The rock-paper-scissors edition

The rock-paper-scissors edition Received this from a friend? [SUBSCRIBE]( CRITICAL STATE Your weekly foreign policy fix. [The World]( [INKSTICK]( If you read just one thing … … read about the harmful record of coca eradication in Colombia. International Crisis Group has a major new [report]( out on the harm done to civilians as a result of ongoing efforts by the Colombian and US governments to stop people from growing coca, the main ingredient in cocaine. Coca eradication has been a goal of the US war on drugs for the last 30 years, and the US and Colombia combined have spent millions — perhaps billions — on destroying the cocaine supply chain at its root. Yet, in 2019, Colombia boasted 154,000 hectares of land producing coca, more than a three-fold increase from 2012. In response, the Colombian government has increasingly used security forces to destroy coca fields and strong-arm farmers into planting other crops. Researchers found that this method is ineffective at reducing coca cultivation and extremely dangerous to farmers. Between the threat of state violence, the loss of income from losing crops, and the destabilization of their relationship with violent drug traffickers, a farmer who becomes the target of coca eradication operations is put in an impossible position. Watching whiteness at war A new issue of Adi Magazine is out this month, focusing on how whiteness and white supremacy manifest in security policy. The whole issue is fascinating, but a standout item is the [conversation]( between political scientists Nimmi Gowrinathan and Kanisha Bond on, among other things, how Bond’s work on whiteness in US extremist organizing can inform our understanding of the events of Jan. 6. One of Bond’s points, which is often lost in the discussion of the Capitol riot, is that the overwhelming whiteness of the rioters is a major factor in constructing the meaning of their violence. One could imagine other people — less white, perhaps, or less wealthy — breaking windows and beating police officers at the Capitol, but those actions would be perceived differently than the actual Jan. 6 riot was. Bond also highlights the role of whiteness as an “orienting worldview” that shapes the structure of institutions built to understand and respond to the Jan. 6 riot. As long as those institutions fail to examine their relationship to whiteness, they will struggle to understand how whiteness operates within anti-state groups. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( Your grandmas, their profits A lot of work on finance and security focuses on how money funds security threats on the sexier end of the spectrum — gun running, rebel recruitment, things like that. Arguably, though, it’s the day-to-day operation of mainstream finance firms that have a bigger effect on most people’s safety. That’s one of the takeaways from a new whopper of a [working paper]( by economists Atul Gupta, Sabrina Howell, Constantine Yannelis, and Abhinav Gupta. They looked at how private equity investment in nursing homes changed health outcomes for patients, and the results were alarming. The topline result is that, when private equity firms buy nursing homes, short-term mortality of Medicare patients in the homes jumps 10%. That is, over the 12-year period the researchers studied, private equity firms' greed appears to have led to an estimated 20,150 senior citizen deaths in the US. The increase in mortality seems to come largely from private equity owners reducing nursing staff in an effort to cut costs. Taxpayers end up picking up the resulting costs, as the amount Medicare spends on each nursing home stay increases 11% once private equity firms take over. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [• • •] DEEP DIVE When it rains, it wars: Part I Like celebrity deaths, the security threats civilians face almost never crop up one by one. Instead, most people experience many sources of insecurity at once. Yet security studies — with its preference for simplicity — prefers to study sources of insecurity in isolation. This week and next on Deep Dive, we’ll look at new research on what happens when two sources of insecurity interact, and how those interactions shape state and civilian responses. Last week, the Journal of Peace Research [announced]( that University of Oslo political scientist Jana Krause had won the journal’s 2020 article of the year award for her [work]( on interactions between post-election violence and sexual violence in Kenya and Nigeria. Krause’s article makes for compelling reading because it disaggregates two types of security threats that we might be tempted to assume function in tandem. When communal violence follows in the wake of elections, it would stand to reason that the magnitude of that violence in terms of deaths might predict the amount of sexual violence that accompanied it. Yet, as Krause found, that is not necessarily the case. Looking at the aftermath of 2007/2008 elections in Kenya and the 2008 election in Nigeria, Krause found dramatically different records of killings and sexual violence. In Kenya, post-election fighting in areas around Nairobi and the Rift Valley led to, according to Human Rights Watch estimates, over 1,100 deaths and 900 cases of sexual violence. In the Nigerian city of Jos, however, post-election clashes in 2008 resulted in higher incidence of death — over 800 in just two days — but very few reports of sexual violence. In her fieldwork in both countries, Krause conducted over 100 interviews to understand the distinctions between the two cases of post-election violence. What she found is that differences in the kinds of underlying conflicts that elections ignite can determine the forms of violence that manifest. When the conflict pits majority groups against minorities, as happened in Kenya, the resulting violence looks like a pogrom — an extended bout of communal violence of one group against another — in which sexual violence plays a major part. When the conflict is instead between two groups of similar strength as it was in Jos, however, the fighting is sharper but shorter, resulting in more deaths but with little time for systematic sexual violence. Krause’s interviewees in Kenya reported attacks against minority populations that the victim groups could not hope to prevent or avenge. Instead, many men who were the primary targets of deadly violence fled, while many women who were the primary targets of sexual violence remained in the conflict zone in an attempt to protect family property. The fact that the violence was unbound by reprisals gave attackers the space to use sexual violence as a form of socialization for their young fighters. Many minority men were also the targets of sexual violence in Kenya in areas where they could offer little organized resistance. In Jos, in contrast, many women feared sexual violence at the hands of opposing forces, but there were few reports of any such violence taking place. The conflicting parties were roughly equally matched, and the fighting between them focused on attempting to find tactical advantages. The results were deadly for the combatants and for suspected collaborators, but neither side was able to come up with an advantage that would allow them to continue the conflict beyond the two days it raged. The balance of power kept fighters’ attention on each other and prevented widespread sexual victimization of civilians. In the context of post-election communal conflict, therefore, incidence of sexual violence cannot be predicted just by looking at the amount of deadly violence. Instead, the balance of power between combatants shapes both forms of violence in distinct ways. In areas where one side dominates another, sexual violence is likely to be widespread, and fleeing potential combatants might reduce the rate of deadly violence. In areas where power relations are more finely balanced, however, clashes are likely to be quite deadly and preclude opportunities for widespread sexual violence. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [• • •] SHOW US THE RECEIPTS Rebecca Kanthor [tracked]( the high season for tourism in China in the wake of COVID-19. Chinese New Year was Feb. 12, which should be a major occasion for travel and socializing. This year, however, the Chinese government has discouraged travel in an attempt to prevent potential transmission of COVID-19. As a result, tourist spending is down by half, and many people are choosing to stay home and celebrate through video chats and long-distance gift giving. Emma Ashford [argued]( that one security issue the Trump administration got right was its effort to end US involvement in the war in Afghanistan. Pulling out US troops from the country is a popular policy among US voters, but foreign policy elites have tried to prevent the Biden administration from following through on troop withdrawals promised by the Trump administration. Ashford made the case that the US should cut its losses because it has achieved its basic goal of separating the Taliban from al-Qaeda and cannot hope to achieve its more ambitious aims in Afghanistan. The Taliban is too powerful, and the Afghan government too disorganized, to ensure democracy or end the drug trade in Afghanistan. Rupa Shenoy [reported]( on the work of the United Nations Human Rights Council, which met last week for its 46th regular session. UN Secretary-General António Guterres called on the Council to address a number of human rights crises around the world, but arguably the biggest issue faced by the Council is the question of its own legitimacy. The Council has historically had difficulty holding its own members to account for their human rights abuses, a problem that continues today as with China on the Council despite Chinese abuses in Xinjiang province. [FORWARD TO A FRIEND]( [ ] WELL PLAYED If the rule of law (paper) loses its power to regulate the use of state force (rock), then, as you can see in [these]( pictures of Rio de Janeiro military police trying to decide whose turn it is to pay for lunch, the game theory equilibrium of rock-paper-scissors becomes unbalanced. Indeed, rock-paper-scissors is so fundamental to security theory that it even [appears]( in US Army doctrine. [This]( is a pointless exercise from a policy perspective, but it will make life for some future PhD student studying offense-defense balancing (that is, the rock-paper-scissors theory of conflict onset) much easier. [TFW]( the recurring disinformation and viralization of your alleged immoral unions have been dispensed through awkward slacktivism. Nelson Rockefeller Jr. has [declared]( that wars are now over and that he would like his pretty picture back, thank you very much. Rocky the younger is only the second-worst abuser of the UN’s copy of “Guernica.” Top honors go to the US representatives during the runup to the Iraq War, whose [official position]( was that diplomats deciding the legality of the US invasion should pay no attention to the dismembered man or woman in flames behind the curtain. All of Krish Raghav’s “Bullshit Jobs in China” comics are excellent, but the one about Chinese government cultural censors is a [standout](. Lebanese political meme culture is still [going strong](. [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 and GBH. 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](