desire a new citizenship simply for its economic and practical purposes.

Legal issues

For countries who are associated with countries with lenient citizenship schemes, as well as for international organizations, one of the implied fears is the increasing opening of borders to illegal activities. A common example is tax evasion: for example, foreigners who secure their tax residence in the United Arab Emirates are able to block the flow of data to tax authorities in their home country, freeing them from taxation responsibilities. Similarly, the Pacific Island of Vanuatu has a reputation for being a corrupted tax haven, and recently joined the European Union’s blacklist of countries for transparency and corruption issues. Yet citizenship only costs about US$150,000, requires living there for a minimum of only 30 days, and grants visa-free access to the European Union. The OECD is increasingly concerned that such operations will undermine its efforts to fight money-laundering and tax evasion.

In other cases, wealthy foreigners can take residency in another country to escape criminal persecution at home, in which case the selling country becomes complicit in sheltering crime for profit. For example, Mehul Choksi, an Indian billionaire who is wanted in India for a US$2 billion fraud scheme with the Punjab National Bank, has recently moved to Antigua and Barbuda, of which he is a citizen since 2018. If escaping to lenient nations becomes the go-to solution for wealthy criminals, then citizenship-by-investment may become complicit in hindering the efficiency of the international justice system.

Ethical issues

Having acknowledged the diplomatic and legal issues that citizenship-by-investment causes, we now turn to the most important consequences of this common practice, which are the ethical concerns that it presents. Because most schemes require significant investments in the country’s economy, citizenship-buying is reserved for the richest people in the world. While millions of people each year apply for and are denied European or American visas and citizenship, giving an easy way in to the top 1 percent perpetuates inequality of opportunity in a world that is already biased towards the wealthy.

Beyond perpetuating inequality, rendering the sacred rights and privileges of being a citizen into a commodity blurs the definitions of national identity, civic duty, and territorial borders. A passport is often a source of pride—it sometimes symbolizes a fight for national self-determination against imperialism, but more broadly it represents national identity and political sovereignty for all nations. If governments begin selling state identity and a false sense of national pride to anyone who asks for it, regardless of their ties to the nation, they are sending a message to their true citizens that their national identity means nothing. In the aforementioned Island of Vanuatu, Anne Pakoa, a community leader, spoke to BBC: “Our ancestors died for our freedom. Now people are carrying the same green passport I carry? For $150,000? Where is the money? I think this has to stop.” Dan McGarry, in charge of the local newspaper, reiterates: “Is this what we fought for? Is this right? Is it right to sell our hard won sovereignty to the highest bidder?”

What happens, then, with the civic rights and duties that come with being a citizen – most importantly, the right to vote? Citizenship involves political responsibilities, and the right to vote should be reserved for individuals who care about the political development of their nation, who see their citizenship as more than just a commodity, but rather as a source of pride and obligations, with which comes the duty to participate in civil society for the betterment of public life. If small nations oversell passports, native voters could gradually be outnumbered by foreigners with little political ties to the state, which would negatively affect democratic assumptions and practices. The economic interests of wealthy individuals who have acquired a citizenship for private needs are often radically different from those of nationals who live on the land with distinct conditions of living. It becomes extremely problematic if these diverging interests are projected in politics, because it compromises the integrity of the channel used by true citizens to achieve political objectives and basic necessities. Additionally, if nationals feel that their citizenship has lost its value and meaning, they may no longer feel compelled to vote, debate, or care about the political development of their nation. National identity and a sense of belonging to a community is essential for political participation, and if citizenship is granted to all (or to the highest bidder) beyond ties of identity and cultural affinities, then national identity becomes nothing more than another transactional good.

15.JAN.2021 . 8 MIN READ

Opening a bank account, obtaining a driver’s license, or even getting married—while many of us may take these activities for granted, they are impossible for people without a formal nationality, or so-called stateless persons. Yet, the lack of a bank account is just a minor detail compared to the more severe consequences of being stateless, particularly a lack of access to healthcare, education, or employment. As Isa, a stateless person from the former Yugoslavia, explains, “To be without documents and a nationality is as if you never existed in this world.” Together with at least 10 million stateless people across the globe, Isa belongs to the most vulnerable group of humans, who are often even described as “legal ghosts.” Well-known examples of such demographic groups not having the nationality of any country include the Rohingya in Myanmar or Eastern Europeans after the collapse of the Soviet Union. In recent years, public awareness about the issue of statelessness has increased due to increased efforts by the UN and many international non-governmental organizations. In fact, the UN has even launched a campaign to end statelessness by 2024, identifying flawed administrative procedures, which can be fixed rather quickly in theory, as the main cause of statelessness.

However, this campaign is unlikely to be successful because the public discourse so far has forgotten about the connection between statelessness and informal employment. As part of globalization, what Professor Nina Glick Schiller calls a new “global labor regime” has emerged, in which transnational companies looking for inexpensive labor will incentivize workers to move from their less-developed home countries to more prosperous nations. While the workers, which include both stateless persons and their documented counterparts, undoubtedly hope for a better future, they soon encounter restrictive and complicated administrative procedures in their new country that effectively prevent them from applying for citizenship. With few legal protections, stateless labor migrants in particular then become a pawn sacrifice of the “global labor regime.” This strategy of capitalizing on human defenselessness renders informal labor possible at the expense of stateless persons, particularly in newly industrialized countries in Southeast Asia like Malaysia. Therefore, merely blaming flawed administrative procedures will be insufficient to properly address the issue of statelessness. More creative and comprehensive solutions such as a “transnational labor citizenship,” a type of proxy identity provided through membership in a transnational civil society organization, are needed so that the seeming contradiction of non-existent humans does not become reality for even more people.

How Statelessness and Informal Employment Connect

To understand why the “global labor regime” is even effective at incentivizing low-skilled workers to migrate, it is important to discuss the precarious living situations that many migrants face at home. On the one hand, such insecure conditions are caused by the subsistence-level living standards found in many parts of the world, where low-skilled workers typically receive low wages and have few opportunities to enhance their skills. On the other hand, people’s desire to accumulate previously unimaginable amounts of wealth has crushed the labor and social rights that had been won throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. This capitalist centralization of power and wealth has removed the governmental frameworks and social institutions that once prevented labor exploitation and has served to reinstitute the kind of dispossession that most people have only heard of in the context of the Middle Ages. As a result, many low-skilled workers can only dream about the kind of financial security, labor protection, and long-term security that citizens in industrialized countries have come to take for granted. This phenomenon is well summarized by three scholars from the International Institute of Social Studies, who recently showed how “foreign employment demands to be understood as precarious work undertaken to mitigate existing conditions of precarity at home.” The desire to migrate appears quite natural given the perilous living situations many low-skilled workers find themselves in.

It is exactly these push factors, which are driving people with low levels of education out of their home country, that the new “global labor regime” profits off of in order to meet the increased demand of low-wage labor caused by globalization. As the global market increasingly demands faster production of consumer goods at lower prices, large companies can only stay competitive internationally by reducing workers’ wages. Additionally, the significant demographic changes in many industrialized nations have shrunk these countries’ populations and domestic labor supplies, forcing them to increasingly depend on low-wage migrant workers. Yet, national governments and large companies have to actively cooperate on an informal level to ensure that these migrant workers can consistently be employed at a comparably low price. This is where the idea of a “global labor regime” comes in. Scholars have coined this term to describe the mutual effort of governments and companies to exclude particularly stateless labor migrants from access to citizenship. Built on nationalism and seemingly justified by a defense of the modern welfare state, this “global labor regime” systemically keeps migrants without a nationality in statelessness. For instance, governments in East Asia intentionally refuse to adopt more inclusive administrative procedures that would more easily grant stateless migrant workers from Southeast Asian countries citizenship rights as doing so would endanger economic growth. In short, national governments purposely accept the statelessness of migrants so that their economic sector can more easily exploit these people via low-wage labor. This practice is deeply troubling from a human rights perspective because it effectively dismisses the humanity of a nation’s stateless migrant workforce.

How Stateless Workers Suffer

This “global labor regime” fundamentally intertwines statelessness and informal employment, creating devastating consequences for the stateless workers who have become the regime’s pawn sacrifice. Without some type of government-issued identification, which thereby systematically excludes them from the formal labor market, stateless people are forced into chronic economic instability. For instance, they are denied access to almost all public-sector jobs within almost all countries since employment at federal or state agencies is generally restricted to citizens. As these public-sector jobs often present a key avenue to getting paid employment, especially for women in Southeast Asia, victims of the “global labor regime” are compelled to carry out cheaper, more dangerous under-the-table work even after many years in their new country. Yet, while ordinary citizens might be able to escape the low-wage sector, stateless persons are rarely able to find paths toward upward mobility. Given that the main mode of acquiring citizenship by birth in almost all Asian countries is by ius sanguinis (based on the nationality of one or both parents), generation after generation is ultimately trapped in a hopeless combination of poverty and obscurity. And, as if this is not enough already, most labor laws do not apply to workers without an official nationality, opening the door for employers to exploit, sexually harass, or even abuse their stateless employees. This is not to mention excessive working hours without overtime pay or the substandard working conditions that have almost become the new normal to many labor migrants. Unfortunately, these are the heavy burdens stateless workers have to bear at their workplace. Within their private life, stateless people similarly have to suffer from countless other examples of marginalization and discrimination.

A particularly heartbreaking example of the type of marginalization that stateless workers are confronted with can be found in Sabah, a Malaysian state in the northern part of the island Borneo. For decades, Sabah’s most crucial economic branches, such as rural oil palm plantations, have massively depended on migrant labor. Yet, as a professor at Hasanuddin University in Indonesia has described, a system of “mutual illegal collaboration” between local politicians, the police, and employers has prevented any provisions that would have granted stateless migrant workers the right to permanent employment. Instead, Sabah’s labor regime has ensured that foreign stateless workers are chained to one particular employer. The victims are people such as Rozita, whose father once came to Sabah as a refugee from the Philippines. Due to a series of family moves, Rozita lost her birth certificate and a copy of her father’s passport, which effectively made her stateless as she has been unable to prove her nationality ever since. By now, Rozita has four children who all lack birth certificates because of their mother’s statelessness. The family is effectively trapped in a vicious cycle of migration, statelessness, and informal employment. As Rozita says herself: “I don’t know how to get documents for my children. I want to go to Immigration or the Police to ask them, but I am scared.” Rozita, like so many others around the world, has become a victim of the new “global labor regime.”

How Solutions Do Exist

Although it might at first seem hard to solve this issue effectively, there is still hope for people like Rozita and her children. Most obviously, stateless workers could become naturalized citizens of the country they currently reside in. This measure would not only boost the worker’s income, but it would also indirectly benefit the host country’s economy through increased spending and demand, which would undermine many nations’ demand for exploitable, low-wage workers. In this sense, improving statelessness determination procedures or granting stateless workers unimpeded access to a nation’s labor market would also contradict the interests of many transnational companies. These are but a few of the reasons for why the current UN initiative, which sees flawed administrative procedures as the predominant cause of statelessness, will most likely not succeed. Instead, a proposal for a “transnational labor citizenship” put forth by Fordham University Professor Jennifer Gordon seems much more promising. Such citizenship would link the permission to enter a country in search of work to the membership in a “cross-border worker association [that would] allow migrants to carry benefits and services with them as they move.” Gordon’s idea has already gained support among numerous scholars who agree that this kind of “proxy citizenship” through membership within a civil society organization would be quite effective if labor organizations are empowered to develop a transnational capacity. For instance, labor movements in Indonesia as well as the Philippines have developed greater organizational capacity in recent years. A combination of political activism from below by civil society and continuing global initiatives from above by the UN could intensify this trend, possibly also spreading it to other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia or Singapore. If continued efforts by the international community or domestic pressures empower these labor organizations to a sufficient degree, a “transnational labor citizenship” could actually defeat the “global labor regime.” In the end, Rozita and her children might still have a chance.

Although the right to a nationality has theoretically been enshrined within Article 15 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights since 1948, stories like those of Rozita have shown us how statelessness and informal employment are still possible, particularly within newly industrialized countries in Asia. A new “global labor regime” driven by international competition for the lowest prices purposely denies stateless persons the right to citizenship to ensure that these stateless migrant workers can consistently be employed at low wages. The result could hardly be more catastrophic as humans become a pawn sacrifice that is continuously exploited, sexually harassed, and physically abused. People like Isa and Rozita become legal ghosts, non-existent, without any rights, privileges, or happiness. As the current world fails them, their sole remedy might be a transnational labor citizenship. The stakes could not be higher.

Cover photo by Jan Arendtsz, CC BY-ND 2.0, accessed via Flickr.

04.JUL.2020 . 5 MIN READ

Education plays a critical role in ending poverty. For example, the winners of the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences in 2019 Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo found that schooling increases earnings relatively linearly, in that each additional year of primary education adds about eight percent to earnings for a child: over the standard six years of primary schooling, income would increase for a child by about 50 percent. These gains are especially important in sub-Saharan Africa, which has the highest out-of-school rates for all ages; 33 million of the 61 million global out-of-school children live in the region.

Despite the large benefits of widespread increased education, the logistics of education can be difficult. In an analysis of seven African countries, United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) found that on the average school day, a fourth to a half of the teachers are absent, which results in a wasted school day for the students who do attend and lowers the actual effects of going to school. Moreover, barriers in attending school, such as fees, traveling time, and child morbidity, prevent out-of-school rates from decreasing.

Online Education

However, these roadblocks are not insurmountable. Online education has been on the rise in sub-Saharan Africa due to it being a cost-effective alternative to formal education as well as a way to widen educational opportunity. Already, this transition is being felt in the higher education category. Africa’s public universities are wrestling with expanding capacity without sacrificing quality which has allowed online-based institutions such as Unicaf, a pan-African university, to assert itself in the education system. Unicaf provides every student with a tablet and downloadable, offline course materials. A similar program in India, the Indira Gandhi National Open University, educates over three million students. In light of these case studies, online education could serve as a powerful tool for poverty reduction.

Tackling Barriers to Education

The primary reason that online education is so popular is for the convenience advantages for students. Specifically for students in poverty, online education tackles a number of barriers including travel time, school cost, and labor schedule.

The most important determinant of primary school enrollment is proximity.

Travel time
In their book, Improving Primary Education in Developing Countries, the World Bank describes how the most important determinant of primary school enrollment is proximity.The most important determinant of primary school enrollment is proximity. This insight has also been corroborated by the Jameel Poverty Action Lab’s (JPAL) studies, which have shown that creating local schools resulted in very large gains in enrollment as many areas with low enrollment rates are remote and affected by conflict. At the moment, 27 percent of school-age children in sub-Saharan Africa live more than two kilometers away from the nearest school, and the World Bank estimates that if these distances were reduced to less than two kilometers, their enrollment rates would rise by 15 percentage points. Clearly, the virtual aspect of online education would remove this issue of travel time and locality.

School fees and other costs
As an alternative to tax-based funding of education, a number of sub-Saharan African countries implemented school fees. However, they paid insufficient attention to the effect of these fees on access to education for the poor, which led to decreased primary school enrollment, especially among the poorest and most vulnerable children. In fact, a randomized controlled trial by Innovations for Poverty Action showed that students whose school fees were removed were 55 percent more likely to complete secondary school. Similarly, JPAL revealed that even reducing other schooling costs such as by providing free school uniforms or school meals also had positive impacts on attendance. Comparing the costs of universities in sub-Saharan Africa, it is clear that online institutions clearly win this competition; Unicaf costs US$4,000 for a degree compared to the average of US$3,000 per year of traditional universities. This suggests that, at least at the college level, online education is a very viable way to minimize costs.

Labor Schedule
The UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) reported that about a quarter of five to 14-year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa were engaged in child labor in 2004. These working children faced attendance disadvantages of about 30 percent to 67 percent. Moreover, because a majority of the child laborers are working on subsistence agricultural farming for the family, online classes would also facilitate the education of those who have to farm during the school day so they can take classes later in the evening. The UN Girls’ Education Initiative also describes how for young girls, sibling care is a major barrier to education. Considering the gender gaps between school completion—36 percent for girls and 42 percent for boys—in sub-Saharan Africa for lower secondary school, online education offers hope of leveling the playing field. By having the ability to enroll in online courses, young girls would be able to learn at their own pace and on their own hours rather than on a rigid school day schedule.

Concerns

Despite these benefits, there are a number of logistical concerns with the feasibility of extensive online education in sub-Saharan Africa.

Internet Infrastructure
One of the primary concerns is Internet access: a fundamental part of online education is the online part of it. Sub-Saharan Africa has the lowest Internet penetration of any region in the world at just 40 percent. Moreover, the gaps between Internet usage varied with income, up to a 29 percentage point difference between high- and low-income earners in certain countries. Considering these lower Internet penetration rates, online education would be less suited to tackle the poorest of the poor, but could benefit those on the higher end of the poverty spectrum. However, these rates could change soon. A number of companies are working to bring universal Internet access across the globe. For instance, the US Federal Communications Commission recently approved aerospace company SpaceX to launch more than 4,000 satellites into space as part of their universal satellite Internet program Starlink. A number of other companies such as Amazon and Facebook are also pursuing these types of satellite Internet plans.

Quality of Online Education
Moreover, the quality of online education is another concern. In a report last year about online education, researchers at George Mason University revealed that, though general learning outcomes are similar for online and in-person courses, at-risk populations such as those of lower socioeconomic background underperform in the online setting as compared to the traditional setting. They suggest that those who are the most disadvantaged may end up experiencing a lower quality of education, because traditional classes offer valuable instructor-student interaction whereas online education does not. Because schooling quality has significant impacts on later earnings, decreased quality of online education may diminish the effects that receiving an online education would have regarding social mobility.

Overlooked Primary and Secondary Education
Unfortunately, most online education in sub-Saharan Africa is at the tertiary education level, but only about 9 percent of the population even enrolls in tertiary education. Truly tackling the barriers of education would involve increasing digital education opportunities for lower levels of education because that is where the most impact is needed.

Key Takeaways

Ultimately, online education is an increasingly-utilized, but still under-used tool for tackling a lack of educational attendance in sub-Saharan Africa for its benefits of no travel time, cheaper costs, and flexible hours. However, concerns such as the existing digital infrastructure, quality of schooling, and targeted student population suggest that it alone is not enough to drive a welfare revolution in sub-Saharan Africa.

A critical tool for tackling inequality in the 21st century.

Online education may not end poverty, but it is a leap towards the right direction, a critical tool for tackling inequality in the 21st century.

22.JAN.2021 . 7 MIN READ

For immigrants chasing the ever elusive American Dream, the phrase, “education is the greatest equalizer,” is repeated, then recited, until it becomes a promise. In academia and scientific research, fulfilled dreams abound. On the tip of the iceberg, the immigrant professors, just awarded tenure, or the immigrant scientists, perhaps now working on a COVID-19 vaccine in big pharma, are living proof of the American Dream. They are the lucky ones—sometimes the exceptional ones. Others become invisible workers driving scientific innovation and research; their stories are rarely told. This is too often the plight of the immigrant postdoctoral (postdoc) researcher. Placed into a system that tends to exploit immigrant labor, the unlucky ones go from blue-collar work to, in extreme cases, 100-hour work weeks inside clandestine labs. The American Dream is put on indefinite hold.

Indentured to Research

Academia is not a true meritocracy. At the golden tip of the hierarchy are the tenured professors, who hold the job for life. Choosing these professors, a tiny sliver of the doctorate-holding population, is an inherently political process. The demand for that coveted slot is what has fueled the relevance of the postdoc.

Officially, a postdoc position is marketed towards candidates who have completed graduate school. It allows them to receive invaluable training, additional research experience, and strong mentorship—everything that, on paper, seems to prepare graduates for tenure-track professorships. A vast majority of students believe they need to do at least one postdoc in order to be considered for tenure-track positions. In reality, it’s a job built on empty promises.

What the job really entails is far less rosy than advertised. Postdocs are often hired through scientific grants awarded to professors, so they are responsible for one thing: creating valuable output. There is a simple equation that determines job security—publications equals grants equals employment. The 40 hour work week becomes a myth, as output is measured by number of publications, not the hours spent on research. Salary is neither measured by time nor skill. The average annual salary hovers around US $40,000, with minimal employee benefits. Because most postdocs are in their 30s or 40s, it’s a salary that goes towards supporting a family. In contrast, full time researchers hired to do the same work are paid up to twice that amount, and the income gap becomes much larger for researchers in industry. It is clear that postdocs are often valued as a source of cheap labor. The justification for this is that a postdoctoral fellowship is not a job, but rather a temporary training period that serves as a down payment on a stellar academic career to come. So, in spite of what often looks like a blatantly exploitative job, junior researchers still compete for postdoc opportunities  at research facilities working under well-connected faculty.

For immigrants, however, a postdoctoral fellowship is often neither temporary nor freely chosen. A postdoc is meant to be a temporary placeholder until something better comes along, but what if nothing better is up for grabs? It’s especially telling that, as of 2018, 51 percent of postdocs were foreign nationals. Immigrants more often than not realize that a postdoc is rarely a short-term affair; being a postdoc becomes a career, and an unstable, stagnated one at that. When grants dry up, postdocs simply move on to the next lab, the next professor. It’s common and almost expected to spend five or more years as a postdoc before moving on to the next job, and even then there’s no guarantee that the next job will be any better.

Because the US job market tends to be less forgiving for foreign nationals, the postdoc is a vital opportunity for immigrants to make their mark through important publications in well-known journals. Only by building up a substantial portfolio can they further a career in academia or even find a position in industry. Unfortunately, individual potential for innovative research often stagnates after too many years of postdoctoral research. Recall that most postdocs are in their thirties or forties, and more often than not, the years spent in school and then research make them overqualified for most entry level positions in industry, but under-qualified for other senior roles.

Condemned by the Visa

As much as the postdoc can become a semi-permanent position, it is also a volatile one for immigrants. The stamp of foreign status can be used as leverage to guarantee output. In some cases, this is used to take advantage of workers afraid of being sent back to their home country. Right after signing off on a postdoc’s visa renewal, one professor decided that he would be withholding 30 percent of the previously agreed upon salary. In another lab, one student remembers seeing foreign postdocs who were waiting for experiments to run sneaking in naps on the floor of the lab during 100 hour work weeks. Extreme situations like these are unfortunately more common than most would think.

The lack of quantitative surveys on postdocs, much less foreign postdocs, creates room for  marginalization. However, there is a wealth of informal anecdotal evidence suggesting that professors abuse their power in these kinds of situations. The reason for this is that professors are most often the ones who approve visa renewals; the research institution rarely has any oversight in this matter. Visas in exchange for compliance, the right to stay in exchange for labor. All of these stories, of course, are whispered. As one university administrator claims, these events are frighteningly normal. The abuse or otherwise tough conditions are often normalized, and most postdocs refuse to file formal complaints because they fear retribution. In small scientific communities, reputation and connections mean everything, and the goodwill of a professor is critical. Filing a report could very well be a career-ending move.

This exploitation then comes to occur systematically due to the simple fact that immigrants have much more to lose than a job or a promotion to a tenure-track position. Career aside, to stay in the United States, immigrants must have a visa. This sacred document is always at stake, and ironically is what often traps them in the postdoc position.

For postdocs, the most common visa is the J-1 visa, and less frequently, the H1-B visa. Both of these visas are contingent on employment. However, a postdoc position is often synonymous with instability. The job is tied to availability of funds: if a professor’s grant is spent, a postdoc will very likely be let go. Having a job and a visa sponsor will always be the top priority for foreign postdocs; why reach for  competitive positions in industries or tenure-track professorships when postdoc positions are available and frankly more realistic? Immigrants have the most to lose, and the unpredictable politics of visas are often to blame for that.

With the Trump Administration’s recent visa suspensions that placed further quotas and restrictions on H-1B and J-1 visas, the competition for limited positions open to foreigners, especially in industry, will only intensify. For foreigners, the only way to escape the postdoc trap seems to be through luck, brilliance, or obtaining resident or citizenship status. Unfortunately, on all three counts, the odds seem to be stacked against the average postdoc.

So You Think You Can Get a Green Card?

For the majority of workers that don’t catch a lucky break, have a brilliant streak, or snatch up one of the limited spots in industry, what options remain? Because the job market invariably favors US citizens and permanent residents, the only way to get a leg up is to apply for a green card. The green card is the golden ticket for immigrants. It holds the promise of security and employment opportunities; it is the key that unlocks the American Dream. Not surprisingly, the paths to winning that plastic card are incredibly limited for all immigrants, including postdocs. Assuming that the average foreign postdoc is neither married to a US citizen nor seeking asylum, one of two options is a test of luck: the green card lottery. Citizens of certain countries are prohibited from applying; even if eligible, the odds are astronomical. In 2017, 50,000 cards were awarded out of a pool of 19 million applicants. The second option, and most viable for postdocs, is to apply for an employment-based green card.

Within this broad category, there are several classes of visas with different levels of preference. The lowest preference levels, EB-5 and EB-4, are for wealthy business investors and religious workers, respectively. This clearly excludes the typical postdoc, who is generally paid less than US$15 an hour. Two categories up are the EB-3, for professionals and other skilled workers with at least two years of experience, and the EB-2, for individuals with advanced degrees or exceptional abilities. At first glance, this sounds feasible. Unfortunately, the EB-3 and EB-2 both require employer sponsorship to prove that the applicant has or will have a permanent, full-time job—and a postdoctoral fellowship is officially deemed temporary. To apply for these two categories, an immigrant postdoc would need a full-time faculty position or a position in industry.

The last and arguably only resort for any postdoc without a full-time employment offer is the holy grail of green cards: the EB-1. Often referred to as the “genius visa,” it is as daunting as it sounds. It is reserved for individuals with “extraordinary abilities” such as “outstanding professors or researchers; and multinational executives and managers.” To be eligible, an applicant has to be at the very top percentiles of their field, and proof—such as publications or positions held—is required. The only reason it is the only feasible option for many foreign postdocs is that they do not need a permanent position to apply. Nonetheless, it is incredibly daunting and difficult for junior researchers to apply for and be awarded this visa. The immigration system is set up so that a select few are successful. The question is, what happens to the rest?

Exposing a Broken System

The fundamental problem in combating the exploitation of foreign postdocs, and immigrants in general, is the lack of visibility. The majority of the time, these postdocs simply go unseen even though it is clear that they and other junior researchers are responsible for much of the output in research institutions. The current system in academia and in domestic politics is designed to lure and almost coercively retain highly skilled foreign researchers. It uses them, but refuses to acknowledge them through protective regulations. After postdocs leave one institution, most universities and research institutions do not track career outcomes for immigrant postdocs. They effectively become transient workers. Some continue building successful careers in academia, or find lucrative positions in industries. As for  the rest, do they bounce between low-level, low-paying academic positions or simply relocate back home, dreams unfulfilled?

30.DEC.2019 . 5 MIN READ

Landmines, as Major General Michael Beary of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon aptly describes them, are an “insidious menace” that disproportionately kill civilians. In recent decades, one of the most successful international agreements in recent decades has resulted in significant steps towards their elimination in warfare. The Convention on the Prohibition of the Use, Stockpiling, Production and Transfer of Anti-Personnel Mines and on their Destruction, better known as the Ottawa Treaty, was signed in 1997. The treaty aims for the complete elimination of anti-personnel landmines in warfare and has to a significant extent accomplished that aim. To date, 162 countries have signed onto the treaty, signaling their actionable intention to never develop, produce, use, stockpile, transfer, or retain landmines. The United States, notably, has not acceded to the treaty. Through an examination of the history of landmines, the campaign against them, and the process towards developing the Ottawa Treaty, the successes and failures of the Treaty can be fully understood. Furthermore, the United States’ past relationship with the Treaty can be adequately explored along with a path towards future ascension.

The history of landmines goes back to the American Civil War. The inventor of the first landmine, Gabriel Rains, assisted the Confederacy in their deployment on the battlefield—at the time, land mines consisted of a piece of sheet iron with a brass—covered fuse activated by movement of an object attached to an explosive primer. Despite concerns over their use including a temporary ban by Confederate General James Longstreet, thousands of land mines were deployed during the Civil War, resulting in an unknown number of what Union General George McLellan described as “murderous and barbarous” casualties. Rains himself declared that “Each new invention of war has been assailed and denounced as barbarous… yet each in its own turn notwithstanding has taken its position by the universal consent of nations according to its efficiency in human slaughter.” His words proved prophetic: land mines became a weapon of war used by nearly every nation in the world throughout the World Wars and after. Outside of their devastating effect on civilian populations during wartime, landmines can remain buried for decades after their intended use. For example, Afghanistan saw landmines planted indiscriminately across the country during conflicts in the late 20th century, which continue to kill thousands and serve as a major obstacle to development; Egypt cites a figure of some 23 million land mines within its borders, causing locals to refer to some tracts of the country’s deserts as “The Devil’s Gardens.” By the mid-1990’s, landmines senselessly killed around 26,000 people annually.

In the early 1990’s, an international movement against the use of these devastating weapons began in earnest. Spurred by an international campaign to ban landmines made up of nonprofits including Handicap International, Medico International, Human Rights Watch, the Mines Advisory Group, the Vietnam Veterans of America Foundation and Physicians for Human Rights, in December of 1993 the United Nations considered a moratorium on the exportation of anti-personnel mines. However, the ultimate amended Protocol that emerged from three years of negotiations on the subject fell short of total prohibition. Independently, some countries—including Belgium, Canada, Switzerland, and France—destroyed their stockpiles and stopped exporting land mines. In late 1996, countries frustrated by the lack of international progress convened in Ottawa for a summit entitled the “International Strategy Conference: Towards a Global Ban on Anti-Personnel Mines.” After establishing a framework for negotiations going forward, 97 nations signed the Brussels Declaration of 1997, which called for a comprehensive ban on the production, stockpiling, and transfer of landmines, the destruction of stockpiles of landmines, and international assistance in the clearance of land mines from conflict zones. This declaration became the basis of the Ottawa Treaty, which was officially signed in Canada in December of 1997.

The Treaty has largely been successfully implemented, though some areas of enforcement are lacking. For one, the codification of an absolute ban on landmines has stigmatized their use and contributed to a new international norm against their deployment in warfare. More concretely, the treaty has directly caused the elimination of 87 countries’ landmine stockpiles; more than 40 million landmines have been destroyed since 1997, saving tens of thousands of lives. Additionally, the Treaty has established meaningful mechanisms for compensation and rehabilitation for victims of landmines and their families, including drastic increases in funding for organizations providing medical, social, and economic support to affected populations. However, some nations are actively trying to leave the Treaty, such as Finland: Finnish Defense Minister Jussi Niinisto called the Ottawa Treaty a “blunder by a peacetime fool,” and urges Finland to remove itself from the Treaty in the interest of its defenses against Russia. Even worse, some states openly defy the Treaty’s ban. A notable recent example is Myanmar. The Burmese military has laid mines in Rohingya villages and along their border with Bangladesh, directly impeding the return of Rohingya Muslims from their place of refuge. Unrelenting international pressure is the best recourse and solution to force noncompliant states to accede to the Ottawa Treaty and stop their use of landmines. Thirty-two nations are not a party to the Ottawa Treaty; however, not all are openly using landmines in warfare. Though the Treaty has seen great success with its signatories, progress towards the complete elimination of landmines in the world will require the ascension of noncompliant states.

More than 40 million landmines have been destroyed since 1997, saving tens of thousands of lives.

The United States—along with the likes of Iran, China, Russia, Pakistan, and Syria—is not a party to the Ottawa Treaty. Although America supported the development process of the treaty, it did not sign it in 1997. The Clinton administration declined to accede to the Treaty under pressure from the Pentagon, which was concerned with the strategic importance of landmines along the Demilitarized Zone (or DMZ) between North and South Korea. The United States, in conjunction with South Korea, has deployed thousands of landmines across the DMZ to serve as a deterrent against North Korean invasion. Robert Beecroft, a State Department official under President Clinton, said that the United States would have signed the treaty if not for the issue of Korea. Little movement was made on the issue until 2014, when the Obama administration announced that it would accede to the Ottawa Treaty in every way except on the Korean peninsula. President Obama announced at the time that “we will begin destroying our stockpiles not required for the defense of South Korea. And we’re going to continue to work to find ways that would allow us to ultimately comply fully and accede to the Ottawa Convention.” The United States pledged to destroy its stockpile of nearly 10 million landmines, not produce anymore, and totally restrict their use in warfare. Advocates of the land mine ban applauded this move, but questioned the logic of requiring an exception for Korea. Steven Goose, arms director at the Human Rights Watch, said that “a geographic exception to the ban is no more acceptable today than when the treaty was negotiated.”

A new opportunity presented by recent diplomatic efforts in Korea could be the beginning of the United States’ ascension in full to the Ottawa Treaty. The recent thawing of diplomatic tension on the Korean peninsula included a 2018 summit between South Korean President Moon Jae-In and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un; both South and North Korea agreed to begin dismantling landmines in the DMZ. Engineers began removing landmines from the region within days of the summit, with the stated goal of total removal. If this policy is successful between North and South Korea, and landmines are eliminated from the DMZ, then the United States would have no reason not to fully sign on to the Ottawa Treaty.

A new opportunity presented by recent diplomatic efforts in Korea could be the beginning of the United States' ascension in full to the Ottawa Treaty.

The Ottawa Treaty is the result of the complicated, ugly history of landmines and the subsequent late-20th century movement towards their elimination. It is a success in progress: though it has undoubtedly saved lives and made the world safer, landmines are still in use in some countries around the world. The United States has so far failed to accede to the Treaty, largely due to the outlier of the Korean peninsula and the necessity of landmines in the DMZ as a deterrent. New developments towards the removal of those mines, though, may finally mean that America can add its full, unconditional support to a global landmine ban.

21.OCT.2020 . 6 MIN READ

For more than seven decades, NATO has been an “anchor of stability and a beacon of hope.” North America and Europe have even been called “two sides of the same coin” with regard to international security interests. Since the end of World War II, the close ties between the two continents have guaranteed the security of the Western world. Yet, in early June 2020, US President Donald Trump announced plans to withdraw approximately 9,700 US troops from Germany, thereby reducing the United States’ military presence in the region by 30 percent. Former US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell explained the motives behind this momentous decision, criticizing Germany’s comparably low defense spending and describing how “[US] taxpayers are getting a little bit tired of paying too much for the defense of other countries.” From the US point of view, Germany, like most of Europe, has become an unreliable defense policy partner because of their insufficient financial support for NATO.

However, from a European perspective, Trump’s attacks constitute a threat to the alliance’s cohesion. After Trump suggested that the United States completely withdraw from NATO,  a mere 11 percent of Germans trust him to respond appropriately to global developments. With Russian military activities in Ukraine endangering Europe’s security from the east and Trump questioning the future of NATO from the west, the political leaders of the European Union now feel pressured to find new ways of ensuring the continent’s safety. German Chancellor Angela Merkel remarked how “the times, in which we could rely on others without reservations, are over. This means that we Europeans must take our fate into our own hands, if we want to survive as a community.” While Trump aims at strengthening NATO by having its members contribute an equitable amount of money, his decision to withdraw US soldiers from Germany may actually push the European Union toward developing its own military strategy. Trump’s pressure might actually promote the type of European military integration that has long been proposed but never fully realized.

A Slow Start

In the 1950s, the leaders of six major European countries including Germany and France agreed to form the European Defence Community. Implementation, however, ultimately failed after a veto by the French National Assembly, which feared German rearmament so soon after World War II. Instead, Germany, along with the other major European powers, joined NATO to unite their various military forces under the US umbrella. As a result, the United States became Europe’s de facto military protector during the Cold War; it was not until the fall of the Berlin Wall for the idea of European military integration resurfaced again. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the subsequently decreased military presence of the United States in Europe, numerous politicians—such as German Chancellor Helmut Kohl in 1991, French Prime Minister Alain Juppé in 1996, and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in 1999—have advocated for the implementation of a common European defense union. Yet, all of this grand rhetoric only turned into minor actions.

It took until 2004 and the establishment of the European Defence Agency (EDA) for the first political step toward European military integration, providing an informal forum for European ministries of defense to collaborate without any kind of legal framework. Eventually, the 2009 Treaty of Lisbon built a statutory foundation for European military cooperation and even included a Mutual Assistance Clause in case one member state would become the victim of “armed aggression on its territory.” For the first time, military integration had become a formal item on the European agenda. Today, initiatives such as the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), the European Defense Fund, and an annual Review of (European) Defense try to deepen the continent’s military cooperation by financing collaborative defense industrial projects and synchronizing the member state’s individual defense plans with one another. This institutional groundwork has enabled the various European Union member states to jointly carry out military and civilian missions across Europe (Ukraine, Bosnia, and Herzegovina), Africa (Somalia and Mali), and Asia (Georgia and Afghanistan).

Insurmountable Hurdles?

Despite these promising developments, European military integration still faces many of the same challenges that existed in the 1950s. Some countries freely deploy their military personnel across the globe: France was the driving force behind the ouster of Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011. Other countries, like Germany, have considerable reservations about assigning their soldiers overseas. These asymmetric security preferences combined with the consensus-based institutional organization of the European Union make it difficult for member states to agree upon joint military operations. The addition of growing Euroskepticism among numerous member states makes it very unlikely that a full supranational military force could ever replace national armies. Not only do most countries still value their own military sovereignty over cooperative efforts, but the complicated institutional organization of the European Union would make an efficient military crisis management of a European army almost impossible. Cooperation between countries’ individual armies, then, appears to be the only viable option to further European military integration.

However, even joint military missions are strained in the context of COVID-19. As the EU faces GDP declining by more than 12 percent, the continent’s defense expenditure will likely be severely restricted. While a similar phenomenon occurred after the global economic crisis of 2008, the impact on Europe’s defense budget will be even greater this time around. Experts have already warned that this looming decrease in military spending could have massive negative effects on European military integration. If European leaders do not act decisively, the progress made toward a European defense community might be lost—possibly forever.

Moreover, external pressures from international actors could seal the fate of Europe’s joint defense aspirations. The United States in particular has strongly resisted EU attempts to develop its military capabilities, worried these efforts could limit US control over regional military decisions. The United States also fears European military integration for economic reasons: a united European defense community could exclude US defense contractors. US ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, acknowledges how “we do not want this to be a protectionist vehicle for the EU…. We want the Europeans to have capabilities and strength, but not to fence off [US] products.” US opposition to extensive European military integration, whether through indirect political pressure or aggressive lobbying within the European Parliament, is as old as the idea of integration itself.

Now or Never

The removal of US troops from Germany could make European leaders realize how the United States’ current economic priorities have dominated their traditional strategic political alliances. Security experts like diplomat Wolfgang Ischinger have warned for almost five years that “[while] a strong transatlantic partnership will remain the best security guarantee for Europe, this preferred option may not be available in the future.” Current polls indicate that 75 percent of Europeans advocate for common defense and security policies, and that 68 percent would like the European Union to cooperate more closely on defense. At any rate, European citizens seem to have understood these warnings. It remains to be seen if the politicians have. If former US Vice President Joe Biden, an outspoken advocate of refreshing transatlantic relations and strengthening NATO, wins the US presidential elections in November, European leaders may easily fall back into the habit of relying on their American ally. Attempts to increase European military integration would once again amount to little.

Alternatively, the European Union could take the numerous warnings of security experts seriously and could satisfy the populace by furthering a holistic European defense strategy. A unified military would finally allow Europe to properly defend itself without having to rely on the assistance of outside forces. How? Simple coordination and an expanded mandate of the European Defence Agency would be sufficient. Importantly, none of that would necessitate the surrender of national military sovereignty, and coherent individual defense spending plans and joint investment into European industrial defense projects would actually allow member states to save money. There is no lack of arguments for military integration and no lack of ideas for how to achieve such integration; there is only a lack of political determination.

For more than seven decades, EU member states have claimed that they do not want to lose their military sovereignty to justify implementing halfhearted integration policies. US military assistance lulled Europe’s leaders into a sense of security and made the hurdle of establishing a European army appear insurmountable. Now, Trump’s decision to withdraw soldiers from Germany could finally push the European Union toward developing its own military strategy. While North American and European international security interests might have once been two sides of the same coin, this perception has masked what is possible under a united European front. It is time to put the topic of further military integration on top of the continent’s political agenda; the future of Europe depends on it.

18.AUG.2019 . 9 MIN READ

Alex Young. Originally published in the HIR Summer 2013 Issue.

In this age of digitalization and technology, intelligence agencies across the globe process massive amounts of information about individuals, sub-state actors, and governments every day. Intelligence experts ana military leaders often assume that the goal of intelligence work is to gather as much information as possible in order to formulate a more comprehensive picture of the world. The United States, in particular, has become a global epicenter of intelligence work—4.2 million US citizens, more than 10% of the country's population, have some form of security clearance. However, this aggressive intelligence gathering does not make for better-informed government agencies or higher quality security policy. Instead, excessive information collection leads to information overload on both the individual and institutional levels, impairing the US intelligence community's ability to do its job. What’s more, US government agencies do not use this information effectively, due to overclassification problems. These inefficiencies in intelligence ultimately sow instability in the international system and increase the likelihood of conflict between states.

Too Much Information

The US intelligence community is currently inundated with information. This poses a serious challenge to effective intelligence work. Overwhelmed by data, analysts lose the ability to pick out what is important and fail to make good judgments. In a 1970 book, futurist Alvin Toffler of the International Institute for Strategic Studies coined the term "information overload" to describe situations in which an excess of information results in poorer decision making. Today, this phenomenon holds true on both an individual and an institutional level. Modern psychology teaches that the human brain can only focus effectively on so much information at a time. As a person tries to complete more tasks simultaneously, his or her efficacy in dealing with each individual task diminishes in a phenomenon called "cognitive overload." Psychologist Lucy Jo Palladino writes that information overload leads to added stress, indecisiveness, and less effective analysis of decisions. This feature of human attention has clear implications for security policy: attempting to collect more and more information makes a nation less secure when it overloads intelligence analysts.

Information overload carries over to the institutional level in three ways. First, institutional skill is in some ways nothing more than an aggregation of individual talent. If every member of a group is overwhelmed by an excess of information, then the organization as a whole is unable to operate effectively. Secondly, institutions may face the challenge of circular reporting. In the process of collecting massive amounts of information, agencies may collect the same information twice from different sources. When faced with high volumes of incoming reports, intelligence agencies cannot easily prevent this duplication of data. It is particularly difficult to detect circular reporting when the shared provenance of the information is obscured—for example, when the information is delivered to intelligence officers through secondary sources. Not only does circular reporting add to inefficiency, it also can lead analysts to place too much importance on the twice-reported information. This is because analysts measure the credibility of intelligence reporting in part based on how many independent sources confirm the report. That standard becomes problematic, though, if one source appears to multiply through circular reporting. Third, organizations fall prey to the sheer complexity of their own intelligence gathering frameworks. These three factors make information overload a serious problem at the institutional level.

To make things worse, institutions are notoriously ineffective at evaluating themselves. Leaders of organizations like those inside the US intelligence community are more likely to keep their jobs or to be promoted if the organization they manage appears to be successfully and efficiently living up to expectations. The head of an agency therefore has a vested interest in appearing competent, leading to strong efforts to avoid unfavorable evaluations, especially from the inside. This means that leaders face powerful incentives to suppress negative evaluations, marginalize the internal evaluators, and overlook their own shortcomings. Intelligence institutions thus cannot easily identify or resolve information overload.

Unfortunately, it may prove impossible to solve both individual cognitive overload and institutional information overload: the solution to one problem exacerbates the other. Individuals should take breaks and limit their number of concurrent projects in order to minimize cognitive overload. This suggests that organizations should hire more analysts to deal with the flow of intelligence. However, as organizations grow larger and more unwieldy, the problems of circular reporting and complexity become only more serious.

These cognitive and institutional problems are degrading the capability of US intelligence agencies to keep track of world events and to use information to guard against security threats. Since the terrorist attacks on September 1 1th, 2001, the US intelligence community has ballooned: since the attack, 263 separate organizations have been created or reformulated. Those offices represent 20% of the government organizations that do intelligence work. The analysts among the 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances produce an overwhelming number of intelligence reports—so many that the Office of the Director of National Intelligence cannot keep track of exactly how many reports are completed each year. Perhaps most strikingly, the National Security Agency intercepts and stores 1.7 billion emails, phone calls, and other communications every day, a small portion of which are organized into 70 databases. Paradoxically, then, by trying to do more, US intelligence agencies are accomplishing less.

Too Much Secrecy

The US intelligence community does a poor job sharing information internally, between agencies and between analysts, because vast portions of that information are overclassified. Overclassification occurs either when information is classified but should not be, or when information that is classified should be classified at a lower level.

This is by no means a new problem. Almost six decades ago, a Department of Defense report argued that overclassification had "reached serious proportions." More recently, public figures from John Kerry to Donald Rumsfeld have expressed strong concerns about how many documents are classified in the United States. Excessive classification has persisted because it arises from a fundamentally perverse incentive structure facing decision makers. Officials who decide whether to classify documents and how strictly to limit their circulation face virtually no consequences if they classify a document whose contents did not warrant such a designation. On the other hand, those officials are punished severely for failures to classify sensitive information. This leads decision makers to err on the side of caution, choosing to classify documents at higher levels in uncertain cases. The result is massive overclassification and institutional failure to make information available where and when it is needed.

The numbers are striking. In 2010, officials in the US intelligence community made 22 million more classification decisions than they had in 2009, reaching an annual total of 76.8 million classification activity events. These estimates include both original decisions made about the classification status of new incoming information as well as derivative decisions reviewing previously classified information. Spending levels also act as an illuminating illustration of the scale of overclassification. The Information Security Oversight Office, the US government agency that keeps track of trends in classification and intelligence management, publishes annual reports on the state of the intelligence community. In 2011, the US government spent almost US$11.31 billion on all classification efforts. This number does not include the costs of classification by the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Office of the Director of National Security, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, or the National Security Agency. Those expenditures are themselves classified.

By contrast, the total cost of all declassification by the US government was only US$52.76 million—more than 200 times less than the amount spent on classification. Perhaps most tellingly, Elizabeth Goitein, Co-Director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, reports that in 92 percent of cases in which a member of the public appeals for the declassification of a record, the agency in question determines that at least part of the relevant document did not need to remain classified. Secrecy is out of control in the US intelligence community.

Overclassification has become an obstacle to intelligence sharing across agencies, potentially leaving analysts in the CIA without easy access to necessary information gathered by the NSA (or other agencies), and therefore, with diminished ability to formulate an accurate picture of the world around us. The lack of transparency that necessarily results from such large-scale classification also decreases accountability, thereby reducing the incentive for analysts to carry out accurate intelligence reporting. Analysts cannot easily be reprimanded or commended for their work unless their superiors can gauge the accuracy of the information they produce and use. Excessive secrecy also precludes open discussion of security policy questions, fueling public ignorance on issues of national security and eliminating the government's ability to take into account the voice of the people. Essentially, the US intelligence community has limited itself by placing too much emphasis on secrecy and not enough on efficiency.

Intelligence and International Insecurity

The failures of US intelligence do more than just erode US security. Given that the United States shares intelligence with many of it allies and coordinates with militaries across the globe, especially since 9/11, lapses in judgment and inconsistencies in intelligence on the part of US analysts cause ripple effects throughout the military and intelligence communities across the world. Since 1946, the United States has upheld a signals intelligence sharing agreement—often called "Five Eyes"—with the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Washington also cooperates closely with newer allies in the Middle East and South Asia, including Israel, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and Pakistan. US intelligence agencies have even reached out to governments that have traditionally not been their greatest partners—nations such as China and, before the Arab Spring, Libya and Syria.

This means that any failures of US intelligence are multiplied and spread across the international community. These shortcomings in US intelligence collection have serious security implications for the world as a whole. States make decisions about entering, exiting, and preparing for war based on their perceptions of the international system, their views of how power is distributed, and their understandings of what capabilities other states have. All of these assessments are shaped by the United States' and other nations' abilities to collect accurate, relevant information and distribute that intelligence to allies.

Furthermore, less effective intelligence work heightens the chance of war between states. One classic problem in political science deals with why war occurs: conflict is costly for both winners and losers, which seems to suggest that it is irrational for two states to wage war. One prominent explanation for the existence of war, then, is that states act rationally but make mistakes due to imperfect information. That is, if the world were in fact exactly the way a state perceived it, then that state would be acting rationally. But, because the world differs in some significant way from that state's view of it, the state makes irrational choices. Specifically, governments make miscalculations surrounding relative military capabilities, strategies, the intentions of allies to provide support, or the resolve of military and civilian leadership to pursue a drawn out conflict. A state's misunderstanding of one or more of these factors could lead it to overestimate its ability to win wars, leading it to enter more conflicts.

Historically, there have been many wars founded on misinformation or incomplete intelligence—conflicts which could have been avoided by better intelligence work. Overclassification prevented US intelligence analysts from making the right connections in the months and days leading up to the terrorist attacks of September 11th, 2001; the 9/11 Commission later blamed those intelligence gaps on "overclassification and excessive compartmentalization of information among agencies." Moreover, the US war in Iraq from 2003 to 2011 began because of a widely held belief that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein possessed and was perhaps willing to use weapons of mass destruction. This claim proved false, but the war nonetheless claimed more than 50,000 US and Iraqi lives, left more than 100,000 people wounded, and condemned Iraq to years of instability. With better intelligence work, the US intelligence community could have seen this miscalculation before it was too late.

Today, faulty intelligence gathering still poses a threat to peace. For example, without accurate information about Iran's nuclear capabilities and intelligence about the nature and locations of its nuclear plants, a risk-averse Israel could overestimate the need to take drastic, preemptive measures against Iran. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has already called for international action to stop Iranian development of functional nuclear weapons, calling that prospect… the main [problem] facing not only myself and Israel, but the entire world." Israel's decision to strike or not to strike Iran depends in large part on the Israeli government and military's perceptions about Iran's strength, capabilities, and intentions. If faulty intelligence leads Israel to believe that Iran is putting the finishing touches on a nuclear arsenal or that Iran intends to use a nuclear weapon against Israel, Israel will likely carry out an airstrike on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities. Such action may be acceptable or even responsible if Iran is indeed in possession of a nuclear weapon, but if that intelligence turns out to be false, an Israeli strike would destabilize the region without achieving much. Inadequate information therefore continues to have the potential to create unnecessary conflict.

Conclusion

US military strategy and security policy depend heavily on the ability of intelligence analysts to piece together a clear, coherent, and accurate picture of the world. Unfortunately, the agencies tasked with gathering intelligence have overreached their capacities and grown far too unwieldy, while at the same time placing too much importance on secrecy. This hinders their ability to do their job: due to individual cognitive overload, institutional information overload, and the overclassification of intelligence, US intelligence offices can no longer accomplish what they are intended to do. By trying to do too much, the United States has harmed its own ability to collect intelligence. This problem grows even more serious when one considers that the United States shares intelligence with allies across the globe. Unless the United States rapidly improves its ability to gather and sort through intelligence, the international system will remain less stable and more prone to conflict for the foreseeable future.

17.SEP.2020 . 9 MIN READ