WORLD.  Globalization has been proclaimed dead in relation to the inflation problems, the war in Ukraine, and the recent Covie-19 pandemic. Different academics and experts have talked about deglobalization since 2020. However, new globalization is now being developed and also organized with decentralized technology such as cryptocurrencies. 

Comments and myths about “the death of globalization” are false and inaccurate for several reasons. For example, the current inflation problems are mainly a result of shortages of goods, and global value chains will still be important for trade and cooperation. Regarding the ongoing war in Ukraine, one must remember that despite its land size and economy, Russia is still among the least globalized and most trade-preventionist nations.

Regarding trade and other globalizing aspects, there is no strong evidence or support that our world is becoming more or less globalized. As for example liberal opinion-maker and global historian Johan Norberg writes, globalization has “found new ways” and adapted itself as during the recent pandemic and global health problems with the Covid virus. Covid-19 has mainly been handled thanks to global cooperation and flows of important goods, services, and ideas. 

Historically, it is nothing new that globalization or global development, in general, is changing. Partly it has to do with general political, economic, social, and technological changes around the world, such as further development of trade agreements and flows in Africa. Regarding technological changes, one of the main current trends in the development of decentralized technology is in the cases of blockchain, self-sovereign identity, and cryptocurrencies. 

Covid-19 has mainly been handled thanks to global cooperation and flows of important goods, services, and ideas. 

One common factor for these techniques is that they enable people to cooperate and interact without needing “a middle-man” as a bank, company, or government institution. Decentralized technology is also global because the interactions between humans, and private and public institutions are done worldwide. Older cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum are already used for buying goods and services worldwide, especially in larger cities such as Miami, Tokyo and Barcelona. 

In several ways, cryptocurrencies can be described as a new form of global development where individuals and communities are more dominating and presented than the case was during the 1990s and 2000s when globalization was often seen as mainly beneficial for large multi-national and global companies. When new cryptocurrencies are created, communities are common as well. In such crypto-communities, individuals organize themselves by creating internal democratic governance, markets, products, work, and businesses. This is for example the case with crypto-currencies such as Seeds, Tezos and Algorand. 

Currently, the total global trade and value of cryptocurrencies is around two trillion American dollars. At the same time, many new communities, companies, and cooperatives that are using crypto are created. Such businesses and initiatives are also specialized by focusing on different topics such as for example banking, climate transformation and food production. 

As post-pandemic and post-Trump&Brexit-style discussions about globalization are taking place, the case of cryptocurrencies offers new insights and methods for how our world can be more integrated and unified. This process is very much driven by economic topics such as markets and money transfers but also includes many examples of non-profit and more meaningful initiatives and actions. On an individual and practical level, being a member of a  cryptocurrency community, one directly participates in global development through decentralized cooperation through ideas and systems that can contribute to connecting more people and solving problems as world citizens. 

The post Cryptocurrencies are a vital part of the new globalisation first appeared on Opulens.

This article was originally published in 2019 by Amy Oloo via Democracy Without Borders blog. 

FREEDOM. With millions of people across the world fleeing violence, oppression, economic desparation or because of environmental reasons, migration remains a key issue on the political agenda. Two years ago we reported on our blog that a powerful case was made that the global benefits of open borders and free movement of people may strongly outweigh the disadvantages. This piece looks at some of the arguments since then.

In an article penned for the Los Angeles Daily News, Doug McIntyre argued recently that nation-states as we know them eventually may become a thing of the past. The columnist said that due to increased access to the internet, and subsequent exposure to ‘others’, people are beginning to identify themselves as global citizens. “For the first time in human history our sense of community is not limited by geography,” he writes. In fact, surveys confirm that the notion of global citizenship is widespread.

The world is far away from ‘borderlessness’

However, the world is far away from achieving a state of ‘borderlessness’. According to Tim Marshall, author of the 2018 book Divided: Why We’re Living in an Age of Walls, Donald Trump’s controversial plans for building a wall on the border to Mexico is actually in the global norm. The author reveals that 65 countries now have a wall or fence. Half of these fortifications were built in this century. Marshall argues that their purpose is to ease concerns by giving the impression that ‘something is being done’ to keep migrants out. After all, the current influx of nationalist leaders often is a result of growing concerns about uncontrolled mass migration.

The idea of a world without borders remains unfathomable for those in the Global South. The free movement of people across borders has only been awarded to the affluent and those with European and North American passports.

In a piece titled The Idea of a Borderless World, Achille Mbembe, a Cameroonian philosopher and political theorist,  argues that the “capacity to decide who can move, who can settle, where and under what conditions is increasingly becoming the core of political struggles.”

According to Mbembe classical liberal thought embraces the freedom of movement for capital, goods, and services. He argues that a ‘fourth freedom of movement’ must be added: that of people. In the European Single Market this freedom is referred to as free movement of labour.

Thus, Africans and all world citizens must be awarded the same freedom of movement that others already have. Mbembe acknowledges that in order to initiate this transition, African countries themselves must start with opening their borders to each other and remove the tight constrictions that were mapped out by colonizers. The African Continental Free Trade Area which is set to launch on 30th May 2019 may be perceived as a step towards this. The new free trade area is envisioned to become one of the largest single markets in the world and will provide companies with easy access across the continent. Two months ago Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta called upon African governments to allow free movement of people as well. The African Union is already working on a single African passport for all African citizens.

From a moral point of view, freedom of movement should be granted irrespective of social or economic status. Nonetheless, denial of the ‘fourth freedom’ remains rooted not only in xenophobic views but also in economic bias. This is best illustrated by the fact that 108,000 millionaires were able to migrate freely in 2018 as a recent study showed. Further reports predict that at least 26% of the world’s millionaires will make similar moves in 2019. In many cases, millionaires from countries such as China, Russia and Turkey flock to states such as Australia, Canada and the USA. Often millionaires effectively purchase citizenship or residency status, a privilege not awarded to the poor. They cannot even travel freely.

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COMPLEXITY. Wars, diseases and major ecological collapses have existed as long as there has been human life on Earth. Humans have been heavily afflicted by such problems, but we have always risen from ashes. But imagine if, despite that the risks are low, a global catastrophe takes place without humanity being able to recover? In order to avoid global disasters, the world community has to find new methods for cooperation. Could a multistakeholder model be one of the solutions? 

Jens Orback is the Executive of the Global Challenges Foundation

Traditional risk analysis is based on the following equation: the size of a risk is the potential future damage multiplied by the probability that the damage would occur. The equation clearly shows that when the potential damage of risk is large, we cannot ignore it because of insecurity or because the probability för the damage taking place seems low.

Global catastrophes have occurred before in history, as some previous pandemics have killed more than 10% of the world’s population. During the 20th century, a nuclear war was close on several occasions, a risk that has not changed despite it is more seldomly being discussed in public debate. The most dramatic change is that humanity, for the first time in history, is capable of seriously damaging the global ecosystem that we are all depending on. ser

Covid-19, greenhouse gas emissions, and weapons of mass destruction have one thing in common – they are not limited to national borders. It is becoming obvious that threats against humanity are border-crossing. Regardless if it is about global health, climate, environmental damages or connected migration flows. 

Since earlier, humanity has tried to create institutions at different levels to handle those crises and conflicts of interests that affect us. However, the capacity to address serious border-crossing threats through common decision-making and regulations is defective at the moment. 

Humanity stands in front of great opportunities and challenges in reforms, economic development, and technological innovation to handle global catastrophic risks like climate change, weapons of mass destruction, or pandemics. Everyone can benefit from a common policy, but all stakeholders do not equally interpret the benefits to themselves as being large or are unwilling to finance the costs. In such situations, everyone is affected by the problem. 

The term “global governance” includes a lot of the “soft power” that the world community needs, by the power of attraction resulting in more stakeholders committing themselves to a norm rather than by imposing coercion, cowing to brute force or economic compensation. True supranationalism between governments and international organisations is still rare. Most of today’s multilateral institutions were built up after the Second World War, but they were not designed for the purpose of dealing with the threats we face today.

This is why we now see organisations like the World Health Organisation (WHO) lacking the power to sanction countries that do not follow the encouragement to analyse and report their health capacities to handle diseases spreading. World Trade Organisation (WTO) negotiations are at a standstill. Member countries are instead working on bilateral or regional multilateral agreements. United Nations (UN) organs are dependent for their functions on the member-states earmarked contributions, leading to distortions in their activities.

The European Union (EU), the world’s most advanced project for political integration, is a regional organisation and member-state governments decide the union’s direction. Global problems demand global solutions, but we must understand which solutions are efficient and workable. Reforms of the UN have been discussed, but have so far not gone forward because great powers are tending to their short-term national interests, and thereby it is hard to conduct reforms from above. 

Multi-party stakeholder models approach global challenges by gathering representatives for different governmental and non-governmental organisations that affect or are affected by a common issue or problem. Global interest initiatives gather together companies, civil society organisations, politics, public institutions and projects. Also, such processes can also include academic institutions, foundations, intergovernmental organisations as well as technical expertise. 

Some multi-party stakeholders include only the non-governmental sector, in contrast to multilateralism, where the governments are meeting for negotiations. Some researchers that have analysed the topic of multi-stakeholder conversations argue that this model provides a stronger engagement and mobilises more resources from participants than traditional multilateral institutions. Also, stakeholders represent their functions, rather than their nations, which provide a more pragmatic attitude in the negotiations. 

Such developments were in general seen as unthinkable 20-30 years ago, so can a shift to multistakeholderism be legitimate and efficient? To whom are such stakeholders responsible and how? Is there a risk that they are being dominated by special interests and can increase inequality in the world? 

We do not know the answers to these questions yet and we need to examine them further in order to find a road map. Not only in order to recover our world to the conditions before Covid-19 but also in order to imagine a less fragile future. 

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RIGHTS. The 2020s could be a decade when new systems and functions concerning rights are developed. But the future development can be both light and dark, depending on which ideas win more support and acceptance in public debates. Keeping in mind the 2010s nationalist and populist development where human rights are despised, at the same time as there is a lack of new ideas about rights catalogs for a post-industrial societal development.

Brexit and rights 

In connection with the Brexit debate, the academic David Miller asked why many left-wing Britons took a stand for EU membership based on communication about labor union organization, working conditions, and social rights. After all, rights as civic ones are a historical product of formations of nations and nation-states as the UK.

Miller’s point about rights being interpreted from a state-centric perspective is also about the idea of ​​”liberal nationalism”, which can also be likened to nationalist social democracy – high taxes and a demand-based welfare state, as well as restrictive immigration and demands for cultural uniformity. In addition, the liberal-nationalist view is that citizenship and rights should only be national because the nation-state is regarded as the only possible form of social and institutional organization.

The argument in the style of Brexit being bad for social rights and the working class in Britain has been part of the pro-Remain left-wing referendum campaign. Furthermore, millions of anti-Brexit and pro-EU Britons realized that they risked losing their civil rights as EU citizens regarding turnout, mobility, and health care. In turn, pro-Brexit leftists have argued the opposite, namely that Brexit would be good for British civil rights, partly because the European Union is still equal to neoliberalism and undermining national democracy.

European Union and rights 

But regarding Brexit and the view of rights, it is important to understand the following, as the historian Yuval Harari argues. According to Harari, Brexit was not a political battle between people who were for or against rights. Rather, it was a political struggle between those who wanted rights in a universal and cosmopolitan sense against those who wanted the rights to stay at the border and primarily be for “our own“.

Much of the EU’s ‘social dimension’ of rights and conditions can and should be criticized for improving and further evolving over time. At the same time, it is also important to understand that the EU is the only example in the world of how concrete civil rights have been shaped at the supranational level and could thus include and unite more people than ever before in history.

This partly explains the establishment of European citizenship in the 1990s and 2000s as a kind of political target for both left-wing and right-wing populists and nationalists in the Union. For those who in an authoritarian way believe that man must be subordinated to the nation and mentally limited to “the national”, ideas about rights and the individual’s private sphere at the supranational level can feel very irritating and negative.

The “civil rights vs human rights” false narrative

Rights discussions in the 2010s also show that nationalism cannot be divided into good and evil because different ideas tend to merge. For example, when the Sweden Democrats in 2017 handed out their “freedom prize” to the Czech Republic’s former prime minister and now right-wing extremist Vaclav Klaus, the motivation was that Klaus had argued that human rights have become a threat to civic rights and national sovereignty. However, such ideas and reasoning are not limited to right-wing extremist actors, as the debate on rights from a nationalist and authoritarian point of view has occurred among other debaters, including on the left.

For example, the historian and debater Lars Traedgaordh, known for the texts concerning Swedish identification and social trust, argued in the 2010s that civil (welfare) rights should outweigh human rights regarding Sweden’s function as a state. Above all, it is about the view of humanitarian immigration and resources concerning the welfare state, where Traedgaodh believes that Sweden has a greater responsibility for its own citizens than for non-citizens. In addition, Traedgaordh has reasoned in the style that the focus on multiculturalism, pluralism, and universality should be reduced in favor of culture in the “national” sense.

A rights debate for 21st century

In this way, based on the 2010 rights debates, one can conclude that the political battle that Harari believes is generally not about for or against rights but is about which people should have rights and how the rights should be managed institutionally. Those who want a cosmopolitan world and are driven by universal values and rights need to explain how democracy, welfare, and the rule of law can really function globally. And those who want rights based on nationalist and discriminatory reasoning need to explain why the public as the state should treat people in an arbitrary, repressive, and exclusive way.

There are several reasons why more people as in the Swedish debate should look ahead and write about modern ideas about rights. The modern state needs to be precisely universalist and cosmopolitan to be able to deal with global problems and challenges and contribute to human security and the development of the climate and the planet. Today, more and more people are joining decentralized and often global communities such as networks and associations with their own constitutions, democratic processes, and economic ecosystems. Animals also need to have their rights more protected in line with climate change. There are also transhumanist and futuristic ideas about rights for robots, AI, and cyborgs in the post-industrial as well as “post-human” societal visions of the future.

Such a development may sound comical and strange, but it is important to remember that one of the most important functions of rights is to ensure peaceful interpersonal relationships. The future development may mean that relationships between people and with other beings become increasingly complex and interconnected over time through various interactions and processes concerning the handling of the climate issue. In such a world, a universalist and complex view of rights is needed for humanity as a whole to keep the ability to solve common challenges.

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OPINION. There are ways to solve the Israel-Palestine conflict, argues Tomas Nordberg in this the third of articles on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Oslo Accords provide the guidelines for reconciliation. We must go to the roots of the conflict to arrive at its solutions. For conflict solution, not just management, both sides need to exhibit authentic acceptance of the other side rooted deep in its culture. The starting step is for Israel to relieve the economic plight of people living under its occupation, he writes. 

This article was originally published by Tomas Nordberg via Global Bar Magazine. 

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author.

The regional context is plagued by turbulence and disorder. The conflicts intersect each other and the Israel-Palestinian conflict has a bearing on the internal conflicts of scores of countries in the region. Resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would remove a major hindrance to better relations between the nation-states in the region which are in agreement regarding the need to prevent Iran from becoming a regional hegemon. 

Israel is under attack by groupings such as Hamas and Hezbollah. Acceptance by the Arab states is important for the Jewish state, especially given current population tendencies. There are already more Arabs than Jews between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea. The land for peace formula is being challenged by a growing share of the Israeli population that wants to separate from the Palestinians. Some orthodox Jews wishes that Israel would annex and rule over what they define as historical Israel. And the two-state idea is questioned by more and more people on both sides to the conflict. The negotiations, mediations and facilitations of negotiations keep failing, thus providing more backing for Hamas. The region-wide revolution the Arab Spring didn´t succeed. To set itself on firmer footing, Israel needs a peace agreement with the Palestinians similar to its treaties with Jordan and Egypt. 

Read also: Why are the peace initiatives failing to bring lasting peace?

The parties are not starting from scratch. Previous negotiation processes have fixed the contours of the final status issues, namely refugees, the status of Jerusalem, security and territorial issues. The Trump Administration showed the inadmissibility of discontinuing funding as a means to achieve peace. The parties should negotiate a system that compensates refugees while keeping in mind that an unrestricted right of return is not feasible. Both Prime Minister Olmert and Mahmoud Abbas during President Bush presented options for a limited number of refugees returning. Proposing a compensation fund would incentivize the Palestinians to sign a peace agreement.

Worries about Security

Israel is rightly worried about its security. So, Israel should be offered membership in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) to alleviate these concerns. On the Palestinian side, more funding is required for creating the Palestinian state and housing. Security cooperation must complement civilian state-building; a successful example is the US and Jordanian combined training of a security force in the West Bank. And the Palestinian leadership should show willingness to compromise on the final status issue of Jerusalem. The city will most likely not be divided. 

Unless the Palestinians construct a viable state, Israelis will go on to experience dread of being attacked. There is a vicious circle here: Israeli security concerns will preclude the Palestinians from developing full statehood. This is why the Palestinians have to end paying out money to perpetrators of terrorism. Israel, on its hand, incite the Palestinians to anger with its border closings which prevent Palestinians from entering Israel and working in Israel proper. Some observers claim that a demilitarized Palestinian state offers the best solution since it would not present a security menace to Israel. And Hamas would be weakened; a peace agreement would be the strongest deterrent to a Hamas take-over of Palestinian society. 

UN Security resolution 478 of 20 August 1980 dealt with Jerusalem. It seems that with regard to Jerusalem UN peacekeeping forces might be needed for securing a transition to peace. Demilitarized zones with peacekeepers that have the right to use force in emergency situations is another option.

The Israeli security barrier has saved thousands of lives argue those who think it should not be dismantled. The Palestinians want a return to the 1967 borders, right to return and withdrawal from West Bank settlements. But Israel cannot, realistically speaking, be expected to unilaterally withdraw without security requirements. The Gaza Strip withdrawal of 2005 led to 15,000 rockets being fired against Israel from Gaza. It failed because Gaza was not truly freed. And Hamas had a very different agenda from the PA. 

The mass exodus of Jews from the Arab States is a great tragedy that is often overlooked. A Jew born in Palestine would not be able to live there but a Palestine born there would have that right. Israel has a Law of Return on its books because of the Holocaust. Still, proper legal equality within the Holy Land is needed for peace. Poverty and institutional discrimination run rampant, as shown in reports from B´Tselem and the Or Commission. We are witnessing a progressive dispossession of Palestinian people. 

Opinion surveys carried out during 2000-01 indicated that the majority of Israelis wanted to end the settlements and have peace. Unfortunately, Arafat declined the offer put on table at the Taba negotiations. Netanayahu has said he wants to negotiate without preconditions but the Palestinians are hesitant to do so because of external factors including the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement. This movement seeks to end international support for what it claims is Israeli oppression of Palestinians. It aims to, among other things, boycott the Israeli regime, for banks, churches and others to withdraw investments from Israel, and sanctioning businesses with what it claims are illegal Israeli settlements. The Palestinian leaders inform the people that the International Criminal Court (ICC), the UN, and the BDS will give us a state. In reality, only negotiations will bring about a two-state solution. There is a clear risk that he BDS and the others processes disincentives the Palestinian leaders to return to negotiations.

The Right of Return

The Palestinians will have to renege on its demand of four to seven million people having the right of return. Jews lived in Jerusalem as a majority for 2000 years. Three million Palestinians did have to leave in 1948. But the Jews were the majority in Jerusalem. In addition, 700 000 Jews were expulsed from the Arab countries in what was essentially an exchange of populations. If we reexamine the so-called borders from 1947 we find that these borders are now part of Palestinian occupied territory. Numerous Israeli places and cities that are well developed and established are found there, so insisting on the right of return according to the border divisions of the Partition Plan of 1947 is most unlikely to gain traction. It would not work in practice given the sheer number and size of Israeli cities within occupied territory.

Realities on the ground inform us that the settlers are bent on staying in the West Bank and would probably successfully resist evacuation efforts. While the current administrative arrangements essentially divide Israel into several parts with slender connecting passages, there are causes for pessimism concerning the potential for change.

Read also: The Palestine Question – The two-state solution

These factors notwithstanding, the situation needs to be readdressed. The Palestinian people have been under Israeli occupation for over 50 years and the will of the international community is relevant; the United Nations General Assembly did define over 70 years ago what it considers a just solution for both the Israelis and the Palestinians. We must go to the roots of the conflict to arrive at its solutions. For conflict solution, not just management, both sides to need to exhibit authentic acceptance of the other side rooted deep in its culture. The Abraham Accords, while much aligned, offer a window of opportunity here. The UNSG has welcomed the accords and there might be way to include the Palestine question in the larger setting of peace between the Arab States and Israel. The starting step is for Israel to relieve the economic plight of people living under its occupation. 

Hamas representatives have on several occasions said publicly that they agree to a two-state solution based on the so-called Green Line (the 1967 borders). And Abbas has recommended that international society and the United Nation convene a conference together with the Middle East Quartet, namely Russia, the EU, the UN, the US, and the Security Council. He has stated that the Palestinians remain steadfast in their commitment to the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative.

Controlling the Gaza Strip

Israeli and Arab forces have fought multiple wars, most significantly in 1948–49, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, and 2006. These conflicts have produced an untenable situation on the ground. The EU should use its diplomatic strength to ameliorate the humanitarian situation in Gaza and strive to put an end to the Israeli blockade. Gaza is according to UNSC Resolution 1860 an integral part of the Occupied Palestinian Territories, something which the US should officially acknowledge.

Israel should be based inside of the Green line as it was determined in 1967 and the Palestinian state should be located between the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. The Oslo Accords provide the guidelines for reconciliation. To ameliorate the situation and reduce the risk of future armed conflict, Israel needs to let up the blockade of Gaza in order to make its control of imports for Gaza more similar to those of the West Bank as well as standardizing the movement of people and goods in and out of the Gaza Strip. There is an urgent need for economic bulwarks to improve the dire economic and humanitarian conditions in Gaza. But Israel won´t commit to his unless Hamas ends its armed activates.

The surrounding world should use its economic and political leverage to motivate the PA and the PLO to clarify their respective mandate and the PA to usher in a state-wide dialogue with its rival organizations with the aim of the PA coming back to the Gaza Strip. Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem should complement an Israeli capital in West Jerusalem. And Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Turkey and Egypt should be allowed to play a much larger role in ongoing peacemaking efforts.

There is also the issue of companies contravening human rights in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The United Nations set of international conventions obligates states to secure redress for human rights encroachments through legislative, administrative, judicial and other channels. Mediation may, in addition, be resorted to outside the judicial sphere. But the UN structure fails to elucidate how to act in case of hindrances to legal assistance. 

The UN Human Rights Council is creating a juridically binding international instrument which may be used to demand that Israeli companies abide by human rights norms. Soft law, such as the Global Compact, may on its hand harden with time, increasing acceptance and followance, and become part of international human rights law. The US has resently reestablished its support of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA)

Employing Lawfare

Israel is adept at employing lawfare, or the strategy of using or misusing law as a substitute for traditional military means to achieve an operational objective. The U.S., on the other hand, is primarily intending to eschew accountability at the International Criminal Court (ICC). Lawfare is being developed on the ground in Israel-Palestine and successful schemes will spread to violent conflicts around the world. And it may be argued that the UN Human Rights Council is, by its almost sole focus on castigating Israel, engaged in lawfare to the detriment of its mandate which is to protect human rights. 

The seasoned Israeli peacemaker Gershon Baskin wrote in November 2020 about the importance of building on the momentum created by the normalization agreements between Israel, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain to engage the United Arab Emirates as a mediator in the conflict. There are critical immediate issues to address including the water crisis in Gaza. Final status issues such as the status of Jerusalem and borders can be sequenced in a similar fashion to the Oslo negotiations. By avoiding the thorniest subjects, agreement may be reached on other topics. This increases trust and confidence-building and eases mediation and negotiation of the most intractable issues.

Concrete examples of cooperation on the ground provide inspiration for the peace-builders. EcoPeace, which celebrated its 25th anniversary last Fall, is comprised of Israelis, Palestinians, and Jordanians working together on projects related to the environment. The city of Rawabi is a novel approach of building a Palestinian city in the occupied territories. The Palestinian Internship Program (PIP) gives young Palestinians the opportunity to intern with Israeli high-tech companies. But these examples of functional collaboration needs to be complemented by new political negotiations aimed at creating peace in the region. 

The Palestinian Leadership

Yahya Sinwar will probably emerge as the new leader of Hamas in the coming elections. While on paper already the leader of Hamas, he will most likely be formally chosen. Sinwar was declared a ”Specially Designed Terrorist” by the US government in 2015. And it is not probable that Hamas would be interested in peace negotiations. In addition, Israeli political leaders have for the past decade not been keen on meeting Abbas for peace talks. Sinwar made a surprising announcement two years ago, however, on Al Jazeera, declaring that Hamas would pursue ”peaceful, popular resistance”.

In sum, the peace process needs to start anew with the parties agreeing on the final status topics as treated by UN resolutions and international law. Confidence-building measures must remove the chief cause for terrorism, that is, the lack of peace. And political negotiations need to be complemented by functional cooperation. 

The post The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict – Some Thoughts first appeared on Opulens.

ECONOMY.  “We need to get off of all of these subsidies at some point — otherwise, we’ll have a zombie economy”

Carl Bildt, co-chairperson for European Council on Foreign Relations.

Covid-19 is a hard blow to the world. According to official statistics worldwide, around 111 million people are considered infected, and approximately 2,5 million people have died.  

At the beginning of the pandemic, economists spoke about the biggest impending economic crisis since the Great Depression in the 1930s. However, GDP statistics for the third quarter of 2020 show a strong recovery. For example, the growth in Germany was 8,2 percent compared to the second quarter. In France, the growth was at 18,2 percent, which is almost the whole loss from Corona. 

Corporate bankruptcies in the EU diminished by on average 25% in 2020. Without billions of euro in government-supported loans and wage subsidies to keep companies floating, the number of bankruptcies would have been doubled, according to a study from the research institute National Bureau of Economic Research NBER.

Government support has certainly prevented rising unemployment, but the proportions are risking to increase the number of zombie companies.  The Bank of International Settlements, an international financial institution owned by central banks, defines zombie firms as “a company that at least is ten years old, listed on the stock exchange and has interest rate costs that are exceeding the company’s results before interest rates and taxes”. 

BIS’s estimation shows that when the share of zombie companies increases by one percent within an economy, the productivity growth decreases by 0,3 percent.  They distort investments and slow down renewal, so much that such companies could contribute to the 2020s as an “a lost decade” with a standstill economy, according to the World Bank. 

Most of the European governments did plan to phase out their support for companies during the autumn of 2020. The governments counted on the Coronavirus to be under control by then. A second wave has just filled the hospitals and is aggravated by new strains of the virus, which also led to economic support being brought forward. When the third wave of Covid-19 strikes, while the EU’s member states are having problems cooperating about vaccines and measures against the pandemic, the economy risks shrinking even more. 

The increase of zombie companies and government budgets operating on high deficits, even when the economy is booming, combined with weak productivity growth, was already a problem in Europe before the pandemic. Consumers in the world’s biggest economies have accumulated about 2.9 trillion dollars in extra savings during the lockdowns and a large number of liquid assets that could lead to a powerful recovery, according to Bloomberg.

Inflation and growth are not low because of a surplus of savings, but because of a very high indebtment that sustains an over-capacity in the economy with low-interest rates and high liquidity. Small savers do not know what they can invest their money in because nothing seems to lead to returns on their investments. 

Rarely has optimism in the financial markets been as high as it is now. On the stock exchange, record highs are continuously beaten, while at the same time, everything from real estate to high-risk bonds continues to increase in value. Growth in the world economy is expected to be around 4% in 2021 in order for the economy to be fully recovered to its pre-pandemic state by the end of 2022 fully. That requires a previously unmatched level of indebtedness and asset-buying (quantitative easings) by the central banks. 

It is a question of “toxic positivity” in the economy.

When someone shows toxic positivity, it means the person attempts to be happy and positive even if feeling terrible. They also want others to adopt the same distorted positivity. Otherwise, the bubble risks to burst. 

Negative interest rates are a large transaction of wealth from savings and wages to governments and debtors. It functions as a tax on realism. If the interest rate and the price of money are equal to zero today, then all profits have to be achieved in the future. Thereby, the economy becomes dependent on debt and asset bubbles. Politics become dependent on financing rising expenditures with cheap loans and perceives that reforms are unnecessary. 

The promises of the future promises are also on the present’s accomplishments, and we are now expecting the value of our stock to be extremely high, our real estate to be constantly rising in price on our real estate and for dividends to give us ever-increasing profits. 

The worst that could happen is not a financial crash, but that the current situation becomes normal. It means a weak and K-shaped recovery, where specific sectors as tech companies and sectors with higher added value recover fast, while a majority of small and medium-sized companies and entrepreneurs do not. The pandemic becomes a permanent feature of the economy. 

Researcher Jessica Mead at Swansea University et al. finds in a study that those who psychologically have dealt better with the pressure and isolation during the Covid-19 pandemic are those who were ready to accept that life will become more stressful, compared to those who were not able to accept that. That can be a source of guidance both for the pandemic crisis, as well as the debt crisis. 

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WORLD. Globalisation has historically often been interpreted as an economic and technological process. However, modern globalisation is a many-sided and complex process that has been hard or even impossible to predict, as in the case of the Covid-19 pandemic. For more people to get involved in the world’s development, it is also necessary for democracy to become more globalised. 

Since the end of the 1980s, many studies about globalisation have been published. The most common definition of globalisation is by presenting it as increased economic and technological flows. At the same time, globalisation as a process and phenomenon has social, cultural and political sides. 

In order to understand why the focus on globalisation has been centred around the economy, it is important to understand the historical context of modern globalisation. Already during the 1970s, certain experts and academics started writing about the upcoming economic and institutional changes. Even before globalisation became an established term, it was recognised that aspects such as the Internet, computers, and mobile phones transformed from industrial to informative societies. 

One individual who resonated in such ways was political scientist Ernst B. Haas who based his arguments on the contemporary European Economic Community’s institutional development. Haas concluded that technological changes would lead to an end of European political and economic integration because European and other governments worldwide, instead, would prefer global integration and collaboration. 

During the 1990s, one of the world’s most unique and groundbreaking developments took place when the European Union was formed as a polity. It was a process based on democratically approved supranational integration and cooperation. Also, it happened at the same time when globalisation became one of the primary global stories that, in principle, all humans around the world had to relate to. So how did these connected, complementing but also conflicting process take place simultaneously? 

One of the answers is that globalisation turned out to be very hard to predict and that hardships of prediction led to support for other developments, as regional integration.

When it comes to Europe, many contemporary political leaders and citizens thought that the EU was needed to handle globalisation in different policy areas as it was later manifested in climate negotiations in the 2000s and refugee reception during the 2010s. 

As globalisation took place during the 1990s, sociologists Ulrich Beck presented his ideas of the world as “the global risk society”. According to Beck, globalisation meant much more than economic aspects because it was also about everything from migration and terrorism to climate and welfare. Beck argued that states should not act as nation-states but as cosmopolitan states that can handle global problems and risks. 

In general, all problems are depending on how humans are socially constructing and interpreting them. Problems can be simple and difficult and can be complicated and complex. For many people who were critical or negative to globalisation, the case was often that globalisation was interpreted as something complicated, which led to conclusions that globalisation could be prevented or controlled efficiently. In reality,  globalisation has proven to be a more complex process that is not the same as a complicated process. 

For example, underground public transportation as a metro is a complicated system with all its trains, time schedules, tunnels in combination with hundreds of thousands of daily passengers.  Planners and other metro employers can still make judgments and analysis of risks and problems such as suicide attempts and electricity failures. Creation of new train lines and other significant changes demand agreements in planning and political decisions at the local level combined with other decisions and requirements. 

Complexity, on the other side, is a much more different process, as seen in technological decentralisation. Only some years ago, it was still common with opinions that taxi cars, and not Uber or Lyft, were obvious in urban centres around the world. Applications, blockchains and artificial intelligence make it possible for different systems, components and networks to cooperate and complete each other in ways that make such processes hard or even impossible to predict. Usage of decentralised technology is touching everything from terrorists to impacts on ecology and how social and economic interactions will look in the future. 

The manifestation of complexity is also obvious when it comes to climate change because climate change, transformation and development are including urbanisation, energy and economy. Dealing with climate change means complex solutions where the public, private and individual institutions are all part of the general solution. Complexity is not only about how a problem is perceived and constructed but mainly about acceptance for different ideas, perspectives and partial solutions that need to melt together and integrated into a holistic structure through collective wisdom and planetary consciousness. 

Through the years, globalisation has been criticised for being undemocratic and for reducing acting spaces for the government’s decision-making and popular sovereignty. At the same time, there is no “national sovereignty” when it comes to climate change, AI and nuclear weapons’ impact. In order to deal with global problems, challenges and risks, more people need to have planetary awareness. Via digital democracy and co-creative process, as in communities and social platforms, more people can be involved, and more knowledge can be gathered. Thereby, complexification and further globalisation of democracy are necessary for a peaceful, harmonic and wealthy future of our planet. 

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DEMOCRACY. For a long time, the idea of “A League of Democracies” has been suggested.  How could it influence world politics? Could 2021 be the year when the league is created?

The UK has the presidency of the G7 this year, a group of nations created during 70s also consisting of Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Canada and the United States. British Prime minister Boris Johnson will arrange a first digital summit and if possible due to the Covid-19 situation, even a summit in Carbis Bay in June. Johnson has also invited the Prime ministers of Australia, India and South Korea. 

Other countries have previously been invited as guests to G7 meetings. Still, this time the aim is to create a foundation for the guests to participate in the transformation from G7 to D10 – Democratic 10, a group of the world’s ten largest democracies. 

According to the UK government, D10 has two advantages compared to earlier proposals: it is not too big, making cohesion easier, and neither is it too small as it would encompass the Pacific region better than the current G7 current concentration on transatlantic relations. The D10 would also keep its focus on two issues: development of 5G, the next big phase in communication standards, and development of critical supply chains. These choices for a future D10 would mean a conflict with China. 

Boris Johnson has several reasons to propose the formation of the D10. In domestic politics, he feels the pressure that the slogan “Global Britain” should have some kind of content after Brexit. Also, he wants to create a better impression and improve relations with the new American president Joe Biden, whose staffers often see Johnson as a populist with a crazy hairstyle in the like of Donald Trump. 

The host country can organise a G7 meeting in the way it wishes, but how will the other members react? Decision-makers hail the idea of creating aD10 in Washington DC and Tokyo. The Biden administration sees it as something positive – an alliance of like-minded countries with the intention to take on the challenge from China.  

For a long time, President Joe Biden has been proposing a top-meeting for democracies during his first year of presidentship. The enlarged G7 meeting can give a platform for establishing cooperation in several policy areas. D10 could become a way for Biden to show the USA’s renewed interest in multilateralism, at the same time Biden can gather a more powerful alliance against China that the USA will more and more be coming into conflict with. 

Australia, India and South Korea all have open conflicts with China. Also, they see favour on an influential alliance that is not only reserved for the West. The Pacific region has the highest economic growth, which is seen as the best answer for the pandemic and that more and more stands up in the centre for the global power struggle. 

In comparison to this trio, Canada is more cautious, while Europeans are outright sceptical. France, Italy and Germany are worried that the D10 could become an alliance with an edge against China and Russia (whom they rather would wish to bring back into the G7’s fold) 

Italy, which has its economy closely connected to China’s, is demanding guarantees that G7 will not change. France suspects that Johnson wants to reduce the influence of the EU member countries in the G7 framework and in conjunction their power in future negotiations with the UK. 

The Chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel,  has recently successfully steered the  EU:s agenda in order to decide on a controversial investment agreement with China. She thinks that the forming of the D10 could trouble Germany’s industrial exports to China and the country’s import of gas from Russia. 

The old G7 from the Cold War needs to find new reasons to exist in a changed and unstable world. It is a fact that the democratic countries in Asia and Oceania have a more prominent importance today. 

There are those who fear that the creation of a D10 would worsen international tensions, but maybe not with China and Russia. The EU has dropped its criticism of China’s concentration camps in Xinjiang because the EU wants China’s investments. The EU’s trade strategy to save its industry that is passing through a crisis is based on establishing carbon tariffs against the rest of the world.  

Germany has become dependent on the Russian gas, and Berlin has decided not to use its participation in the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline as a way to influence Moscow. Besides that such actions have resulted in an open field for illegal annexation, poisonings, at least one assassination, attempts to undermine western democracy and even the German government in secret offering one billion Euros last year in order to secure an American guarantee not to impose sanctions against the Nord Stream 2 project.

It is possible that the League of Democracies will not be successful this time due to the conditions in world politics have changed, even for the G7. Cold War II does not have the same conflict spaces as the first one. But the debate shows that democracies can have fundamentally different interests when it comes to geopolitics. Groupings between them are not easy to create, as is often presented. International organisations and agreements are becoming more powerful when they are clear in their aims and have members acting in good faith. 

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WORLD. “The Great Reset” is a rising topic as the world is glimpsing the end of the Corona-pandemic. At the center of the discussions are the mentions made in articles, videos, webinars, podcasts, and a book written by Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum (WEF), in collaboration with economist and consultant Thierry Malleret. The term is already the pinnacle of several conspiracy theories involving the pharmaceutical industry, migration and how national democracies will be torn up and devoured by the UN. Depending on if the views are left-wing or right-wing, the term either expresses how extreme neo-liberalism or postmodernism is out to rule the world.

The language in the book is convoluted, using vague notions like “historical crossroad”, “goal-driven societies”, “cooperative solutions”, “important stakeholders”, “sustainability” and “solidarity”. Those buzzwords can be twisted to many different meanings and appear more fact-based and determined than they actually are. 

The book is a Corona-take on WEF’s usual message. Rather than mastermind conspiracy text, it is an expression of currents in the international community. 

For example,  it is being stated that Covid-19 will change everything, although the world´s direction is rather unchanged. Even before Covid-19, similar thoughts as in “The Great Reset” were promoted, such as “increasing GDP does not guarantee an improved quality of life and social well-being”. Historically, that case is incorrect because when the economic pie grows bigger, it benefits more people when resources are used in better and smarter ways. 

The West’s leadership is still glancing at China with excitement, as its government is perceived to control the economy and society through large multinational companies connected to the government. China becomes more troubling as a new cold war is emerging. However, China has been efficient in managing the investment carrot and the whip of fear in order to turn around the first impression that the pandemic would be a crisis for its leadership. 

The world economy is still based on that capital from the stimulus package will strengthen the recovery, and that central-banks are enabling further assistance for a stronger recovery by keeping the interest rates low and increasing the liquidity. In a global economy doped by cheap money liquidity on the markets, the structural imbalances are growing. 

“The resetters” are not looking for degrowth but a steered growth that is intended to fulfil very different goals, without considerations that those goals might be mutually exclusive. Clear policy measures such as fighting malaria and TBC or support to family planning lose out when they are pitched against well-financed and all-encompassing problems.  

Processes that are energy demanding for the international community, such as revitalising the World Trade Organisation (WTO), are not present among the measures. The progress made since the millennium shift depended on the fact that many poorer countries had a high growth of GDP at the time, especially China, and there were thus simply more resources available for all. Complexity, and thereby risk of failure is increasing. Not the least because political decision-makers focus on security and precaution has strengthened fear and insecurity among the general public. 

What has been missing for a long time, even before Covid-19, is reasonable increase of productivity. An active economy must increase the average amount of what every worker is producing under a certain amount of time, in order to support citizens’ material well-being. This means providing new sectors and technologies with the room to grow and help workers to make use of their skills in innovative ways. 

This also means the reverse, to allow outdated or unproductive companies to fail. That stands in sharp contrast to the recent policies enabling abundant cheap credits to preserve companies – old ones as well as the hyped-up ones in the new economy. 

Conspiracy theories are attractive because they are based on the wish that somewhere there is someone with a full overlook of the situation, a big plan and the assets to realise it. In reality, everyone looks over everybody else’s shoulder, developments are influenced by big and small mistakes, lack of knowledge and resources, and opponents that cancel each other. Surprisingly, most decisions are made on the spot, often following a sunk- cost fallacy.

It is not much of a globalist agenda, as old solutions looking for new problems. National politicians move up difficult issues to the international level, in order to skip having to solve them themselves.  

An important part of the problem is that “the great reset” implies a continuation of “the culture of precaution” that has gained a foothold both in politics and in business. In order to get different results, experimentation, and new thinking outside of the box are necessary.

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DEMOCRACY. The book The Tribalization of Europe. A Defense of Our Liberal Values by Marlene Wind is a welcomed contribution to discussions about Europe’s future. Wind’s message is that historical lessons are important to act against opportunism and populism. 

In autumn 2018, I was riding a Uber-cab in Barcelona during my summer school participation for basic income supporters across Europe. When the driver and I rode near a demonstration asked him what was going on. The driver answered that members from “Catalan and Castellano communities” were in conflict with each other about Catalonia’s future status. 

The term “community” and the driver’s English on Urdu dialect reminded me of when I was living in India and reading about riots in Bangalore. My university colleague told me that it was about a conflict between members of  Kannada and Tamil communities. How could something like that happen in a country with enormous cultural pluralism, I was thinking at the time? Until I realised that similar things happen in Europe, including my own experience from Bosnia, when people are using or better said misusing their collective identifications. 

Terms as nation, tribe and identity politics have dominated political debates in the USA and Europe for the last five years. They especially concern phenomenas as “Brexit and Trump”. A book analysing such developments is Tribalization of Europe. A Defense of Our Liberal Values, written by political scientist Marlene Wind working at the University of Copenhagen. Her book is focusing on the Brexit process, separatism in Catalonia and the anti-democratic development in Hungary.  

Wind argues that the European Union was created as a universalist project. Partly by thoughts to unite people over national borders in Europe and partly to promote a democratic and free world. Several parts of her book remind of what among others historian Yuval Noah Harari has written that the EU is the largest multicultural experiment based on universal values.

According to Wind, nationalists and populists in Europe act against ideas as liberal-democracy by their ambitions to conduct identity control. Wind describes tribalism or tribe mentality as an organised way of proclaiming “the true” ethnic, cultural or nation-based belonging at the same time as wanting to exclude “the others” from a community. For example, in Sweden, the nationalist and radical-right Sweden Democrats’ agenda is to politically decide who and who is not a Swede. 

Another important aspect in Wind’s book is the defence of democratic constitutionalism, as the individual freedoms and rights. Wind argues that Europe’s history during the interwar period 1919-1939 shows how horrible things can get when anti-democratic, totalitarian and authoritarian actors and systems take over. According to Wind sooner or later, different decampments from constitutional democracy as the attack on the rule of law and independent judiciary lead to dictatorship and crimes against humanity. 

There are some parts of the book I wish that Wind could have explained more. For example, there is a whole chapter about how liberals have been too passive in the debate regarding populism but almost without any concrete proposals what liberals should really do.  I also wish that Wind could include some more famous references to Jürgen Habermas’s constitutional patriotism and ideas around European citizenship. 

In general, the book is an important contribution to understand better why nationalist, populist and tribalist only can damage Europe development. A Europe that can still inspire the rest of the world that supranational democracy can work. 

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CONFLICT. The only uninhabited continent could play a role in the political scene in the coming years. Due to the growing influence and role of environmental activists – Antarctica is becoming increasingly important, writes Filip Đukić. 

In the 1950s, Antarctica was perceived as a sterile, cold continent that was inhospitable for living. With constant reference to climate change and the Coronavirus pandemic, the status of Antarctica has changed.

As the political situation is geopolitical in most cases – in this case, is in full form – it is so predictable that national interests will strengthen. We can notice the strongest national interest in it – the Chinese one. And while other countries have begun to delay and cut funding for Antarctic exploration, the Chinese have decided to embark on building the largest Antarctic – krill-fishing boat – in the world that will be completed by 2023.

The economic potential of Antarctica is also increasingly coming to light. Minerals, commercial fishing, tourism are just some of the reasons that are increasingly attracting countries around the world to take an even stronger position in the race for Antarctica.

Antarctica is known for its extreme preservation, as ironic as it may sound due to increasing climate change. We can say that geopolitics is only partly going in the direction that the Nazis once had; the doctrine of Karl Haushofer, geopolitics for militaristic goals.

Antarctica may still not be a hospitable place to live, but a country that has any domination over it – will have a variety of options. With that control, you have a monopoly over the world in various aspects. 

Today’s geopolitics – as in this case linked to Antarctica – is an opportunity for manipulation. In other words – whoever has primacy over Antarctica will be able to dictate real and imaginary problems as far as global warming is concerned. That is not fictitious, and utopian thinking as climate change creates the emergence of various treaties and agreements between states on the issue of greenhouse gases.

Yes, national interests can go so far that non-national Antarctica can be nationalized. If scientists of specific states are in the field (and state and politics have their fingers in science as well, which is not something new), the same country can dictate pieces of information related to global warming. Yes, WikiLeaks shows that. 

The result would be a change in agreements such as the Paris Agreement. Although there are seven states; New Zealand, Australia, France, Norway, the United Kingdom, Chile, and Argentina in Antarctica as part of a research team – I expect China to take a step forward and claim the right to the territory.

The Antarctic Treaty and Article IV – which prevent the claim to national sovereignty of any state in the Antarctic continent – are still in force for the time being. China, the biggest polluter on the planet, will surely build even more of its research stations. The Chinese also have the most isolated station called Kunlun and are even more elusive from international control.

Although some experts, such as Professor Brady claims that the Chinese have a militaristic intention towards Antarctica – my opinion is that they are more interested in the research part. With that, they can more easily come up with the idea of national sovereignty in Antarctica. 

Antarctica may still not be a hospitable place to live, but a country that has any domination over it – will have a variety of options. With that control, you have a monopoly over the world in various aspects. 

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VIOLENCE. A recent report released by the Norwegian Refugee Council and the UNHCR, UN Refugee Agency-led Global Protection Cluster (GPC) finds that millions of people internally displaced or affected by conflict could be missing out on humanitarian protection support due to insufficient funding.

GPC data indicates that of the 54 million people targeted for assistance in 26 humanitarian response plans, almost 40 million could be missing out this year:

“The human toll of the pandemic on the world’s vulnerable should not only be measured by the number of lives it has taken but by the eclipsing number it has shattered. Covid-19 has hardest hit millions of people with absolutely no access to protection services. Children recruited by armies cannot reclaim lost childhoods. Women raped and beaten wear their scars for life,” said Jan Egeland, Secretary-General of the Norwegian Refugee Council.

For example, the report states that gender-based violence has increased dramatically since the start of Covid-19. UN- and NRC-experts projected in April that for every three months lockdown measures continued around the world, an additional 15 million women and girls would be exposed to gender-based violence.

As the case is in Mali, over 4,400 cases of gender-based violence were reported between January and September, while only half of the towns in Mali had support services. Another example is that in the Central African Republic (CAR), reported incidents of gender-based violence more than doubled – including rape, sexual slavery and forced marriage.

The report states that child marriages are also on the rise. Meaning that thirteen million more underage marriages could occur over the next 10 years because of the side effects of the pandemic, according to UN estimates. Trafficking is also a concern, with protection aid workers in 66 per cent of the countries surveyed reporting that people are at increased risk of trafficking due to Covid-19.

Also, an increase in violence and armed conflict has been recorded. The report states attacks on civilians increasing by 2.5 per cent since the pandemic began. For example, over 1,800 violent events involving communal armed groups have been registered since the start of the pandemic – a 70 per cent increase – largely across East and West Africa.

The report also states that there is a gap between protection needs during the pandemic, and protection funding is growing wider. Historically nearly 70 per cent of funding for protection services comes from just five donors; the European Union, United Kingdom, Germany, the United Nations and the United States.

For more facts and information, click on the following link.

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