Malala Yousafzai’s Ideology and Activism

Malala Yousafzai’s ideology is activism, social justice for girls and women who have been suffering in many ways such as, lack of human rights, education rights, lack of employment opportunities for women, and countless other barriers for girls and women’s freedom in that that is a continuous trend in the region for centuries.

Ideologies are usually shaping how we think, how we believe and accept or reject cultural, religious, social, and political ideas, policies and actions. In most societies, these ideologies are divided by lift and right, liberal or conservative. Stone (1986, p. 20) explains that ideas “personality and ideology” are interconnected to one another which is the driving force of societies. Stone, (1986) emphasizes that according to “a survey of the psychological literature on behavioral differences was made, with special attention to anomalous differences between liberals and conservatives (differences that seem inexplicable on the basis of ideological content alone)”. However, what is ideology? Or how ideologies’ influence can be analyzed to better understand ideologies? Ideology is related to power and everyone justify their thought, actions, and standpoints “in ideological terms” (POLI 307, n.d). The ideology of Malala Yousafzai roots in her struggle for girls and women’s rights. Yousafzai’s ideology is activism, social justice for girls and women who have been suffering in many ways such as, lack of human rights, education rights, lack of employment opportunities for women, and countless other barriers for girls and women’s freedom in that that is a continuous trend in the region for centuries. The objectives of Yousafzai’s ideology are mainly social, economic, and political equality for girls and women. Additionally, Yousafzai’s ideological streams in her gender, heritage, poverty, lack of equal rights, and equal opportunities both as a female and as a Pashtun tribe in Pakistan.

Women and girls have been suffering in many ways not only in Pakistan but in entire South Asia. Yousafzai’s social and political viewpoints are shaped by her experiences, the lack of her mom’s education, and the stories and educations of her grandmother, grandfather, and her father Ziauddin. Girls and women in South Asia do not have equal rights of education or if they do, it is not welcomed by society because of the traditional and religion superstitious. Yousafzai describes her mother’s educational challenges at that time and wrote “my mother started school when she was six and stopped the same term. Yousafzai adds about her mom that “she was the only girl in a class of boys” and girls’ school was a not normal in that village “she was unusual in the village as she had a father and brothers who encouraged her to go to school” (Yousafzai, 2014, p. 26). Yousafzai also describes her dad that he had the rights to education but none of his sisters “my aunts did not go to school at all, just like millions of girls in my country” (Yousafzai, 2014, p. 26). In addition to the absence of education, women and girls suffer because of dowry, Swara, honor killing, and many gender-based discriminations and inequality in Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, and Afghanistan.

Culture and religion are also victimizing girls and women in the region. Swat Valley which is in North West of Pakistan, where Yousafzai was born and raised, girls and women experience severe forms of gender discrimination and gender-based challenges. For example, in South Asian countries such as Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan women are victims of several forms of violence called Dowry, Swara, and honor killings. Dowry is a compulsory amount of cash, gold, or asset such a land, home, and cars from the bride and her family to the groom and his family. According to Yousafzai that “we have a culture called Swara by which a girl can be given to another tribe to resolve a feud” (p. 38). Honor killing is girls and women murder by their family because they think the female member brought shame to the family. Human Rights Watch reports that “Pakistani rights activist estimate that there are about 1,000 honor killings, in Pakistan every year (Ijaz, 2019). Yousafzai also confirms that her family advocated thorough the years against “honor killings” (2014, p. 46).

The region where Yousafzai’s activist ideology was forming is an extremely tough region where societies threat women very discriminatory. In South Asia, including Pakistan, girls’ birth becomes a presage for families; after they grow most women cannot marry for a long time because their family cannot afford the Dowry. Those who can afford the Dowry put girls and women at risk because the assets brought by the bride put brides’ live in jeopardies. Burn stresses that dowry is domestic violence which occurs when in-laws emotionally, physically, and sexually violate women to make them extract more dowry from women’s family “in extreme cases, they murder the wife and stage it to look like a suicide or an accident, in what is known as dowry murder or dowry death” (Burn, 2019, p. 39). Economic Times also reports that “thousands” of women in Pakistan become paralyzed and are having permanent disabilities after they experienced physical violence by men (2020). In such misogynist societies, Yousafzai and her father believed “lack of education” for girls and women was “the root of all Pakistan’s problems” (Yousafzai, 2014, p. 26). Yousafzai on one hand was observing and experiencing gender inequality and discriminations outside, but on the other hand, she was developing activism for girls’ education and women’s rights at home.

Therefore, Yousafzai developed a strong ideology for activism for girls. This idea that women’s prosperity can be only achieve by educating them when their children through promoting and supporting girls’ education were the center and the core values of her family. Daiya (p. 4), who is the director of Gender, and Sexuality Studies in the George Washington University, cites Yousafzai “poor families in Pakistan and many other parts of South Asia endeavor to ensure that the boys get some kind of education and often careless if their daughter remain illiterates”. Her comments indicate, that Yousafzai is opposing and criticizing the lack of attention to girls’ education, and the above societal approach for girls’ education and empowerment seemed unacceptable for her Yousafzai mentions their family’s collective activism for girls’ education when the Taliban were trying to ban girls from education in Swat Valley while she was 11 years old, and her dad and “his fellow activists were holding endless meetings. These were no longer just about stopping people cutting down trees but were also about education and democracy” (2014, p. 53).

Indeed, the reasoning Yousafzai’s ideology for girls’ education became famous and vital was the extremely patriarchal society. As she calls it her “Pashtun homeland” is a more traditional area within a patriarchal country in the South Asian region with countless gender-based challenges for girl’s education and women’s rights. Daiya highlights that “the social organization of South Asia’s many communities is largely patriarchal”. Daiya adds “according to the United Nations, an estimated 200 million women are missing due to gendercide. Daiya also cited Yousafzai that in her patriarchal society “the husband and the son in the family getting the choice meats at dinnertime, or more food, more milk or eggs, which is expensive, while the daughter-in-law or daughter gets less or none” (21-22). However, Yousafzai grew up in a very liberal and educated family where her father was a girl’s education activist, and women and social activist. But, some so-called religious people were challenging his efforts and actions to educate girls. Yousafzai clearly states that she observes this patriarchy and her dad’s resistance to advocate for girls’ educations. For instance, Yousafzai’s family-run girls’ school was forced to close by some of the local and her family resisted:

“Some of the influential people and elders of our Mohalla into a delegation and turned up at our door. There were seven people some other senior Tablighis, a mosque keeper, and former jihadi, and a shopkeeper and they filled our small house. My father seemed worried and shooed us into the other room, but the house was mall so we could hear every word. ‘I am representing the Ulema and Tablighian and Taliban’ Mullah Ghulamullah said, referring to not just one but two organizations of Muslim scholars to give himself gravitas. ‘I am representing good Muslims and we all think your girls’ school is Haram and a blasphemy. You should close it” (Yousafzai, 2014, p.50).

So, in every step of her life, Yousafzai witnessed patriarchy in society and at the same time, Yousafzai and her family continued to fight for girls’ rights to education. Though Yousafzai observes life-threatening challenges she not only stop going to school, she also never stop promoting girls’ education and never stops fighting for girls’ education. Yousafzai’s everyday life which was activism for girls’ education contributed to her ideology to further promote girls’ educations.

Yousafzai believes that the lack of women’s development in her society is deeply connected to the lack of their education. As mentioned above, women are treated discriminatory, beaten, killed, and are facing numerous savage in the region generally, and particularly in Pakistan and her Valley. Yousafzai (2014) describes that her uneducated mom would have a different life if she was educated. “It was only when she met my father that she felt regret. Here was a man who had read so many books, who wrote her poems she could not read” Yousafzai wrote about her uneducated mom (2014, p. 26). Yousafzai’s ideology furthermore developed when she was banned from school. That is why she took the dangerous route of fighting for girls’ education by standing up against terrorist groups such as Tahrik I Taliban Pakistan (TTP). Yousafzai and her family clearly understood how vitally important education is for a girl’s future. I am one of the examples; how early stoppage of education leaves damaging effects on one future and how that ruins people’s life. More than a decade before Yousafzai’s educational challenges, I was banned from school in secondary school in Kabul, when Taliban took the power in Afghanistan in 1996. While studying about MalalaYousafzai, I remember myself before the Taliban where I was always first in my class, however, yet I am struggling to fill that gap which was caused by the Taliban who took my rights of education. My and my dad’s dream was to become a doctor, but instead of holding a Ph.D. in the late thirties, I am struggling to do higher education in Canada. After the Taliban, from 2002 I worked tirelessly to continue my education, and I was able to complete BA from Kabul University. But I faced countless educational challenges because my educational roots were damaged by the Taliban. Since that time, I am still struggling and facing everyday physical and emotional challenges in my educations, however, I never gave up hope for the future. As Yousafzai and her family believed, I also strongly believe that banning girls will damage them forever. Because not everyone gets the attention, Yousafzai received, or not everyone survived the Terrorist attacks on education. According to the UN News, last month in May, more than 50 “students between the age of 11 and 15 were killed and hundreds of others injured” in terrorist attacks in a girls’ school in Kabul, Afghanistan.

On the other hand, some ideologies are not popular now, or it is safe to say that is not popular worldwide that are excluded from this study, such as Adolf Hitler and Ayatollah Khomeini. Many reasons can be pointed why these ideologies are lesser-known, such as geographical locations, political schemes governing in the society, as well as the period and societal potential and appetite for certain ideologies. For example, currently, the world is suffering from totalitarianism and fundamentalism, which are Hitler’s and Khomeini’s ideologies. In addition, to global warming and climate change, one of the biggest concerns of nations is religious extremism and terrorism. Khomeini’s ideology is fundamentally Islamism, within Islam, he was fundamentalist Shiite. He promoted anti-American sentiments, he was also anti-Israel and against many more. Similarly, Hitler was also anti-Zionism, who was extremely nationalist and who started World War II. Growing incidence against minority around the world shows, that the interest to the exclusion of other is growing which can be related to nationalism ideology. For example, last weekend a Muslim family was targeted in London Ontario, by the white extremist who killed 4 peoples of an innocent family, only because they were looking, dressing, and worshiping different than him. Obviously, in our contemporary globalized world, ideologies such as Hitler and Khomeini are not what we need or what we want. Therefore, Ideologies such as Malala Yousafzai’s is needed to eliminate or at less to reduce the inequality around the globe.

To conclude, Malala Yousafzai’s ideology is human rights, liberalism, feminism, and social justice for girls and women, mainly activism for girls’ education. Yousafzai endangered her safety and got shot, in promoting what she believed in, which was educations rights for girls. She could of be also, silenced if she did not survive the attack or if she did not receive national, regional, and international supports. This support further determined her to get stronger and committed to her activism for girls’ educations. Yousafzai’s ideology developed with the educations she received in international institutions, and from the social and political environments all around the world. She truly highlighted and shined to the world that the world can see how kids are devastated by the war and extremism. Countless, children around the world are suffering in many ways including girls, from religious extremism, culture, poverty, and lack of equal opportunities. Malala Yousafzai is an example of countless stars which one lightened and can be seen, but unknown other stars are shuttered, shut, and darkened. Therefore, Yousafzai is a legend and her ideology became a voice for those who were silenced and will be a voice for those who cannot have a voice in the future.

References:

Burn, S, M.  (2019). Women Across Cultures. Mcgraw Hill, New York. ISBN 9781-260084542.

Daiya, K. (2020). I AM  MALAL. A RESOURCE GUIDE FOR EDUCATORS. Retrieved from:   https://malala.gwu.edu/sites/g/files/zaxdzs1061/f/Theme-3-Culture_FINAL.pdf

Ijaz,S. ( 2019). Pakistan Should not Again fail ‘Honor Killing’ Victim. Human Watch Rights.  Retrieve from: https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/22/pakistan-should-not-again-fail-honor-killing-victim

Stone, W. (1986). Personality and Ideology: Empirical Support for Tomkins’ Polarity Theory. Political Psychology, 7(4), 689-708. doi:10.2307/3791209

The economic times, (2020). Over two-thirds of Pakistani women victim of abuse: Study. Retrieve from: https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/international/world-news/over-two-thirds-of-pakistani-women-victim-of-abuse-study/articleshow/79517277.cms?utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst.

UN, NEWS. (2021). Afghanistan: Top UN officials strongly condemn ‘heinous’ attack on girls’ school. Retrieved from:  https://news.un.org/en/story/2021/05/1091842

Yousafzai, M., & Lamb, C. (2014). I am malala. Weidenfeld & Nicolson.Retrieved from:  https://eg4.nic.in/jnv/DFILES/EBOOKS/IR/IamMalala.pdf.

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect Pajhwok's editorial policy.

In new Indo-Pacific alliance, Biden plans to share nuclear submarine technology

BY AAMER MADHANI AND JONATHAN LEMIRE

• ASSOCIATED PRESS •

 SEPTEMBER 15, 2021

President Joe Biden, listens from the East Room of the White House in Washington, on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021, as he is joined virtually by Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, not seen, as he speaks about a national security initiative. (Andrew Harnik/AP)

WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden announced Wednesday that the United States is forming a new Indo-Pacific security alliance with Britain and Australia that will allow for greater sharing of defense capabilities — including helping equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines. It’s a move that could deepen a growing chasm in U.S.-China relations.

Biden made the announcement alongside British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who joined him by video to unveil the new alliance, which will be called AUKUS (pronounced AWK-us). The three announced they would quickly turn their attention to developing nuclear-powered submarines for Australia.

“We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term,” said Biden, who said the new alliance reflects a broader trend of key European partners playing a role in the Indo-Pacific. “We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region and how it may evolve.”

None of the leaders mentioned China in their remarks. But the new security alliance is likely to be seen as a provocative move by Beijing, which has repeatedly lashed out at Biden as he’s sought to refocus U.S. foreign policy on the Pacific in the early going of his presidency.

Before the announcement, a senior administration official sought to play down the idea that the alliance was meant to serve as a deterrent against China in the region. The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to preview the announcement, said the alliance’s creation was not aimed at any one country, and is about a larger effort to sustain engagement and deterrence in the Indo-Pacific by the three nations.

Johnson said the alliance would allow the three English-speaking maritime democracies to strengthen their bonds and sharpen their focus on an increasingly complicated part of the world.

“We will have a new opportunity to reinforce Britain’s place at the leading edge of science and technology, strengthening our national expertise, and perhaps most significant, the U.K., Australia and the U.S. will be joined even more closely together, “ Johnson said.

The three countries have agreed to share information in areas including artificial intelligence, cyber and underwater defense capabilities.

But plans to support Australia acquiring nuclear-powered submarines are certain to catch Beijing’s attention. To date, the only country that the United States has shared nuclear propulsion technology with is Britain. Morrison said Australia is not seeking to develop a nuclear weapons program and information sharing would be limited to helping it develop a submarine fleet.

The Australian prime minister said plans for the nuclear-powered submarines would be developed over the next 18 months and the vessels would be built in Adelaide, Australia.

Australia had announced in 2016 that French company DCNS had beat out bidders from Japan and Germany to build the next generation of submarines in Australia’s largest-ever defense contract.

Top French officials made clear they were unhappy with the deal, which undercuts the DCNS deal.

“The American choice to exclude a European ally and partner such as France from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region, whether in terms of our values or in terms of respect for multilateralism based on the rule of law, shows a lack of coherence that France can only note and regret,” French foreign minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and defense minister Florence Parly said in a joint statement.

Morrison said the three countries had “always seen through a similar lens,” but, as the world becomes more complex, “to meet these new challenges, to help deliver the security and stability our region needs, we must now take our partnership to a new level.”

Matt Pottinger, who served as deputy national security adviser in the Trump administration, said that equipping Australia with nuclear-powered submarines was a significant step that would help the U.S. and its allies on the military and diplomatic fronts.

Underwater warfare capabilities have been Beijing’s “Achilles’ heel,” Pottinger said. A nuclear-powered submarine fleet would allow Australia to conduct longer patrols, giving the new alliance a stronger presence in the region.

“When you have a strong military, it provides a backdrop of deterrence that gives countries the confidence to resist bullying,” said Pottinger, who is now a visiting fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. “Part of the problem right now is that Beijing has gotten rather arrogant and it’s been less willing to engage productively in diplomacy.”

The announcement of the new security alliance comes as the U.S.-China relationship has deteriorated. Beijing has taken exception to Biden administration officials repeatedly calling out China over human rights abuses in Xianjing province, the crackdown on democracy activists in Hong Kong, and cybersecurity breaches originating from China, as well as Beijing’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic and what the White House has labeled as “coercive and unfair” trade practices.

Even as White House officials have repeatedly spoken out about China, administration officials say they want to work with Beijing on areas of common interest, including curbing the pandemic and climate change.

Biden spoke by phone with China’s President Xi Jinping last week amid growing frustration on the American side that high-level engagement between the two leaders’ top advisers has been largely unfruitful.

After the 90-minute phone call, official Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi expressed concerns that U.S. government policy toward China has caused “serious difficulties” in relations.

Asked Tuesday about media reports that Xi had declined to commit to meet with him in person, the U.S. president said it was “untrue.” Biden did not speak in “specific terms” about the new AUKUS alliance during last week’s call with the Chinese leader, according to the senior administration official.

The U.S. and Australia, along with India and Japan, are members of a strategic dialogue known as “the Quad.” Biden is set to host fellow Quad leaders at the White House next week.

Biden has sought to rally allies to speak with a more unified voice on China and has tried to send the message that he would take a radically different approach to China than former President Donald Trump, who placed trade and economic issues above all else in the U.S.-China relationship.

In June, at Biden’s urging, Group of Seven nations called on China to respect human rights in Hong Kong and Xinjiang province and to permit a full probe into the origins of COVID-19. While the allies broadly agreed to work toward competing against China, there was less unity on how adversarial a public position the group should take.

Alliance with Australia and US a ‘downpayment on global Britain’

Comment from White House shows there is a price to be paid: support for US-led stronger posture against Beijing

Boris Johnson, the Australian prime minister, Scott Morrison, and the US president, Joe Biden, at the G7 summit in June. 

Photograph: Andrew Parsons/UPI/Rex/Shutterstock

Dan Sabbagh
Wed 15 Sep 2021 

Britain’s post-Brexit foreign policy is taking shape, and the early moves are hardly very surprising: a tripartite defence alliance with the US and Australia – handily compressed to Aukus – clearly designed to send a message to Beijing.

The three start work by sharing with Canberra what is ultimately an American technology: supplying nuclear reactors to power submarines with the likely assistance of Britain’s Rolls-Royce and BAE Systems, a relationship that may also allow the Australians to ditch a troubled but lucrative A$90bn (£48bn) diesel engine agreement with a French contractor.

Australia’s new nuclear-powered submarines will not be nuclear-armed, and the country has no desire to be a nuclear power. But there are questions as to how precisely the enriched uranium required will be supplied and how the reactors will be decommissioned – or to put it another way, what will be done in Australia, the UK or the US. The three will spend the next 18 months trying to work it out.

In theory, it would have been perfectly possible for the US to work directly with their Australian counterparts on the sensitive technology transfer (a development so rare that it has only happened once before in history, when the US helped Britain start its own nuclear submarine programme in late 1958).

But as a senior White House official revealed, it was the UK that wanted this the most. “Great Britain has been a very strong strategic leader in this effort,” said one, speaking ahead of the announcement, helping “mediate and engage on all the critical issues” as the partnership was being thrashed out.

It is a vital endorsement after a tricky summer in which Anglo-American relations have been far from smooth during the Afghanistan crisis. British generals and ministers made little secret that they disagreed with Joe Biden’s decision to withdraw troops from the country, effectively handing it over to the Taliban.

There was a lack of understanding of the tactical intentions of the White House. British sources complained it was unclear when the US would pull out of Kabul airport, and Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, a survivor of Wednesday’s reshuffle, even appeared to question if the US had the will to be a superpower any longer.

Now at least, the prime minister, Boris Johnson, can head over the US for the UN general assembly, and his first White House meeting with Joe Biden, with something else to talk about.

But for the UK there will be a price. What the US president wants is for the UK to be more present in the Indo-Pacific, even though it is thousands of miles away from home. The submarine deal is, the White House official observed, “a downpayment” on the “concept of global Britain”.

In June, Biden came to Europe for his first overseas tour as president, wanting western allies to sign up to a stronger posture against Beijing. Nato, traditionally focused on Russia, obliged and agreed to declare that China also poses a security risk at its annual summit. Yet the White House wants to go further.

The Pentagon has hardly been shy in pointing out that China, which has its own nuclear-powered submarines, now possesses the world’s largest navy. The US has repeatedly wanted allies to help: over the summer Britain’s new Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier participated in muscle-flexing military exercises in the Philippine Sea.

A serious confrontation with China remains unlikely, but this is not the point. With access to European markets not as friction-free as before, the UK is choosing to build a political and industrial strategy based in part on defence and helping longstanding but far-flung allies, starting with supplying nuclear-powered submarines.

‘Stab in the back’: France slams Australia, US over move to ditch €50B submarine deal


‘We had established a trusting relationship with Australia, and this trust was betrayed,’ Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian says.

Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian called the decision “contrary to the spirit and letter of the cooperation between France and Australia." | Sia Kambou/AFP via Getty Images

BY JULES DARMANIN AND ZOYA SHEFTALOVICH
September 16, 2021

The French government has hit out Australia's decision to tear up a submarine deal with France worth more than €50 billion to instead acquire American-made nuclear-powered submarines.

"It's a stab in the back. We had established a trusting relationship with Australia, and this trust was betrayed," French Foreign Affairs Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said in a Franceinfo interview Thursday morning. Le Drian added he was "angry and very bitter about this break up," adding that he had spoken to his Australian counterpart days ago and received no serious indication of the move.

Under a deal announced Wednesday by U.S. President Joe Biden, Australia, the U.K. and the U.S. will form a new alliance to be known as AUKUS, which will see the three countries share advanced technologies with one another. As part of the new pact, Canberra will abandon its submarine deal with France.

Le Drian indicated that France would fight the move. “This is not over," he said. "We’re going to need clarifications. We have contracts. The Australians need to tell us how they’re getting out of it. We’re going to need explanation. We have an intergovernmental deal that we signed with great fanfare in 2019, with precise commitments, with clauses, how are they getting out of it? They’re going to have to tell us. So this is not the end of the story."

And he added that the announcement of the move was reminiscent of Biden's predecessor in office, Donald Trump. “What concerns me as well is the American behavior," he said. "This brutal, unilateral, unpredictable decision looks very much like what Mr. Trump used to do … Allies don’t do this to each other … It’s rather insufferable."

In a statement released before the interview, Le Drian and Armed Forces Minister Florence Parly said: “This decision is contrary to the letter and spirit of the cooperation that prevailed between France and Australia."

The statement continued: "The American choice to push aside an ally and European partner like France from a structuring partnership with Australia, at a time when we are facing unprecedented challenges in the Indo-Pacific region ... shows a lack of consistency France can only note and regret."

The Franco-Australian submarine deal has been significantly troubled for years, with tensions building between French shipbuilder Naval Group and Canberra over cost blowouts, design changes and local industry involvement in the project to build 12 diesel Shortfin Barracuda submarines, announced in April 2016.

China fumes over Australia’s nuclear sub pact with U.S., Britain

U.S. Navy personel walks past USS North Carolina submarine docked at Changi Naval Base in Singapore

By Trevor Hunnicutt, Nandita Bose and David Brunnstrom
Posted on September 16, 2021

WASHINGTON/CANBERRA (Reuters) -The United States, Britain and Australia announced a new security partnership for the Indo-Pacific in a move hailed by regional allies but denounced by China as intensifying an arms race in the region.

Under the partnership, announced by President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the United States and Britain will provide Australia with the technology and capability to deploy nuclear-powered submarines.

The United States and its allies are looking for ways to push back against China’s growing power and influence, particularly its military buildup, pressure on Taiwan and deployments in the contested South China Sea.

The three leaders did not mention China by name in Wednesday’s announcement and senior Biden administration officials who briefed reporters ahead of time said the partnership was not aimed at countering Beijing.

However, Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said the trio were “severely damaging regional peace and stability, intensifying an arms race, and damaging international nuclear non-proliferation efforts”.

Countries should not build partnerships that target third countries, he told a regular briefing in Beijing on Thursday.

“China will closely watch the situation’s development.”

NUCLEAR POWER, NOT NUCLEAR WEAPONS

In a three-way virtual announcement, the leaders stressed Australia will not be fielding nuclear weapons but using nuclear propulsion systems for the vessels, to guard against threats.

“We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term,” said Biden.

“We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region, and how it may evolve because the future of each of our nations and indeed the world depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead,” he said.

Morrison said the submarines would be built in the city of Adelaide and Australia would meet all of its nuclear non-proliferation obligations.

James Clapper a former director of U.S. national intelligence, told CNN it was a bold step by Australia given its economy’s dependence on China, adding: “Clearly the Chinese will view this as provocative.”

Republican Senator Ben Sasse said the agreement “sends a clear message of strength to Chairman Xi.”

A U.S. official briefing before the announcement said Biden had not mentioned the plans “in any specific terms” to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a call last Thursday, but did “underscore our determination to play a strong role in the Indo-Pacific.”

U.S. officials said nuclear propulsion would allow the Australian navy to operate more quietly, for longer periods, and provide deterrence across the Indo-Pacific.

The officials said the partnership, dubbed AUKUS, would also involve cooperation in areas including artificial intelligence and quantum technology.

FRANCE SIDELINED

The partnership ends Australia’s 2016 deal with French shipbuilder Naval Group to build it a new submarine fleet worth $40 billion to replace its more than two-decades-old Collins submarines, a spokesperson for Morrison told Reuters.

Naval Group said in a statement that Australia’s decision was a major disappointment and that the company would analyze the consequences of the decision.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Defense Minister Florence Parly said the decision to exclude France showed a lack of coherence at a time the two allies are facing common challenges in the Indo-Pacific region.

Biden said the governments would now launch an 18-month consultation period “to determine every element of this program, from workforce, to training requirements, to production timelines” and to ensure full compliance with non-proliferation commitments.

The pact should be a boon for the U.S. defense industry and among the firms that could benefit are General Dynamics Corp and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc.

General Dynamics’ Electric Boat business does much of the design work for U.S. submarines, but critical subsystems such as electronics and nuclear power plants are made by BWX Technologies Inc

U.S. officials did not give a time frame for when Australia would deploy a nuclear-powered submarine, or how many would be built. They said that since Australia does not have any nuclear infrastructure, it would require a sustained effort over years.

ONE-OFF TECHNOLOGY SWAP

One U.S. official said the announcement was the result of months of engagements by military and political leaders, during which Britain – which recently sent an aircraft carrier to Asia – had indicated it wanted to do more in the region.

“What we’ve heard in all those conversations is a desire for Great Britain to substantially step up its game in the Indo-Pacific,” the official said.


The U.S. official said Washington had shared nuclear propulsion technology only once before – with Britain in 1958 – and added: “This is frankly an exception to our policy in many respects, I do not anticipate that this will be undertaken in other circumstances … We view this as a one-off.”

He said the United States planned to forge stronger ties with long-term allies Japan, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines, and engage more with new partners like India and Vietnam.

The announcement came just over a week before Biden hosts a first in-person meeting of leaders of the “Quad” – Australia, India, Japan and the United States.

(Reporting by Steve Holland, Nandita Bose, David Brunnstrom, Mike Stone, Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington and Colin Packham in Canberra; Additional reporting by John Irish and Matthieu Protard in Paris and Gabriel Crossley in Beijing; Editing by Alistair Bell, Richard Pullin and Jon Boyle)

President Biden delivers remark on National Security at the White House

President Biden delivers remark on National Security at the White House

 AUKUS nuclear submarine deal shows the world has changed

16 Sep 2021|Michael Shoebridge

Australia is going to build nuclear submarines as part of a new broader defence technology pact with the US and the UK. How much the world has changed since just April 2016.

Back then, Australia chose a conventional, diesel-powered submarine as its key undersea weapon, to be built in partnership with the French. A nuclear submarine was ruled out then because of the sensitivity of military nuclear technologies, the complexity and cost, and because we were told our strategic needs would be met by the diesel submarine.

The sensitivity, complexity and cost remain. What’s changed is our security environment. That’s summed up in three words: China under Xi.

Any doubts about the direction Xi Jinping is taking China were ended in Tiananmen Square on 1 July, when he doubled down on his vision that a great China is one that can use its power in the world however it deems fit, engaging in a great struggle against others who seek to make their own decisions.

And it’s more than China that has changed. In 2016, the UK government would almost certainly not have been seized with the urgency of sharing nuclear secrets with Australia and the US would only have done so with a huge amount of arm twisting, notably of submarine folk in the US Navy. We would have been regaled with stories about how the US and UK only share their nuclear defence technology with each other, under an agreement signed in 1958.

So, Joe Biden, Boris Johnson and Scott Morrison standing together (virtually) also signals a shift to a more robust deterrence of China by some of the world’s most powerful and activist democracies. That shift began to be obvious in June at the Cornwall meeting of the G7 group of nations, with Australia, India and South Korea along, but it’s been reinforced and accelerated today. This is the huge geostrategic news behind the announcement—and that will be understood in Beijing and the wider world.

There are many questions and issues to be resolved in the wake of today’s announcement. That’s why the three governments have set out an 18-month planning timeline for this challenging international enterprise.

The Australian government is crystal clear that when it comes to submarines, details, planning and implementation really matter. Since 2016, they’ve had the uncomfortable experience of the troubles, challenges and delays in Defence’s pursuit of the holy grail: a diesel-powered submarine with all the attributes of a nuclear one.

Our French partners will have some interesting discussions with our increasingly important and close strategic partners in Japan—because this is the second time it’s looked like we were building a submarine with a new partner, only to radically change course. The French will rightly note that they’ve spent six years trying to turn their nuclear Barracuda-class design into a diesel-powered version for us because we said we didn’t want a nuclear boat.

In an understatement, Naval Group has said the announcement is a ‘major disappointment’. Keeping any momentum in the French strategic partnership, which was taking on more weight through things like the new annual foreign and defence ministers’ forum first held just a few weeks ago, is going to be plain hard, but important given France’s global and regional roles.

But why a nuclear submarine? Put simply, it’s about range, stealth and power. A diesel submarine, even a ‘bleeding edge’ design for one, just doesn’t have the range or endurance to get from Australia to somewhere like the South China Sea or Malacca Strait and stay on station for long. A nuclear submarine does. A nuclear submarine is stealthier and harder to detect because it doesn’t have to run near the surface during a mission to recharge its batteries and it has the speed to get out of harm’s way if the risk of detection grows. And the nuclear power plant produces as much electricity as even the most power-hungry systems and sensors our future technologist can imagine will need.

The 18 months of joint work on all the complexities is essential. We’ve heard that Australia creating a civil nuclear industry isn’t part of this announcement and nor are nuclear weapons. Both things clarify what’s left to be done and at least don’t add enormous further complications—like becoming a nuclear-weapons state while maintaining strong commitments to non-proliferation of such devastating weapons.

Even with this, we’ll need every bit of the close partnership with UK and US institutions, companies and agencies that the three leaders have directed. As examples, the Australian Radiation Protection and Nuclear Safety Agency currently monitors and regulates the visits of nuclear-powered warships, submarines and surface vessels, from partners like the US and UK to Australian ports. This is largely a matter of monitoring and environmental safety. But short visits by such vessels are quite different to basing, managing and maintaining nuclear reactors on Australian submarines.

Blistering onto the US nuclear submarine infrastructure, and building our own capacity and skills in parallel, will be Australia’s primary approach, and just like the one the UK has taken since 1958. That probably applies to things like the fuel—we’ll probably use the US and UK fuel cycles, including for the management and storage of reactor waste, rather than building our own onshore facilities for this.

The expenses will be eyewatering, but so were the costs of the Attack class—$90 billion at last count just to build the 12 submarines and more than that again to operate them. The advantage is Australia gets an enduringly powerful deterrent capability, and with it we can work even more closely with powerful partners to deter conflict. But it seems unlikely we’ll see the first Australian sub at least until the late-2030s—around the time the first French boat was to be delivered. So, pressure on the Collins-class submarines now in service will grow.

It’s hard to see Defence’s current submarine program management delivering this, given they were at the core of the decision to go down the Attack-class path. And it’s hard to see it being done out of a small part of the Defence department, given that a nuclear submarine is a national and international endeavour. The requirements for operating nuclear submarines extend far beyond the traditional expertise of Defence. Now more than ever we need to treat the national shipbuilding enterprise as a true national endeavour with leadership and organisation to match, rather than as a loosely confederated group of Defence projects managed from within the department.

The long-term nature of the AUKUS partnership is the strongest possible statement that the challenge we face from China is equally long-term—no changes of tone or even the shrewdest diplomacy is likely to change Xi’s instinctive path and mindset of struggle. Deterrence by a growing set of powerful nations just might.

AUTHOR

Michael Shoebridge is director of ASPI’s defence, strategy and national security program. A version of this article was published in the Sydney Morning Herald. Image: Win McNamee/Getty Images.

The Strategist (aspistrategist.org.au)

Australian nuclear subs will be banned from New Zealand waters: Ardern


Issued on: 16/09/2021 - 

New Zealand's Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern says Australian nuclear subs will be banned from New Zealand waters Mark Mitchell POOL/AFP/File

Wellington (AFP)

New Zealand will not lift a decades-long ban on nuclear-powered vessels entering its waters in the wake of key ally Australia's decision to develop a nuclear submarine fleet, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern said Thursday.

Ardern said her Australian counterpart Scott Morrison had briefed her on Canberra's plan to develop nuclear-powered submarines with the help of the United States and Britain.

She described the deal as "primarily around technology and defence hardware", playing down implications for the so-called "Five Eyes" partnership of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

"This arrangement in no way changes our security and intelligence ties with these three countries, as well as Canada," the New Zealand leader said in a statement.

But she also said New Zealand would maintain a ban on nuclear-powered vessels that dates back to 1985, meaning Wellington will not allow the prized naval asset being developed by Australia into its waters.

"New Zealand's position in relation to the prohibition of nuclear-powered vessels in our waters remains unchanged," Ardern said.

The ban was introduced in the wake of French nuclear testing in the Pacific and led to the US navy banning its warships from entering New Zealand ports for more than 30 years.

The destroyer USS Sampson visited in late 2016 but only after the then-prime minister John Key gave a special exemption, saying he was "100 percent confident" the vessel was not nuclear powered or carrying nuclear weapons.

Official US policy is to neither confirm nor deny whether its vessels are nuclear-capable.

© 2021 AFP

Australia enters uncharted waters with nuclear sub plan

Issued on: 16/09/2021 - 

Speaking at a virtual press conference with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson (left) and US President Jow Biden, (right) Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison (centre) announced his country was going nuclear 

Brendan SMIALOWSKI AFP


Sydney (AFP)

Australia's shock decision to acquire US nuclear-powered submarines and cruise missiles helps bind a faltering alliance with Washington, but risks severely worsening an already fractious relationship with China.

With no public debate and little warning, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison on Thursday announced Australia was going nuclear.

Not developing nuclear weapons, but building a fleet of at least eight state-of-the-art nuclear-powered submarines with American and British help.

In one swoop Morrison ripped up several local political taboos -- chiefly a long-standing ban on nuclear power and ingrained caution about stoking military tensions with China.

"Until very recently -- perhaps until 12 hours ago" the idea would have been "fringe" according to Sam Roggeveen of Sydney's Lowy Institute, describing the ground shift felt Down Under.

The deal -- jointly announced with President Joe Biden and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson -- gives Australia access to potent US military firepower refused even to close allies such as Israel.

It would allow Australia's military to travel, and strike targets, far from its coast.

Nuclear subs "are quieter, faster and have longer endurance, which will allow Australia to deploy its future submarines to Indo-Pacific locations for much longer periods of time", Ashley Townshend of the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney told AFP.

Australia had sketched plans to dramatically tool up its military in 2020 as threats from China mounted and trust in the United States alliance waned after Donald Trump's mercurial presidency.

The deal gives Australia access to potent US military firepower refused even to close allies 

Jonathan Sunderman

 US NAVY/AFP/File

This agreement would seem to bind Australia to the US and Britain for decades to come.

It "may be the first of many, including the deployment of US long-range strategic strike weapons, including missiles and stealth bombers, to Australia", said Michael Sullivan, an international relations expert at Flinders University.

"Eventually," he said, that could also mean "the redeployment of some US forces to Northern Australia from US bases on Okinawa and Guam, which are increasingly vulnerable to Chinese military attack".

- Playing with the big kids -

But that close embrace and Australia's new capability put a middleweight power at the centre of growing tensions between heavyweights Washington and Beijing.

Not everyone believes that is a wise move.

Former Australian prime minister Paul Keating was scathing, saying the decision would lock Australia into "any military engagement by the United States against China" and reverse decades of engagement with Asian neighbours.

Some "240 years after we departed from Britain, we are back there with Boris Johnson, trying to find our security in Asia through London", he said.

In a series of secret phone calls ahead of the public announcement, Morrison tried to reassure regional allies from Singapore to Wellington that the decision was based on ensuring "security and prosperity in the Indo-Pacific".

But it will have come as a shock to many Pacific capitals, who will have to work through the implications for weeks and years to come -- not least Beijing.

"This is a significant escalation," said Roggeveen. "It introduces a significant new military capability into the region."

"It's unlikely to be viewed as anything but a move against China," he said. "I won't be surprised if they don't take it well."

The new project also raises questions about Australia's long-standing ban on nuclear energy and is sure to fuel fierce debate at home and among nuclear-sceptic Pacific neighbours.

New Zealand quickly made clear the subs would not be permitted in its territorial waters.

Morrison said the next 18 months would include "an intense examination of what we need to do to exercise our nuclear stewardship responsibilities here in Australia".

Nuclear power has been highly controversial in Australia and Canberra formally banned the use of nuclear energy in 1998, though the country has rich deposits of uranium.

Morrison insisted Australia was "not seeking to establish nuclear weapons or establish a civil nuclear capability".

"And we will continue to meet all of our nuclear non-proliferation obligations," he added.

Adam Bandt, leader of the Greens party, described the nuclear-powered subs as "floating Chernobyls", telling AFP the decision risked a backlash from Australians.

"Australia is a middle power with a lot to lose if conflict escalates in our region," he said.

"Our prime minister is turning up the temperature and putting Australia right in the firing line."

© 2021 AFP

Australia to get nuclear subs in new US, British partnership

Issued on: 15/09/2021 - 

US President Joe Biden is set to announce a new alliance with Australia and Britain Brendan Smialowski AFP/File

Washington (AFP)

The United States will help Australia acquire nuclear powered submarines as part of a new Indo-Pacific strategic alliance also including Britain, a US official said Wednesday.

The announcement -- due to be made shortly in a video meeting by President Joe Biden, Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison and his British counterpart Boris Johnson -- could infuriate France, which has been negotiating a multi-billion-dollar sale of conventional submarines to Australia.

That deal will probably now be scrapped, The Sydney Morning Herald reported.

The US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the three-way partnership, dubbed AUKUS, is a "historic" new piece in Washington's growing focus on the region, where China is challenging decades of US leadership and naval dominance.

What the Biden administration official called an alliance of "maritime democracies" will combine the three countries' forces on "cyber, AI -- particularly applied AI, quantum technologies and some undersea capabilities as well."

AUKUS' first initiative, however, will be "to support Australia's desire to acquire nuclear powered submarines," the official said, stressing this does not mean nuclear weapons.

"Australia does not seek and will not seek nuclear weapons. This is about nuclear powered submarines."

Technical and naval representatives from the three countries will spend the next 18 months deciding how to carry out Australia's upgrade.

The Biden administration official underlined repeatedly how "unique" the decision is, with Britain being the only other country the United States has ever helped to build a nuclear fleet.

"This technology is extremely sensitive," the official said. "We view this as a one-off."

- Stealth and interoperability -

Although the official would not directly name a rising China as the reason for the US move, the intentions of AUKUS are clear.

French President Emmanuel Macron (2nd L) and former Australian prime minister Malcolm Turnbull (3rd L) stand on the deck of a Collins-class submarine in Sydney in May 2018 -- reports say that an expected security deal with the United States and Britain could derail Australia's plans to purchase French submarines 

Ludovico MARIN POOL/AFP/File

"It's meant to send a message of reassurance and a determination to maintain a strong deterrent stance into the 21st century," the official said.

Even if not carrying nuclear weapons, the new submarines will allow Australia to "play at a much higher level," the official said.

"Nuclear powered submarines really maintain superior characteristics of stealth, speed, maneuverability, survivability and really substantial endurance," the official said.

"You will see much deeper interoperability along our navies and our nuclear infrastructure," the official said. "This is a fundamental decision, fundamental. It binds Australia... and the United States and Great Britain for generations. This is the biggest strategic step that Australia's taken in generations."

- French deal in peril -

It was not immediately clear where the development leaves the AUS$90 billion (roughly $66 billion) French deal, which was personally backed by President Emmanuel Macron.

France's Naval Group agreed to build 12 conventional Attack Class subs, but the order is already years behind schedule, well over budget and has become tangled in Australian domestic politics.

As recently as June, Macron promised "full and complete" commitment to the deal. A top Australian defense official said around the same time, however, that Australia was actively considering alternatives.

Australian officials said then that the potential plan B was classified but indicated the issue had been taken more seriously in recent months and included submarines and other vessels.

The AUKUS announcement comes as Australia has been boosting defense spending in response to China's more assertive posture.

Morrison will join Biden again on September 24, this time in person, at a first White House gathering of the "Quad" diplomatic group -- Australia, India, Japan and the United States.

© 2021 AFP

Australia to get nuclear-powered submarines under new security pact with US, UK

Issued on: 15/09/2021 -


The United States, Britain and Australia said on Wednesday they would establish a security partnership for the Indo-Pacific that will involve helping Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines, as Chinese influence over the region grows.

Under the partnership, announced by President Joe Biden, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, the United States and Britain will provide Australia with the technology and capability to deploy nuclear-powered submarines.

In a three-way virtual announcement from each of their capitals, the leaders stressed Australia will not be fielding nuclear weapons but using nuclear propulsion systems for the vessels, to guard against future threats.

“We all recognize the imperative of ensuring peace and stability in the Indo-Pacific over the long term,” said Biden.

“We need to be able to address both the current strategic environment in the region, and how it may evolve because the future of each of our nations and indeed the world depends on a free and open Indo-Pacific enduring and flourishing in the decades ahead,” he said.it

Morrison said the submarines would be built in Adelaide in close cooperation with the United States and Britain.

“We will continue to meet all our nuclear non-proliferation obligations,” he said.

Johnson called it a momentous decision for Australia to acquire the technology. He said it would make the world safer.

Eyes on China

Washington and its allies are looking for ways to push back against China’s growing power and influence, particularly its military buildup, pressure on Taiwan and deployments in the contested South China Sea.

The three leaders did not mention China and senior Biden administration officials who briefed reporters ahead of the announcement said the move was not aimed at countering Beijing.

China’s Washington embassy reacted, however, by saying that countries “should not build exclusionary blocs targeting or harming the interests of third parties.”

“In particular, they should shake off their Cold-War mentality and ideological prejudice,” it said.

James Clapper a former director of U.S. national intelligence, told CNN it was a bold step by Australia given its economy’s dependence on China, adding: “Clearly the Chinese will view this as provocative.”

Republican Senator Ben Sasse said the agreement “sends a clear message of strength to Chairman Xi.”

“I’ll always applaud concrete steps to counter Beijing and this is one of them,” he said.

A U.S. official briefing before the announcement said Biden had not mentioned the plans “in any specific terms” to Chinese leader Xi Jinping in a call last Thursday, but did “underscore our determination to play a strong role in the Indo-Pacific.”it

U.S. officials said nuclear propulsion would allow the Australian navy to operate more quietly, for longer periods, and provide deterrence across the Indo-Pacific.

The officials said the partnership, dubbed AUKUS, would also involve cooperation in areas including artificial intelligence and quantum technology.

The partnership looks likely to end Australia’s negotiations with French shipbuilder Naval Group to build it a new submarine fleet worth $40 billion to replace its more than two-decades-old Collins submarines, Australian media reported.

Biden said the governments would now launch an 18-month consultation period, “to determine every element of this program, from workforce, to training requirements, to production timelines” and to ensure full compliance with non-proliferation commitments.

The pact should be a boon for the U.S. defense industry and among the firms that could benefit are General Dynamics Corp and Huntington Ingalls Industries Inc.

General Dynamics’ Electric Boat business does much of the design work for U.S. submarines, but critical subsystems such as electronics and nuclear power plants are made by BWX Technologies Inc.

Britain said the 18-month program would work out details as to what countries and companies would do what, with the aim for the first submarine to be delivered as quickly as possible.

U.S. officials did not give a time frame for when Australia would deploy a nuclear-powered submarine, or how many would be built. They said that since Australia does not have any nuclear infrastructure, it would require a sustained effort over years.

One-off techonology swap

One U.S. official said the announcement was the result of several months of engagements among respective military commands and political leaderships, during which Britain – which recently sent an aircraft carrier to Asia – had indicated it wanted to do more in the region.

“What we’ve heard in all those conversations is a desire for Great Britain to substantially step up its game in the Indo-Pacific,” the official said, noting its historical ties to Asia.

The U.S. official said Washington had shared nuclear propulsion technology only once before – with Britain in 1958 – and added: “This technology is extremely sensitive. This is frankly an exception to our policy in many respects, I do not anticipate that this will be undertaken in other circumstances going forward. We view this as a one-off.”

The move was being taken as part of “a larger constellation of steps” in the region, he said, including stronger bilateral partnerships with long-term allies Japan, South Korea, Thailand and the Philippines, and stronger engagements with new partners like India and Vietnam.

The announcement comes just over a week before Biden is to host a first in-person meeting of leaders of the “Quad” group of countries – Australia, India, Japan and the United States – that Washington sees as a key means to stand up to China.

(REUTERS)

AUKUS: UK, US and Australia launch pact to counter China

US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched the AUKUS security partnership in a joint virtual appearance. It will supplement Quad and Asean

By Yashwant Raj I Edited by Amit Chanda
UPDATED ON SEP 16, 2021 

In a development termed historic and a game-changer, the US, the UK and Australia on Wednesday announced a trilateral security partnership called AUKUS that will enable Canberra to deploy nuclear-powered submarines in the Indo-Pacific in a major challenge to China and its claims in the region.

US President Joe Biden, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson and Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison launched the alliance in a joint virtual appearance.

The AUKUS pact will strive over the next 18 months to equip Australia with nuclear propulsion technology, which the United States has shared only with the United Kingdom under a decades-old arrangement put together in the face of the threat from the then Soviet Union.

Australia’s nuclear-powered submarines, when they deploy, will be armed with conventional weapons only and not nuclear weapons, the leaders said.

The leaders also made it clear that the new alliance does not and will not supersede or outrank existing arrangements in the Indo-Pacific region such as the Quad, which the US and Australia form with India and Japan, and Asean, and that it will compliment these groups and others.

China sees 'Cold War mentality' in U.S., British, Australia pact

“This is about investing in our greatest source of strength, our alliances and updating them to better meet the threats of today and tomorrow,” Joe Biden said. “It’s about connecting America’s existing allies and partners in new ways.”

He added: “The United States will also continue to work with Asean and the Quad … our five treaty allies and other close partners in the Indo-Pacific.”

TRILATERAL SECURITY PARTNERSHIP

Prime Minister Scott Morrison of Australia, a member of the Quad and other multilateral groups in the region, also sought to convey continued salience of these formations for Australia. “The AUKUS will also enhance our contribution to our growing network of partnerships in the Indo-Pacific region: ANZUS (Australia, New Zealand and the US); our Asean friends; our bilateral strategic partners, the Quad; Five Eyes (US, UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand) countries; and, of course, our dear Pacific family.”

Right Now!

On the ideological and cultural diversity of current antisemitism

Flowers in front of the Great Synagogue in Copenhagen after a shooting in 2015.

 (Photo: Kim Bach - CC)

In May this year, the latest round of hostilities in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict set in motion a wave of antisemitic attacks targeting Jews in Europe and the US. A closer look at these incidents demonstrates the ideological and cultural diversity of current Jew-hatred. In order to understand this diversity, a broader historical perspective is helpful.

Johannes Due Enstad

SENIOR RESEARCH FELLOW, 

NORWEGIAN INSTITUTE FOR SOCIAL RESEARCH
Thursday 16. September 2021 - 

May 2021: a wave of antisemitism

The outbreak of hostilities in Israel and Gaza was followed by attacks on Jews in Western European and North American cities, as well as a flurry of antisemitic messaging online.

To name but a few notable incidents: a London rabbi was pulled out of his car and hit in the head with a brick; a convoy of cars drove through a Jewish neighborhood in London with passengers waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic abuse through a megaphone; a Norwich synagogue was daubed with a swastika and 'Free Palestine'; a group of 180 people marched against a synagogue in Gelsenkirchen, Germany, shouting 'Scheiss-Jude' and waving Palestinian and Turkish flags; Jewish diners at a Los Angeles restaurant were assaulted by persons carrying Palestinian flags; a Jewish man wearing a kippah was violently assaulted on New York’s Times Square by men shouting antisemitic abuse; a kippah-wearing man was beaten kicked in the head, and cut in the face with a knife on the streets of Gothenburg, in broad daylight, by a group of men shouting antisemitic insults. A week later, he was once again insulted and spat after on the street, this time by someone the victim perceived as belonging to the far left.

In the UK, the Community Security Trust (CST, a British charity and monitoring agency) recorded a total of 639 antisemitic incidents in May (a record high for a single month), including 34 violent assaults, 47 threats, and 520 cases classified as abusive behavior. The vast majority of cases involved language or symbolism related to the Israel-Palestine conflict. Perpetrator backgrounds were quite diverse in terms of ethnicity: among the 241 cases where witnesses described the appearance of offenders, 46 percent were described as Arab/North African, 24 percent as white, 22 percent as South Asian, and 8 percent as black.

While we do not have detailed perpetrator descriptions in all cases, the general picture seems clear enough: far-right or white supremacist forms of antisemitism appear to have been a limited feature of the recent wave of incidents. While such elements were also observed, most incidents occurred in the context of pro-Palestinian or anti-Zionist protest. Participation of Islamic extremist actors was also evident. Notably, global jihadist groups such as ISIS and al-Qaeda explicitly called on their followers to 'fight the Jews' wherever they could be found. These observations are consistent with data from two European-wide victimization surveys from 2012 and 2018, in which victims of antisemitic violence and harassment responded to questions about the identity of perpetrator(s).

Judging from these data, the events of May 2021, and also keeping in mind the deadly antisemitic attacks motivated by extreme-right ideology in recent years, current antisemitism is clearly characterized by a diversity of intolerance, ranging across ideological and ethno-cultural divides. In order to understand how this came to be, a brief historical sketch is necessary.

How antisemitism became 'right-wing'

To the extent that people tend to associate antisemitism with the far right, they have good historical reasons for doing so. Antisemitic ideology fundamentally shaped the worldview of Hitler and the National Socialists, motivating their attempt to murder all of the Jews under Nazi control. In the post-war era and until this day, denying the Holocaust and reproducing antisemitic myths has been a characteristic pursuit of right-wing extremists. The imperative to prevent a repetition of the civilizational breakdown set in motion by the Nazis – 'Never again!' – not only lies at the heart of central democratic institutions and values such as minority rights, but also motivates post-war and contemporary efforts to monitor, study, understand, and explain far-right ideology, politics, and violence. For these reasons, the far-right context of Jew-hatred certainly remains important. That said, antisemitism did not start out as a right-wing phenomenon, and it is not likely to end as one.

Antisemitism has a long history, with roots in the ancient world of the Greeks and Romans. Before the 19th century, Jew-hatred was based on general outgroup hostility, religious prejudice, and economic factors (Jews were targeted because of their status as a middleman minority). It had nothing to do with the 'right' or 'left', concepts that had not yet been invented. This changed with the French Revolution, which both established the modern left-right divide and gave rise to a new form of antisemitism that grew out of the right-wing reaction to the Revolution in particular and to the unsettling effects of modernization in general.

From the speculations of early-19th-century royalists that Jews were secretly behind the French Revolution, to the international anti-Jewish congresses of the 1880s, to the Dreyfus Affair (1894–1906), and finally to Hitler’s relentless pursuit of antisemitic policy to its genocidal conclusion – there is no doubt that organized antisemitism in the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries was primarily a right-wing phenomenon.

The 20th century diffusion

Beginning in the mid-20th century, however, the development of antisemitism became characterized by ideological and geographical diffusion. While antisemitism was discredited in mainstream democratic politics after Auschwitz, the beliefs lived on and found outlets not only in extreme-right subcultures, but also within the socialist Eastern Bloc and in the Arab world. The birth of Israel and the Jewish state’s continuing conflict with its Arab neighbors was a key contextual factor in these developments.

Even though the Soviet Union supported Israel in 1948, the Jewish state’s request that Soviet Jews be allowed to emigrate put an end to the warm relationship. Stalin, ever-fearful of divided loyalties among his subjects, denied the request and went on to launch an antisemitic campaign in late 1948, leading to the closure of Jewish cultural institutions across the country, executions of Jewish writers, and what appears to have been the beginning of a major purge that would involve large-scale deportations of Jews (the Doctors’ Plot). The campaign reverberated in other parts of the Eastern Bloc. In 1952, a show trial was staged in Czechoslovakia involving Jewish defendants forced to confess to conspiring with 'international Zionism' to undermine socialist governments. Antisemitic propaganda accompanied the trials, branding Jews as traitors and agents of enemy powers.

Soviet antisemitism after the Six-Day War

Following the Six-Day War of 1967, in which Israel defeated their Soviet-backed Arab foes, the Soviet regime renewed its propaganda efforts ostensibly targeting Zionism. While anti-Zionism is not equal to antisemitism, the two sets of beliefs can overlap. The Soviet case shows how. Just beneath the anti-Zionist surface, the propaganda reproduced classical antisemitic stereotypes, including caricatures of hook-nosed 'Zionists' depicted as perniciously cunning and deceitful, conspiring to dominate the world, exercising massive control over global media, opinion, and economy. The propaganda efforts, led by KGB officials, targeted Judaism as well, framing the religion as an inhumane doctrine teaching 'poisonous hatred for all peoples'. Some caricatures featured serpents and spiders marked with the Star of David, Der Stürmer-style, to symbolize the evil of 'the Zionists'.

The impact of this campaign, involving books and pamphlets printed in millions of copies and translated into several languages, has yet to be fully charted, but it may have influenced far-left discourse on Zionism and Israel in the West. Moreover, the Soviet campaign was partly responsible for the 1975 adoption of the UN General Assembly Resolution 3379 condemning Zionism as a form of racism (the resolution was annulled in 1991). Historian Izabella Tabarovsky suggests that the propaganda effort served to '[empty] Zionism of its meaning as a national liberation movement of the Jewish people and [associate] it instead with racism, fascism, Nazism, genocide, imperialism, colonialism, militarism and apartheid' in the eyes of many on the left.

We should note, however, that the Soviets did not invent Western anti-colonialist hostility towards Israel. Rather, this view took shape within the European New Left that emerged in the 1960s. The New Left tended to see Israel as a European settler-colonialist enterprise, and the Palestinians as the victims of British and Zionist imperialism. For the New Left, Palestine thus became a major cause alongside Vietnam, Algeria, and South Africa. The Soviet campaign drew on this current, but also helped shape it, infusing it with anti-Zionist imagery that frequently expressed classical antisemitic tropes.

Antisemitism in the Arab world

Besides the Soviet Union, the Arab world was another key site of antisemitism’s diffusion in the 20th century. Modern antisemitism had found its way here in the late 19th century, at first through the writings of Arab Christians. As the conflict between Jewish immigrants and Arabs in Palestine escalated in the 1920s and 30s, Arab nationalist leaders began weaponizing antisemitic propaganda, including the notorious forgery known as 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion', to mobilize against the Jews. Humiliating defeats against Israel in 1948 and 1967 led to a major uptick in anti-Zionist and antisemitic discourse in the Arab world, as well as waves of violent anti-Jewish persecution leading to the exodus of up to 900,000 Jews from Arab lands, most of whom settled in Israel.

While antisemitism in the Arab world was secular and nationalist at first, the later growth of Islamism helped frame anti-Zionist and anti-Jewish hostility in religious terms. One notable result of this development was the 1988 founding charter of Hamas, which featured traditional Islamic Jew-hatred alongside explicit reference to the 'Protocols'.

Into the 21st century

With the eruption of the Second Intifada in 2000, the latest phase in the long history of antisemitism commenced. Monitoring agencies in Western Europe and North America recorded a sharp rise in incidents of antisemitic violence and harassment, especially in France, the UK, the US, and Canada. Since then, incident counts have fluctuated from year to year on a relatively high level, often peaking following flare-ups in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, such as the ones that occured last May.

The 21st century phase of antisemitism has not been without its share of far-right manifestations. However, the Soviet legacy of antisemitic anti-Zionism and the Arab and Islamic strains of the phenomenon, each with their own historical roots and circumstances, have come to shape the development in the past 20 years at least as much as the far-right variant. Knowledge about these legacies helps contextualize the events of last May, which revealed the ideological and ethno-cultural diversity of current antisemitism.

Johannes Due Enstad directs the project Comparing Histories of Antisemitism in Contemporary Europe (CHACE), funded by the Research Council of Norway.

About this blog:

Welcome to the “Right Now!” blog where you will find commentary, analysis and reflection by C-REX’s researchers and affiliates on topics related to contemporary far right politics, including party politics, subcultural trends, militancy, violence, and terrorism.

The Center for Research on Extremism, C-REX, is a cross-disciplinary center for the study of right-wing extremism, hate crime and political violence. It is a joint collaboration with five of the leading Norwegian institutions on extremism research, hosted by the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Oslo.

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Israeli Military Kills Recaptured Palestinian Prisoner



Palestinian Escapee Zakaria al-Zubaidi Suffers Brain Death from Extreme Torture by Israeli Police. | Photo: Twitter @MateCosido
Published 15 September 2021 

The death of al-Zubadi comes as nearly 1,400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails will begin an indefinite hunger strike next Friday to demand an end to mistreatment, relocations and administrative detention policy, WAFA News reported.

One of the Palestinian prisoners, escaped from an Israeli jail, suffered brain death as a result of the torture he was subjected to during interrogations by the Hebrew military forces, following his recapture, local Palestinian media reported.

Palestinian Prisoners Plan Protests Against Israeli Repression

According to Yibril al-Zubaidi, brother of the Palestinian prisoner, Zakaria al-Zubaidi was declared brain-dead on Monday as a result of torture by Israeli military after his re-arrest, as reported by Palestinian media and social networks.

The death of al-Zubadi comes as nearly 1,400 Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails will begin an indefinite hunger strike next Friday to demand an end to mistreatment, relocations and administrative detention policy, WAFA News reported.

Al-Zubaidi was one of six Palestinians who broke through the Israeli security system on Monday, September 6, to escape from a maximum security prison, and was beaten and tortured by Israeli security forces after being recaptured.

Palestinian prisoners said they will take gradual steps to protest the escalation of repressive measures by prison administrations against them after the escape of six prisoners from Gilboa prison last week, the Commission for Detainees and Former Detainees Affairs said in a statement.

The commission said the first group on hunger strike will include 1,380 prisoners from various prisons; 400 prisoners from Ramon Prison, 300 from Ofer Prison, 200 from Nafha Prison, 200 from Megiddo Prison, 100 from Gilboa Prison and 80 prisoners from Eshel Prison, 50 from Shatta Prison and 50 prisoners from Hadarim Prison.

New groups of prisoners will join the hunger strike next Tuesday, while 100 senior prisoners, including Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti, will refrain from drinking water starting Friday.

The prisoners demand the Israeli prison administration to end the policy of repression, abuse and arbitrary transfers, the sentences imposed on hundreds of prisoners, release isolated prisoners to regular sections, and return detention conditions to what they were before September 5

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Israel surrenders to demands of Palestinian prisoners: hunger strike called off

September 16, 2021 - 10:18 AM News Code : 1180299 Source : Al Ahead News
Link: 

The Palestinian Prisoners Club announced on Wednesday morning that the Palestinian prisoners have suspended their hunger strike, which was supposed to begin on Friday.

hlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): The Palestinian Prisoners Club announced on Wednesday morning that the Palestinian prisoners have suspended their hunger strike, which was supposed to begin on Friday.

The club said in a statement that the "prisoners, in a unified and harmonious manner, decided to suspend the collective hunger strike, after their demands were met."

According to the statement, the “Israeli” authorities agreed to cancel the “collective punishments" imposed on the prisoners after six Palestinian prisoners succeeded in fleeing from Gilboa Prison last week.

The apartheid “Israeli” entity also reportedly agreed "to stop targeting prisoners affiliated with Palestinian Islamic Jihad [PIJ], the statement added, without providing further details.

Qadri Abu Bakr, head of the Palestinian Prisoners Affairs Commission, had said before that the first phase of the hunger strike would include 1,380 prisoners.

“The prisoners and detainees have decided to go on a hunger strike to improve their conditions,” Abu Bakr said in an interview with the Palestinian news agency Ma’an.

“The prisoners’ demands in the upcoming strike aim to restore the situation to what it was before the recent punitive measures,” he explained, referring to the prison authority’s measures in the aftermath of the escape.

The prisoners added new demands, such as removing the glass separating them from visitors, and allowing families from the Gaza Strip to visit their jailed sons in the Zionist entity, the Palestinian official said.