On fire

Something is rotten in the state of Malta. Received this from a friend? [SUBSCRIBE]( CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. [The World]( [INKSTICK]( If you read just one thing… ...read about a real Maltese noir. Something is rotten in the state of Malta. The small Mediterranean island nation’s leading journalist was assassinated with a car bomb in 2017, and since then the investigation into her killing has unraveled a conspiracy that appears to include, among others, the Maltese prime minister’s chief of staff. Now, the prime minister is refusing to step down after earlier promising to do so, and many are worried that he will use his office to prevent himself and his allies from being prosecuted. The full [story](is a wild tale of violent oligarchy — there are crooked businessmen, tax havens, and delicate negotiations over when to commit a horrific murder so as to avoid electoral blowback. Ploughshares to swords The Honduran government just [reorganized]( itself in a way that might seem strange at first. National agriculture policy is no longer the purview of secretary of agriculture, but has instead been moved to the secretary of defense’s portfolio. The picture gets clearer, however, when you learn about the ongoing conflict between the Honduran military government and subsistence farmers. Since the US-supported military coup in Honduras in 2009, over 140 subsistence farmers have been killed in land-ownership disputes. Allegedly, the Honduran military and government-trained paramilitaries were behind many of the murders. The reorganization of agricultural policy puts $160 million in farm programming funds in the hands of the military, to be distributed as it sees fit. Activists worry that the military’s new power over the sector will only increase the pace of human rights violations against subsistence farmers. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( Twitter manipulation in the Gulf The common narrative about Twitter in the Middle East is that it is a crucial avenue for free speech in countries where speech is often limited. New research suggests that, even if that was true at one point, it is no longer the case. Instead, Harvard researchers Andrew Leber and Alexei Abrahams [write]( that governments involved in the ongoing Gulf Crisis have learned to co-opt Twitter for their own ends. Leber and Abrahams gathered data about an instance in 2017 when Saud al-Qahtani, the Saudi Arabian government’s leading Twitter manipulator, claimed that a hashtag denouncing Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani was trending within Qatar. That wasn’t true, but immediately following al-Qahtani’s tweet, Saudi-associated accounts spammed the hashtag, creating a version of the reality al-Qahtani had already asserted. Some activists were alive to the ruse. Qatari writer Muhammad al-Kurawi began a counter-campaign under the title “No Participation in a Suspicious Hashtag,” which, frankly, is a rallying cry for our times. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [ ] MIDNIGHT OIL This week’s Midnight Oil guest is Joan Johnson-Freese, professor of national security affairs at the Navy War College. Professor Johnson-Freese studies space security, military education, and gender and security, and her most recent book is [“Women, Peace and Security: An Introduction.”]( WHAT IS THE HARDEST PROBLEM YOU WORK ON? I work on space security issues, a field that requires juggling technical, physical, military, and political considerations to understand how states approach the challenges of managing threats and opportunities in outer space. For example, when discussing missile defense systems we need to understand whether proposed technologies will actually work given the physics of outer space, whether the costs of development and testing are politically feasible, whether countermeasures can cheaply and quickly developed by other countries and how the military could actually incorporate it into operations. Considerations around proposed space weapons systems are at least as complex. Yet, it is not unusual to see statements made by politicians, military officials and, perhaps not surprisingly, aerospace officials about proposed gee-whiz capabilities that seem implausible in one or more ways. So I worry that taxpayer money is being spent on capabilities or approaches that won’t achieve the stated goals, but will prove counterproductive by being provocative to other countries, potentially escalating a space arms race or even triggering a use-it-or-lose-it mentality leading to a space war. War games indicate that space wars have high potential for escalation, including to the nuclear level. HOW DO YOU GO ABOUT TRYING TO SOLVE THIS PROBLEM? I’m a political scientist, so the technology issues aren’t my area. Luckily for me, the space community is relatively small and most people in it are very friendly. So when I have technical questions, I can contact someone with the right expertise to help me with what I need to know. I’ve had solar-terrestrial physics explained to me over lunch. That doesn’t make me an expert, but it helps me understand the scientific parameters of questions in that area. Organizations can be very helpful as well. Individuals at organizations like the Union of Concerned Scientists have worked for years trying to provide analysts and decision-makers with information on the physics of space security. The Secure World Foundation provides “just the facts” analysis through in-house expertise and makes it all available to those who seek it. Perhaps the scariest part of my work is that it sometimes appears that accurate information is not what is being sought — that capabilities and approaches pursued by policymakers are being driven by politics and money rather than sound analysis. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [• • •] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS Anita Elash [reported]( on protests against a plan to reform France’s retirement pension scheme. The government is proposing to simplify the system, which currently differentiates worker benefits across dozens of categories, but activists believe that the reform is an excuse to reduce benefits overall. A nationwide union strike against the reform has brought France to a standstill, and unions have vowed to continue the strike until the reform is withdrawn. Jonathan Bydlak [reflected]( on what “The Afghanistan Papers” mean for his own research on the war. Released last week, the papers detail extremely pessimistic statements on the war in Afghanistan made privately by American officials who were often much more optimistic in public. Estimates by Bydlak and his colleagues put the total cost for the war at around $2.5 trillion. With the public in favor of a drawdown, and policymakers also in favor of one behind closed doors, Bydlak argued that now is the time to dramatically step back American military involvement in Afghanistan. Rachel Waldholz [spoke]( to activists and negotiators working at the United Nations’s major meeting on climate that ended last week in Madrid. Protesters decried the slow pace of the talks, especially foot-dragging by richer countries that many activists believe should do more to make up for the environmental damage their economies have already caused. No major polluters announced carbon emission cuts at the conference. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [ ] WELL PLAYED Russia’s sole aircraft carrier, the Admiral Kuznetsov, was docked last week when a welding accident sparked a blaze onboard that quickly spread. Wikipedia editors, their commitment to accuracy everlasting, [updated]( the Kuznetsov’s status accordingly. People who study rebel governance don’t usually talk much about insurgent groups setting up agricultural extension services, but [here’s]( an al-Shabab magazine all about camels. The problem with engineers is that sometimes they figure out how to tinker with words like they tinker with machines and then [this](happens. The version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) that came out of conference last week was a [disappointment](for activists on a range of fronts, but there was one silver lining. Critical State readers will recall the Pentagon’s role in America’s declassification crisis, which is preventing documents that should see the light of day from doing so. The new NDAA will [require]( the Defense Department to explain to Congress how it plans to overcome its declassification backlog. [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 The World and Inkstick Media. The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news and insights from 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](