EMP!

So you’ve stolen over 110,000 pages of Iranian nuclear documents. Now what? Received this from a friend? [SUBSCRIBE]( CRITICAL STATE [PRI's The World]( [INKSTICK]( If you read just one thing… … read about what happens next with 110,000 pages of Iranian nuclear documents Last week, the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard’s foreign policy think tank, published a report based on a huge [tranche of internal documents]( from Iran’s nuclear program from 1999 to 2003 acquired by Israeli intelligence. It was a fascinating look into the relationship between governments, intelligence services and think tanks that also gives some insight into Iran’s nuclear program.The documents themselves are a bit of a Rorschach test: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his allies in the Trump administration have used them to argue that Iran is still seeking nuclear weapons even after the nuclear deal, but the Belfer report itself states that the “documents simply do not tell us what the Iranian government’s strategic intent with respect to nuclear weapons has been for the last decade and more.” What is more interesting is how Israel has approached the problem of having intelligence that has more political than technical value, and the bargain Belfer and other think tanks make to get access to it in exchange for lending it credibility in a public forum. A world of depression For a long time, Western development agencies labored under the impression that [depression was a malady]( of well-off white people and basically did not exist as a relevant concern for people outside certain socio-economic and racial demarcations. Even after the World Bank started tracking the startling global incidence of depression and other mental disorders in the 1990s, the psychiatric community still shrank from prioritizing worldwide treatment. It wasn’t until 2007 that a series of medical journal articles pointing out the global shortage of mental health care prompted a sea change in those views. The World Bank’s data shows that mental disorders, especially anxiety and depression, are the largest sources of disability worldwide, causing about 14% of all the disabilities measured. Mental disorders have the largest disability share in both rich and poor countries. Since the 2007 articles, a range of community health programs have sought to fill the gap in care in the Global South, sometimes to great effect. A Zimbabwean program featured in the article has treated some 40,000 patients with a type of talk therapy that significantly reduced incidences of depression. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( The EMP tape isn’t real Much has been made by Newt Gingrich, Ted Koppel and other people who rooted for the casino when they watched [“Ocean’s 11”]( about the dangers of electromagnetic pulse attacks on the United States. A big-enough [EMP](, doomsayers argue, could wipe out American electronics and leave the country powerless in all senses of the word. A three-year study by the Electric Power Research Institute released last week found that, basically, nah. Specifically, the study reported that a large EMP might cause short-term, regional blackouts, but nothing like the nationwide disaster predicted by some. What’s more, the study found that existing technology can be cheaply used to protect vulnerable segments of the electrical grid against solar flares, lightning strikes, and EMPs all at once. The bigger problem with the EMP doomsday hypothesis, of course, is that the attack scenarios are goofy. Large electromagnetic pulses are the result of nuclear detonations, and if there is a nuclear detonation you have bigger problems on your hands than EMP effects. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [ ] DEEP DIVE Why states pursue 'demographic engineering' Last time in Deep Dive, we looked at recent research on what conditions prompt states to try “demographic engineering” — that is, forced displacement of certain civilian populations — in border areas. Knowing when states pursue demographic engineering is unsatisfying, however, if we don’t have a sense of why such extreme steps sometimes appeal to states. PhD candidate Adam Lichtenheld, at the University of California, Berkeley, has a recent [paper]( offering a theory of what states actually get out of creating mass refugee movements within their own borders. Lichtenheld begins by differentiating between three types of demographic engineering: cleansing, depopulation and forced relocation. Cleansing, Lichtenheld writes, “is the deliberate expulsion of members of a political, ethnic, or social group.” Victims are targeted based on their membership in a given group, perpetrators intend for the expulsion to be permanent and the victims are driven from perpetrator’s territory. Depopulation has many of the same goals, but is indiscriminate — everyone is evicted from the targeted area rather than just a targeted group — and is not necessarily meant to be permanent. Forced relocation can be discriminate or not, but its goal is to bring populations more closely under state control rather than to expel them — think, the strategic [hamlet program]( during the Vietnam War. Of these types, forced relocation is the most common, and not simply because it avoids some of the international opprobrium that often accompanies cleansing and depopulation efforts. Lichtenheld argues that forced relocation gives the state crucial information about the populations it targets. If the state suspects civilians of sympathizing with an enemy and forces them to choose between following orders to move under firmer state control and fleeing to avoid that control, the state gains valuable insight into who is or isn’t a loyal citizen. Lichtenheld calls forced relocation an “assortative” strategy because it causes civilians to sort themselves into categories that the state can easily understand: friend or foe. In order to test his theory, Lichtenheld created a database of demographic engineering attempts in 160 civil wars from 1945 to 2008 and marked which kinds of dislocation strategies were used in each. He looked for conflicts where states might have a difficult time understanding who is exactly on which side, such as insurgencies and conflicts that took place in peripheral areas where state power was weak. He found that forced relocation was much more frequent in those cases than in other civil wars, supporting his contention that states use the practice to learn more about the loyalties of civilians. By forcing civilians to make a choice about whether to live under state control or to run away with the insurgents, states were able to make confusing conflict situations legible. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [• • •] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS Orla Berry[reported]( on the aftermath of journalist Lyra McKee’s unsolved murder in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. The dissident New IRA has claimed responsibility for McKee’s killing, which comes as violence in Northern Ireland has picked up in anticipation of a Brexit that might see the UK renege on some of its main responsibilities under the Good Friday Accords. Berry spoke to Londonderry residents still seeking justice for Troubles-related violence known as “Bloody Sunday” from a generation ago about the extent to which things have changed in two decades of peace. Elizabeth Beavers watched five hours of presidential campaign town halls (so you don’t have to) and [had some notes](. The lack of foreign policy questions in the town halls, she argued, creates a major hole in our understanding of how potential presidents would approach some of the most important aspects of the job. In our present form of imperial presidency, the commander-in-chief acts largely without checks from the other branches of government, so it would be nice to know what potential presidents would do with all that power. James Reinl[tracked]( the case of Farhan Warfaa, who was tortured by the Somali National Army over 30 years ago and is now suing the man he accuses of carrying out the torture in American courts. US law claims “universal jurisdiction” over crimes like torture, allowing foreign nationals to sue perpetrators for acts that took place outside American territory. The man Warfaa is suing, a former Somali army officer named Yusuf Abdi Ali, has been living in the US since being deported from Canada for being a human rights abuser in 1992. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [ ] WELL PLAYED An official Indian army Twitter account is [claiming]( soldiers have found “Mysterious Footprints of mythical beast ‘Yeti’” and analysts — of the Indian military, not cryptozoology — are kind of [freaking]( out. Conflict researchers are in the midst of a debate with funders and publishers about how to balance the latter’s desire for greater sharing of data with researchers’ responsibility to protect sources. Researcher Roxani Krystalli [published a memo]( detailing her experience negotiating the issue in her work with the National Science Foundation, which offers a great overview of the state of the debate today. It’s impossible to say if their characters will be alive by the end of the season, but[this video]( of Game of Thrones actors Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner imitating their in-fiction dad Sean Bean is an absolute joy. British defense minister Gavin Williamson was[fired]( last week on suspicion that he leaked plans to allow Chinese telecom Huawei to play a role in constructing the UK’s new 5G network. His replacement is Tory MP Penny Mordaunt, the first woman to lead the UK’s defense ministry. As Britain hurtles toward Brexit, [this clip]( of Mordaunt belly flopping during a charity appearance on the celebrity diving show “Splash!” threatens to become more relevant. Finally, another [gem]( from the CIA archives. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( Follow The World: [fb]( [tw]( [ig]( [www]( [DONATE TO THE WORLD]( Follow Inkstick: [fb]( [tw]( [ig]( [www]( [DONATE TO INKSTICK]( Critical State is written by Sam Ratner and is a collaboration between PRI’s The World and Inkstick Media. The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from PRI/PRX, BBC and WGBH. With an online magazine and podcast featuring a diversity of expert voices, Inkstick Media is “foreign policy for the rest of us.” Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York. [Preferences]( | [Web Version]( [Unsubscribe](