Interview with US Air Force School of Advanced Air & Space Studies Professor Dr. Wendy Whitman Cobb was last modified: February 29th, 2024 by thegeneration
This video is a full length, unedited interview conducted as part of an upcoming episode of World View on the militarization of space.
One of the foremost philosophical questions asked in many history and political science classes seems to be, “If you were alive back then, what would you have done during the Holocaust?” It’s easy to pipe up and boldly declare how you would have fought back but in reality one can never truly know how they would act in that situation. However, when examining the devastating reality in Xinjiang, China, perhaps that question is no longer as “outdated” as one previously believed.
Uighur Persecution
The Uighurs are a predominantly Muslim Turkic minority ethnic group who reside in what is present-day Xinjiang, but many Uighurs still refer to it as East Turkmenistan, its original name before annexation by China in 1949. There are Uighur communities in neighboring regions such as Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan but a majority, numbering up to 11 million, reside in Xinjiang. As with most cases involving large-scale oppression and discrimination against a group, things escalated incrementally so as to eliminate the shock of such treatment over time. As early as 2011, Amnesty International released a report detailing the Chinese government’s “crackdown” on Uighur groups who revealed their suffering at the hands of the government after the unrest of protests carried out in the so-called autonomous region of Xinjiang. Some of these abuses included, “Hundreds of people [being] detained and prosecuted following the riots, with several dozen sentenced to death or executed and many of these sentenced to long prison terms.” In 2014, China continued with the suppression of Uighur communities and went so far as to ban Xinjiang government officials from fasting during Ramadan, the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting, prayer and reflection.
In explanation of these measures and the continued smothering of the Uighur community, the Chinese government points to the attacks carried out by Xinjiang separatist groups, incidents that include but are not limited to attacks on the police station and government offices in Yarkant, an Urumqi railway station, and most notably a car bursting its way into Tiananmen Square. While there is no excuse for terrorist attacks carried out by groups such as the East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM), the Chinese government specifically used a PR strategy of highlighting these attacks to excuse their disproportional actions against the Uighur community. The construction and continued operation of what China claims are “re-education camps” are closer to concentration camps.
“Re-Education”
The camps which reports show being used since 2017 are a grim reality which Uighurs are forced to face. The numbers of those detained vary based on the source, but it is at least 1 million, a number that requires a moment of thought and reflection as to the sheer amount of lives that have been forever changed. BBC reported that, “in 2017, President Xi Jinping issued a directive that “religions in China must be Chinese in orientation” and “adapt themselves to socialist society.” To this day, China denies that it is operating concentration camps and, when viewing things from a strategic standpoint, the government makes sure to draw parallels between Uighur separatist groups and al-Qaeda, surely wanting to appeal to the U.S’s continued War Against Terror. In fact, the controversial Guantanamo Bay at one time held 22 Uighur detainees at China’s urging despite there being no evidence of anti-American sentiment or participation in the 9/11 attacks. Testimonies of those who have managed to survive these camps reveal the fact that this is not about education but rather brainwashing, indoctrination, and punishment. With more than 85 identified camps and first hand accounts of those who suffered first hand it bears the question why hasn’t anything been done? Even more importantly, why is it still something many refuse to believe?
International Response
Despite the fact that the human rights abuses against the Uighur community had been mounting for years and the camps’ existence known from 2017, it wasn’t until July 2019 that a statement was released by 22 countries (with the United States as a notable exception) to the United Nations castigating China for their treatment of the Uighur population. Even more puzzling, merely four days after that statement, a staggering amount of 37 Muslim-majority countries released their own statement praising China for their “human rights achievements.” It’s frustrating that instead of coming out in support of their fellow Muslims in China, countries such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia chose to defend China but that just speaks to the power politics at play on an international scale. China is a large and powerful country and has cemented itself as a great power in this world. Their economic power is substantial and is the reason why they have so much influence, especially with the successful Belt Road Initiative. The BRI was a method for China to utilize trade infrastructure projects to strengthen relationships and invest in emerging markets. It was launched in 2013 and has many countries in the Middle East not only involved but indebted to China through the massive loans extended as part of the BRI initiative. Money continues to be a driving force in this world and is perhaps the main reason why many countries won’t speak out about China’s oppression of the Uighur people 一fear of harsh retribution.
Conclusion
When concerning huge global topics and relations between countries, it’s too easy to forget those on the ground who are personally affected by the ever-changing policies and nature of the world. In order to help Uighurs, we as people and we as a country are not helpless. Sanctions have always been an effective method of deterrence and a non-violent way of garnering an outcome. In order to rally public support against Uighur mass detentions, awareness is key. Continued education and spreading information helps battle the lies, knowledge is power, and through that we can extend a helping hand to Uighurs fighting for their freedom and lives. The time for philosophical questions and words are over, now is the time for action and taking that initiative.
Dr. Fiona Hill is a former official at the U.S. National Security Council specializing in Russian and European affairs. She was a lead witness in the November 2019 House hearings regarding the impeachment of President Trump. She currently serves as a senior fellow in the Center on the United States and Europe in the Foreign Policy program at the Brookings Institution.
On October 6th, I and Taylor Fairless had the pleasure of interviewing Dr. Fiona Hill. My angle of the interview focused on engaging her expertise to explore the role that social media plays in Russian meddling in the U.S. electoral process. My question centered on the challenge of how the United States can effectively thwart Russian disinformation on social media when many argue that they simply exploit vulnerabilities inherent to the platforms themselves. Dr. Hill agreed with this assessment, which makes it an issue she believes we will be grappling with for “some time to come.”
In a recent article where I questioned if social media can undermine democracy, I broadly noted that these vulnerabilities included their content curation algorithms, targeted digital advertising, and much of the toxic psychology that guides engagement on them. These varying facets enable foreign actors like Russia to engineer content that compounds polarization and saturates feeds with misleading or false information. Facebook estimates that Russian actors managed to generate 80,000 posts that reached nearly 126 million people over the span of two years in the United States.
Information has always been a blessing and curse
Dr. Hill noted that information, regardless of the way it is delivered, has always been susceptible to deception, falsehoods, and lies. She argues that these are issues that are part of human nature. “Humans have always had a propensity for spreading rumors.” In preliterate times, this occurred via word-of-mouth and town criers, then pamphlets, print news, and eventually the digital realm. To her, this dynamic is simply part of a larger information commons, making it unsurprising that the same phenomena that we have seen over the sweep of history are now playing out on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms.
Dr. Hill believes the main difference is that social media platforms are “speeding up” the personal interactions that we have as human beings. Indeed, much of this information and interaction is distributed through highly sophisticated algorithms and is instantly engaged with by millions of people each day. Furthermore, no single person receives the same information experience. Each person is curated content that reflects what these platforms and actors believe an individual will be receptive to. This is what can make deception, falsehoods, and lies become so effective and formidable in the digital realm.
I stated before that the advent of targeted digital advertising enables actors, malicious or not, to engineer and formulate content that it believes their targeted audience would likely react and engage with. In 2018, the House Intelligence Committee released 3,500 Russian Facebook ads that were designed to target and polarize specific portions of the population. In some cases, Russian-owned pages created and promoted political rallies where they hoped people would violently clash. Russia’s sophisticated and broad utilization of data-centered advertising demonstrates the dystopian implication social media can have on the political process when users are reduced to data points for sale.
The Path Forward
Dr. Hill believes that self-regulation is the most practical way to thwart Russian disinformation on these platforms. She makes it clear to acknowledge the flip-side of social media, stating that the “leveling out and leveling up” of information has enabled more people than ever to have access to critical, informative information. Her reasoning for self-regulation is that a draconian, heavy-handed government approach to regulating these highly complicated platforms runs the risk of squashing free speech. “We thrive on free speech, free engagement, and freedom of assembly,” which increasingly takes place on the internet and these platforms within our societies.
Considering this, disinformation is something we will have to accept and grapple with for some time. “We will have to be creative in how we handle it for the foreseeable future because what is a strength is also often a vulnerability,” Dr. Hill says. She argues that this balancing act will largely rely on self-regulation and creating close working partnerships with the government, the private sector, and the entirety of society. “We ourselves as consumers and users of the platforms […] have to also be aware that part of the responsibility is ours to be more careful of the information that we propagate, verify, and cross-reference.” She concludes: “we have to be active consumers, not just passive recipients of information.”
“I don’t think it is responsible to the American taxpayers to leave it like it is. We need a way forward.”
– Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld
Following the Battle of Tora Bora, while the Bush Administration remained steadfast in its commitment to maintaining a light footprint in Afghanistan; taking into account the destabilizing nature of regime change, it began to recognize that the US needed to ‘do right’ from a humanitarian standpoint to preclude an environment conducive to extremism. However, given Afghanistan’s decimated infrastructure, and deteriorated security, it was evident that ‘doing right’ would involve the same extensive, expensive and resource-intensive nation-building that the Bush Administration was reluctant to provide. Therefore, the issue of reconstruction presented yet another contradictory policy prescription, the lasting effects of which, specifically regarding building the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces (ANDSF), have continued to stymie the peace process.
But why was the Bush Administration reluctant to engage in nation-building in the first place? In a previous article, I established: “[Bush] held a personal aversion towards protracted involvement, and an aversion towards using conventional forces to engage in … risky nation-building that would tie “up US troops indefinitely,” and stir up anti-American sentiments.”
Given the above, why on the one hand, did the Bush Administration speak of a ‘Marshall Plan’ for Afghanistan, and on the other, condemn nation-building?
In a Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR) interview, senior Rumsfeld advisor Marin Strmecki explained that the Administration was only “against [nation-building] in the sense of [the US] being [it’s] preeminent and dominant force.” Therefore, the point of contention was not reconstruction per se, only the potential unilateral commitment that it entailed. Essentially, the Bush Administration was willing to ‘talk the talk,’ setting impressive objectives, but was reluctant to ‘walk the walk’ and put forth the necessary resources. As a result, to address the issue at hand and assuage fears of protracted unilateral commitment, the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) was established.
In addition to hunting anti-Afghan forces and developing the Afghan Government (GIRoA), a large part of ISAF’s mission was to create a self-sufficient ANDSF. Regarding the latter, under a lead nation approach, the US was assigned the responsibility of developing the Afghan National Army (ANA) and Germany, the Afghan National Police (ANP). However, just as how a lack of strategic clarity prevented systematic planning at the national level, the broad-based coalition of ISAF fared similarly. For instance, German officials reported that they believed their role in ISAF was simply to serve as short term advisors; “they did not believe [that they] entailed full responsibility for developing … the entire ANP.” Of course, this view ran contrary to the Bush Administration’s intent for urging the establishment of ISAF in the first place, which was to maintain a light footprint by spreading the burden of reconstruction between multiple nations. Furthermore, reflecting fears of protracted involvement; pre 2004, ISAF was relegated to Kabul to primarily train and advise, with a ragtag ANDSF in charge of securing the remainder of the country.
Consequently, the Bush Administration took nearly unilateral control of ANDSF development, fearing that deteriorated security would threaten Afghan elections and by extension, an expedient handover of responsibility to the newly formed GIRoA. However, it soon became evident that the ANDSF would need to mature significantly before shouldering the full burden of Afghan defense. Therefore, to bridge the gap while ANDSF forces were trained, the US commitment in Afghanistan, and in turn, the intensity and frequency of combat operations, were steadily increased. To reflect the new US-centric effort, a new military command, the Combined Security Transition Command–Afghanistan (CSTC-A) was created to train the ANDSF. On the other hand, to minimize the duration of a US presence, the Bush Administration also sought to rapidly expand the ANDSF on a condensed timeline, prioritizing quantity over quality.
With the Iraq War siphoning attention away from Afghanistan, and the Bush Administration’s contradictory prescriptions towards reconstruction guiding a reactionary, rather than proactive approach at the policy level, the stage was set for a Taliban insurgency. In response, ISAF’s mission was expanded beyond Kabul, a decision that some leaders opposed, given their interpretation of ISAF’s role within the train-advise-assist paradigm; with the latter component holding secondary importance. For instance, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien said: “We [Canada] are supporting the expansion of ISAF, and we will work to convince other nations to send troops here… but will we put more troops? We do not have the intention, and we are not able to do this at this moment.” With this dysfunction, ISAF’s efforts to stabilize Afghanistan were “akin to punching an adversary with five outstretched fingers rather than one powerful closed fist.”
For the ANA, training capacity was increased from two to five kandaks (battalions), while basic training was reduced from 14 to 10 weeks. For the ANP, despite a reported 34,000 ‘trained’ Afghan police officers, only 3,900 had been through the prescribed eight-week basic course, with the remainder only having attended a two-week introductory course. The rapid expansion of the ANDSF led to them becoming “miserably under-resourced,” and according to General Barry McCaffery, such circumstances were a “major morale factor for the force.” However, despite these issues, the ambitious Bush Administration continued to push for rapid expansion, threatening the GIRoA with reductions in funding if they did not comply.
Undertrained and underequipped, the ANDSF did not stand a chance against a resurgent Taliban during the latter half of 2008. Infamously, one such attack overran a US Combat Outpost in Kamdesh, resulting in the tragic deaths of eight US Soldiers and 27 wounded, following their betrayal by the Afghan Local Police (ALP) and abandonment by their ANA contingent.
Despite these signals, expediency, rather than responsibility, would continue to characterize US policy under the Obama Administration, as the President called for a short ‘surge’ in activity “to weaken the Taliban and improve the ANDSF,” before a 2014 withdrawal. The surge, which was intended to bring the war to a quick end, incentivized corruption by flooding the rentier state with a tsunami of cash, digging Afghanistan deeper into a kleptocratic grave. For example, Afghan civilians reported prolific extortion by ANDSF forces, with “two-thirds of police checkpoints charging illegal tolls” in 2013. Subsequently, in a survey conducted by ISAF between 2010 and 2012, Afghans ranked corruption as one of the top three reasons why they “choose to support the Taliban instead of the government.”
Subsequently, with the end of the surge and scheduled drawdown of offensive combat operations in 2014, ISAF was dissolved, and Operation Resolute Support (ORS) was initiated to achieve ‘peace with honor’ by handing over responsibility to the GIRoA and ANDSF. Accordingly, US troop numbers dropped to just 16,100 advisors, from a peak of 100,000 combat troops in 2011.
Unsurprisingly, the drawdown emboldened insurgent forces and instead of proving their self-sufficiency, the ANDSF suffered major failures, most notably the fall of Kunduz City in 2015. According to eyewitness accounts, during the battle, “a chaotic environment quickly spread and government officials, ALP commanders and … ANA officers fled to the … airport, leaving [the city] effectively leaderless.” This scene, reminiscent of South Vietnamese soldiers’ actions during the fall of Saigon, was certainly a reality check for policymakers.
For many in the US Government, it became evident that forcing western solutions onto a largely illiterate population had created unsustainable dependencies on foreign assistance. During the surge, the tsunami of funding and military advisors for ANDSF development created a force that was “a carbon copy of US doctrine” and Afghan commanders were “addicted to air support,” a combat enabler inorganic to their organization. Given the pressure generated by the Obama Administration’s hard deadline, indigenous solutions were replaced with western ones, and a blind eye was turned towards corruption, because doing so was expedient given the time constraint. Former US Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan Senior Advisor Barnett Rubin explained: “We did what we knew [in Afghanistan] … not what needed to be done.”
If the surge incentivized corruption and produced a deficient ANDSF, why wasn’t it remediated under the Obama Administration?
As the 2014 deadline neared, the top-down pressure from the Obama White House to report success up the chain of command, outweighed demands for accountability. For instance, ANDSF trainers were encouraged by their commanders to bolster ANA and ANP competence assessments in order to present Washington with a facade of higher numbers of combat-ready units. In a 2015 interview with SIGAR, Lieutenant General Michael Flynn questioned: “So, if we are doing such a great job, why does it feel like we are losing?” Answering his own question, he remarked, no “commander is going to leave Afghanistan … and say, you know what, we didn’t accomplish that mission. So, the next guy that shows up finds it screwed up.” By placing a time constraint on ‘winning,’ the Obama Administration inadvertently stymied a chance for victory, and peace. Consequently, as of 2020, American and Coalition advisors remain in Afghanistan, and despite efforts to broker a negotiated settlement, the Coalition’s resolve seems to be shrinking, while the Taliban’s grows.
Enter the current administration.
Addressing his generals, President Trump reportedly exclaimed: “You guys have created this situation. It’s been a disaster. You’re the architects of this mess in Afghanistan … you haven’t been able to fix it, and you’re making it worse.” Judging from the equanimous American acceptance of the capture of Saigon due to the widespread popularity for a withdrawal from Vietnam, given the similar public support for a withdrawal from Afghanistan, the President has little to worry in terms of blowback in the form of domestic opinion. However, in regard to international prestige and credibility, some critics of the peace deal, such as Richard Haass, President of the Council on Foreign Relations, claim that by withdrawing, “the US will cast further doubt on [its] willingness to sustain a leading role in the world.” Such qualms may be a victim of the sunk cost fallacy and ‘press-on-itis,’ which is the unwise tendency to persist with a plan that is failing, especially after considerable investments have been dedicated.
Mark Hannah, a senior fellow at the Eurasia Group Foundation puts it succinctly:
“We’re going into the 20th year of this war where people who were not even born on Sept. 11 are being called to serve [in Afghanistan],” Hannah said. “I think there’s a sense that … the original motivation for going into Afghanistan in the first place has receded into the rearview mirror.”
During the the 2020 Democratic Presidential Debates, Rep. (D-Hawaii), combat veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee: Tulsi Gabbard, asserted that “we [the US] are no better off in Afghanistan today than we were when this war began,” and promised to bring all US troops home within her first year if elected President.
It is time for policymakers to join Rep. Gabbard and President Trump in making a bipartisan and definitive assessment of whether the sheer prospect of remaining embroiled in a never-ending quagmire will tarnish America’s international reputation more than coming to a negotiated settlement ever will.
The views expressed here are those of the author and do not reflect any official policy or position of the US Government, the Department of Defense or the US Army.
At the end of 2019, each of Bolivia’s nine regional departments experienced protests for nearly two months following the Oct. 20 national election, where former leftist President Evo Morales declared himself president for the fourth consecutive term. Under claims of fraud, he resigned from the presidency in November and ultimately fled the country with many of his party’s high-ranking officials, leaving the country with conservative Jeanine Añez as their interim president. However, after COVID-19 led to delayed elections and renewed protests, the state of the country’s power remains at a standstill.
Morales’ presidency was fraught with controversy. He had been president for thirteen years, having been elected in 2005 and reelected in both 2009 and 2014. Before Morales, this number of reelections was unheard of. Controversy rose after Morales’ constituent assembly and Bolivia’s Constitutional Court approved a 2009 referendum and early election, rising out of a changed constitution that allowed the president to pursue one consecutive reelection. Although the economy rose under Morales’ rule—such as the country’s poverty population percentage dropping by more than half from 36% to 17%—his increasingly leftist politics caused tension among the general population. After claims of fraud arose due to the results of the Oct. 2019 election, citizens set up roadblocks among violent clashes to challenge his continuation as president.
Bolivians took the streets claiming that Morales had engaged in electoral fraud. While observing the counts of the vote, the nation was surprised when results froze; Morales was falling behind other candidates at this time, but when final numbers were released, Morales had seemingly managed to best all his competitors. Although he was still in the margin of a runoff with the second-highest candidate, Morales declared himself victorious in the election. He resigned at the bequest of Bolivia’s then-chief of military in response to growing chaos from protests around the country.
Morales and several high-ranking Bolivian governmental figures fled the country following the civil unrest and the former president’s resignation. Morales first went to Mexico, where he urged his followers to denounce the transition of power to Añez. However, Morales was eventually granted refugee status in Argentina, where he currently resides. Although it is presumed his move to Argentina was to facilitate his organizing near Bolivia, it raises the question of the already-strained relationships in Bolivia’s foreign relations. When Bolivia’s foreign ministry challenged Argentina for protecting Morales after he continued to ask for political revolution from his party, the country’s foreign ministry responded by stating that they would not recognize Bolivia’s interim government. As elections have been pushed back, Morales continues to organize for his political party, Moviemiento al Socialismo (Movement for Socialism, or MAS), from Argentina, frustrating Añez and her current government.
Añez has been in power since Nov. 12th, 2019, declaring her interim presidency after the vacancy of higher-ranking officials left her at the top of the line of succession. Morales and MAS attempted to claim that her ascension was illegitimate, but she maintained her power through congressional support. Although she originally announced that her role would be only to facilitate a fair election free of fraud, she eventually announced that she would run for the presidency herself, and her administration proceeded to charge various MAS members and officials with crimes against the state. The election was originally scheduled for May, but Añez decided to push back the date due to concerns regarding COVID. However, despite taking measures such as an early lockdown, COVID rates across Bolivia are still rising, with a lack of oxygen and personal protective equipment in a damaged healthcare system from Morales’ rule. Bolivian citizens—largely those affiliated with MAS—are frustrated with Añez’ use of the pandemic to interfere with election proceedings.
The struggle for power between MAS and the interim presidency has wider implications for Bolivia’s population. The protests, both last year and now, highlight the tensions felt by the largely Indigenous leftists and the long-unrepresented conservatives in the country. They also illustrate how Morales’ presidency has strained foreign relations, as Bolivia only reestablished diplomacy with the United States during Añez’ interim administration with a visit from a White House senior advisor. As the country looks forward to finally resolving the question of the presidency, nearly a full year after the initial fateful election, these tensions will underscore the country’s final election in the age of COVID.
As the election nears, seven candidates are in the running. According to a Jubileo Foundation Poll in September, Luis Arce, the candidate from MAS, led with roughly 40% of the polled vote. Former president Carlos Mesa polled second. Añez dropped out of the race on September 17th after polling with less than 10%, most likely due to citizens’ concerns over her interim government’s handling of the pandemic.
The final election date is scheduled for Oct. 18th, 2020. After a failed election, an unstable interim government, and continued political tensions during a global pandemic, this new election will define which direction Bolivia’s domestic and international turmoil will take.
Introduction:
History often serves as a potent force in global affairs. Its power over them can be comparable to DNA: an unseen, ancient, highly complex structure composed of even smaller units that all form to cast immense influence over the actions an organism takes and how it interacts with its environment.
Events of the past permeate deep into the collective memory of any nation. Just like DNA, the nature of history’s effects on contemporary geopolitics can depend on evolution or manipulation. Even when centuries or decades old, history can form a powerfully deep-seated narrative that winds up shaping and influencing the behavior of a state, even in the face of contemporary realities that may dictate otherwise when developing foreign strategy.
Relations between South Korea and Japan provide a case-in-point in this regard. While the powerful logic of realism lays the rationale for a robust security alliance between the two in the face of a rising China, historical memory and nationalistic fervor evoked from past trauma leave the two disunited and disengaged, and keeps their relationship fractured, even when their security rests on their ability to work together to maintain the balance of power in the region.
The History Problem, in Brief:
The origin of the current contention between South Korea and Japan can be traced back to the brutality of Japan’s empire – an entity which ceased to exist nearly eight decades ago. Throughout the course of modern history in the East Asian region, the Korean peninsula has often sat exposed and abused as a result of global imperial competition and expansion. Imperial Japan was responsible for systematic brutality during its occupation of the peninsula from 1910-1945. Among the detestable policies of the Japanese occupation were forced labor and the Japanese military’s use of Korean “comfort women” as sex slaves in wartime borthels. Many of the victims of these brutal and exploitive policies are still alive today to tell their stories.
To this day, the suffering Koreans endured still permeates deep into the relationship held between their nation and Japan, even in the face of a mutual benefit in leveraging the power of cooperation against a rising China. The starkest indication of these contentious historical grievances bubbling back to the surface is illustrated with the path the two governments have taken in the past two years.
In October 2018, South Korea’s Supreme Court ruled that a Japanese steel company, which helped perpetuate forced labor over half a century ago, must compensate Korean workers for their unpaid duties. Japan argues vehemently that cases under this purview have been addressed under a 1965 treaty between the two countries which effectively normalized relations. Furthermore, a 2015 agreement designed to mend the “comfort women” wound has ignited sharp backlash from hardline nationalists in both countries, further limiting avenues for officials to ease the growing tension.
The escalatory measures taken by both sides have manifested into several other facets of the bilateral relationship. Trade and intelligence sharing have become tools for showing dismay with one another. Prominent examples include export controls Japan placed on industrial chemicals vital to South Korea’s semiconductor industry and South Korea’s recent threat to exit an intelligence-sharing pact with Japan. China and Russia also took their own measures to compound trouble: a joint military flyover into a chain of islands contested by South Korea and Japan in 2019. The result was an alarming military confrontation in which South Korea fired dozens of warning shots at the encroaching warplanes.
In April 2020, Japan’s reluctance to consider the idea of adding South Korea to the Group of Seven Club prompted an official in South Korea’s presidential office to state that “Japan’s level of shamelessness is in the world’s top tier.” Japanese firms have also been exiting the South Korean market at an accelerated rate due to a protracted trade war and an anti-Japanese boycott movement in South Korea that shows little sign of abating.
These actions have been the consequence of bottom-up and top-down negative engagement with Korea’s and Japan’s traumatic history. In short, these two dynamics feed into one another. From a domestic standpoint at the elite level, it is often politically expedient for politicians to evoke nationalistic sentiment by taking polarized, hardline stances on the historical contention held between the two. To many experts, Japan’s tough stance against South Korea stems from “apology fatigue,” the idea that Japan has done more than enough to apologize for its past atrocities and that South Korean backsliding on official agreements demonstrates an insincere desire to truly reconcile the relationship. It is the result of a younger, more nationalisitc generation of Japanese born after World War II who now equate apologizing with “selling out” Japanese pride, history, and culture.
What Realism Dictates:
Under the lens of the International Relations theory of realism, Japan and South Korea possess a mutual interest in working together to balance against a rising China and to collectively confront a nuclear equipped North Korea in a cohesive manner. Professor John J Mearsheimer captures this dynamic most eloquently in his book, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, when he states: “In a world where there is no agency to protect them (states) from each other; they quickly realize that power is the key to their survival.” Power, in other words, can also be gained by working together to balance against a mutual threat. In regards to a state like China, its principal aspiration is to become a regional hegemon in the Asia-Pacific. A hegemon is best defined as a “state that is so powerful that it dominates all the other states in the system.” For China, pursuing this goal means eroding the United States’ ability to serve as an offshore balancer in maintaining the status quo in the region. It becomes clear that this is a scenario neither South Korea or Japan wants.
Realism dictates that Japan and South Korea diffuse their historical grievances and opt in for a strategy that is based off of sheer pragmatism. It requires a tenable level of rapport and cooperation in order to confront China as a collective whole. As long as South Korea and Japan’s relationship remains frayed, it enables China to exploit the division and further assert itself as a dominant force throughout the region.
The Path Going Forward:
The United States must use the extensive diplomatic leverage it has with both countries to facilitate dialogue, forge compromise, and cultivate a renewed focus on maintaining stability in the region. If South Korea and Japan continue to depart from one another, the ability of the United States to maintain its foothold in the region will be threatened. To effectively balance against China, the United States needs its regional allies to hold a united front against Chinese expansion. China thrives from an alliance structure that is left fractured and divided between two consequential allies of the United States.
Political leaders in both South Korea and Japan have a duty to mitigate the domestic forces seeking to demonize the other. This means refraining from taking the politically expedient route of partaking in divisive activities. Just as this example has demonstrated, leaders must balance the broader national interest with their own electoral desires to a reasonable degree. Japan ought to strike a more prudent tone when engaging with the history issue rather than framing the expression of any semblance of contrition as a humiliation of Japan’s national pride. There is a middle-road between being overly apologetic and showing a sense of sympathy for the pain many South Koreans still feel. South Korea, for its part, should abide by past reconciliation agreements and truly seek to make peace with the past. The boycotting of Japanese goods while allowing anti-Japanese sentiment to continue moving along a directionless path of outrage will not help either side come to terms with the past, nor will it serve their broader interests in the present. Both need to come to grips with reality: the past should be forgiven but not forgotten. It should not become a tool for stirring-up nationalistic backlash at the cost of failing to confront current international realities that have far greater consequences for the security of both countries. In the end, pragmatism and sensibility must prevail because regional stability rides on it.
In August of 2014, ISIS fighters invaded the Iraqi city of Sinjar, the former home to about 8 million Yazidis.1 Today, their population in Iraq stands at about 500,000.2
Who are the Yezidis? Perhaps one of the more violently-targeted, yet lesser-known groups, the Yezidis are ethno-religious minorities concentrated in Iraq. This group’s struggles with deportation, human trafficking, and terrorism are all too compelling, and articulates a wider, global phenomenon of inaction towards acts of genocide.
Discrimination and persecution of the Yezidis lies within their association with devil worship. This derives from their praise of the “Peacock Angel,” which in Islamic mythology is believed to be the Devil. Though in Yezidism, this is a God-like creature who manifests both good and evil traits, which Yezidis believe are integral parts of a whole.3 Violent militia groups, such as ISIS, have used this to justify Yezidi-extraction from Iraq or forced conversion to Islam.4 With the latter, many Yezidis have been executed for resisting conversion, and this push back helped to catalyze the 2014 invasion by ISIS which the United Nations identifies this as an act of genocide and a crime against humanity.5
The extremists aimed to eliminate the Yezidi population by murdering their men and taking their women as sex slaves.6 Many of these women and girls are still missing today, and are only returned if ISIS members decide to sell them back to their families at a costly rate most cannot afford.7 Mosques and churches were continuously destroyed for almost a decade, meanwhile those who survived the attacks were forced into Arab and Suni assimilation, which often resulted in their deportation.8 About 40,000 Yezidis who managed to escape the encircling jihadists fled to the mountains of Sinjar, where some remained for years after this initial contact.9 To add to this, the Yedizis do not have a military to defend themselves, which makes it easier for terrorist groups to target their population.
Following the ISIS takeover of Sinjar, the United States, the United Kingdom, France, and Australia sponsored air drops of food and water to the captive Yezidi people.10 Although the Yezidis have now begun to construct their own army, they are still heavily reliant on foreign aid and makeshift militias who are sparsely manned and under-armed. Out of desperation, they’ve recently created an all-female militia, called Êzîdxan Women’s Units. For these reasons, they still remain a weak target in the eyes of violent extremist groups looking to rid the Middle East of their presence.11
The ethnic cleansing of the Yezidis is only a short bit of their long history of oppression and discrimination. While suffering from unemployment, poverty, and violence motivates the Yezidis to seek safer grounds, they are unable to relocate due to their citizenship being tied to their homeland. To exacerbate these problems, variances within the Yezidi community itself have also factored into this group’s deteriorating stance. Disunity arises from differences in political affiliation, religious beliefs, language, and even discrepancies over their origins.12
Their confrontations with ISIS underscores two prominent components of discrimination. The first deals with how identity is projected onto minority groups and how groups respond to that encroachment. Members of ISIS or other ethno-religious majorities in the Middle East have identified the Yezidis as “devil worshipers,” despite limited and incomplete evidence, alongside the group’s steadfast denial. This projection of identity is inextricably linked to hostile ideas about character, merit, intellect, and civility, which have been used to justify malicious behavior towards the Yezidis. Their history of violence and discrimination, furthermore, have led to a pressing refugee and humanitarian crisis that continue to affect Syria, Turkey, Russia, and Greece. In recent years, this violence and migration have caused the Yezidis to focus more on creating an army. Yet, Iraqi-crackdowns on their illegitimate militias means the Yezidis have to operate covertly to fight ISIS, which extremely limits their capabilities to garner weapons and train their citizens.
The second point deals with domestic intervention into instances of discriminatory violence. The Yezidi genocide is only one of dozens of genocides that have taken place in Iraq.13 Iraqi officials have turned a blind eye to the Yezidis and have failed to effectively persecute any member of ISIS that participated in the 2014 attacks.14 This point ties to the falters of the Iraqi penal code in which crevasses have allowed for minority communities to not be granted the same protection under the law. Today, officials have restricted aid to Yezidi refugee camps, which face poor sanitation, food scarcity, and, perhaps worse, are even booby-trapped by ISIS fighters.15 The many who have been born in the refugee camps and will now grow in a territory that has stripped away their education, voting rights, and freedom of speech.16 Even more pressing, they will grow up in one of the most insecure and deadly regions in the world.
Although the Yezidis may be a lesser-known group for many Westerners, their history may still come across as familiar. Violence and oppression against minority groups transcends national borders. Just this past year, for example, Christian minorities in Sri Lanka were the targets of a deadly ISIS bombing. Smiliar events took place in Canada and New Zealand in 2017 and 2019, respectively, where Muslim minorities were mass-murdered for their beliefs. And, of course, other minority groups in the Middle East, such as the Armenians during their genocide, have faced similar acts of violent discrimination. The history of the Yezidis, although distinct in many ways, in its most rudimentary form is certainly not unique to this group, or even unique to the Middle East.
Now, Iraq must invest heavily into peace-building measures and a sustainable end to violence. Key challenges that arise post-conflict include rebuilding Yezidi communities, which comes with reconstructing the psychological idea of “community,” addressing grievances, and more importantly, providing adequate protection against another, and somewhat inevitable, invasion by extremist groups.
On a positive note, their story has captured attention by domestic and international NGOs who are now working to support Yezidi refugees and are focusing on locating and returning their captured women. These NGOs are now targeting the government and demanding that they improve legal rights and protection for this minority community. Importantly, other countries and global organizations, such as the United Nations or the International Monetary Fund, must amplify their disapproval of the Iraqi government’s furthering of this issue, and take measures to pressure their government to make improvements for these civilians.
E N D N O T E S :
[1] Katharine Holstein, author of “Shadow on the Mountain: A Yazidi Memoir of Terror, Resistance and Hope,” interviewed by Taylor Fairless. February 25, 2020.
[2] Raya Jalabi. Who are the Yazidis and Why is Isis Hunting Them? The Guardian. August 11, 2014.
[3] Devdutt Pattanaik. The Peacock Angel of the Yazidis. Articles World Mythology. 4 December, 2017
[4] Razan Rashidi. UN Human Rights Panel Concludes ISIL is Committing Genocide Against Yazidis. The United Nations. June 16, 2016.
[5] Birgul Acikyildiz-Sengul. The Yezidis: An Ancient People, Tragedy, and Struggle for Survival. Chapter 11. p. 149
[6] Ibid. p. 147, 149
[7] Ibid. p. 153
[8] Ibid.
[9] Raya Jalabi. Who are the Yazidis and Why is Isis Hunting Them? The Guardian. August 11, 2014.
[10] Birgul Acikyildiz-Sengul, p. 153.
[11] Birgul Acikyildiz-Sengul. p. 153
[12] Katharine Holstein, interviewed by Taylor Fairless.
[13] Ibid.
[14] Ibid.
[15] Ibid.
Older Posts