Wednesday, February 02, 2022

LEFT HAND OF DARKNESS

Will Creating an Androgynous Society Solve Gender Roles?

The depth of misogyny

Photo by Benjamin Voros on Unsplash

Sean Donovan

Jan 22, 2022

Food delivery workers, ride-share drivers demand more rights

By BOBBY CAINA CALVAN

A cyclist delivering food stops at an intersection in the East Village neighborhood of New York, on Thursday, March 26, 2020. Food delivery workers and other app workers in New York City are pressing for protections including better wages, health care and the right to unionize
. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E, File)

NEW YORK (AP) —

Food delivery workers in New York City, fresh off winning rights to transparency in tipping and the use of restaurant bathrooms, joined with ride-share drivers Tuesday in pressing for more protections, including better wages, health care and the right to unionize.

Groups representing about 100,000 such app employees announced the formation of a new coalition, Justice for App Workers, that would push for new measures they say would “achieve dignity” for drivers and the city’s fleet of delivery workers.

The vast majority of app workers in New York City are immigrants. Reliable statistics on the number of app workers aren’t available, but estimates put the number at tens of thousands — many of them lured into the industry by the flexibility of schedules, the need to supplement income from primary jobs, or out of necessity because of few other options.

Most of the coalition’s members are based in New York City, but it also represents members in parts of neighboring regions. The coalition hopes its advocacy will ripple into movements across the country.

“We are delivery workers or Uber drivers. We’re moving the city. ... They want good food, and we deliver it to their door,” said Ranjit Geuli, a member of the United Delivery Workers Association and a driver for Uber and Uber Eats for five years.

“We have no protection. ... Our jobs are unsecured,” said Geuli, an immigrant from Nepal, who called for a union at a rally near City Hall. “If we all come together, it will be a big voice.”

The ride-sharing industry was hit hard by the COVID-19 pandemic but remains a multibillion-dollar industry. On the other hand, apps like DoorDash and UberEats have flourished as diners shunned restaurants in favor of home delivery. The food delivery business generates more than $150 billion worldwide, according to an analysis by McKinsey & Co., a business consulting firm.

Those numbers have riled advocates who say workers aren’t getting their fair share.

“App workers run New York City. Without app workers, New York City would be at a complete standstill,” said Aeraj Kazi, a driver advocate. “Justice for App Workers is about finally being able to step up against these big dogs.”

The coalition, which includes the NYC Rideshare Club, United Delivery Workers Association and seven other groups, said many of its members struggle to pay rent, keep up with car payments and provide for their families.

In a statement, the ride-sharing company Lyft said it was willing to work with its drivers “to strengthen app-based work, prioritizing earnings, safety and protecting the independence and flexibility drivers want.”

Immigrants like Peng Fei Zhang, who must support a family of five, say they have little choice but to take delivery jobs because their poor command of English makes it more difficult to land other jobs.

Last month, some new protections went into effect in New York City, among them the right to use restrooms at restaurants for whom they are delivering food. The online firms that employ them must also reveal how much customers tip and must tell workers how much they earned on a daily basis.

Until the new law, food delivery workers were at the mercy of restaurant owners who didn’t always grant them permission to use their facilities. Some resorted to carrying bottles in which to urinate, said Dachuan Nie, the president of the International Alliance of Delivery Workers, who himself continues to deliver food to earn a living.

The coalition said it is focused on advocating for living wages, better safety, quality health care, reliable bathroom access, the right to form a union, and protections against being unfairly blocked from receiving work.
Cuba vaccinates over 95 percent of toddlers as young as 2


The island country began vaccinating children as young as 2 years old in September 2021, making it the only country to immunize children that young at the time.

By Shirin Ali | Feb. 1, 2022


A mother holds her daughter who is injected with a dose of the Soberana-02 COVID-19 vaccine, in Havana, Cuba, Thursday, Sept. 16, 2021.
Ramon Espinosa/ AP


Story at a glance

Cuba has vaccinated over 95 percent of toddlers as young as 2 years old.

Cuba has vaccinated about 93 percent of its total population, one of the highest vaccination rates in the world.

The progress could be because Cuba has developed its own COVID-19 vaccine, eliminating the need for it to compete for vaccines from other countries.


Cuba has become the world leader in vaccinating its population against COVID-19, hitting a new milestone in vaccinating its youngest residents.

The island is the only country that has approved its vaccines for use on toddlers as young as 2 years old and now more than 95 percent of 2-to-18-year-olds have been fully vaccinated, according to The Guardian.


Our World Data estimates that Cuba has one of the highest vaccination rates in the world, with about 93 percent of its population vaccinated as of Jan. 31. The country began vaccinating children as young as 2 years old in September 2021, making it the only country to immunize children that young at the time.

What’s allowed Cuba to vaccinate so many citizens is through the development of its very own COVID-19 vaccine, eliminating the need to compete for vaccines like other nations.


Our country is in a historic fight against the coronavirus. Add Changing America to your Facebook or Twitter feed to stay on top of the news.

A study published in the BMJ last year found that Cuba’s Abdala COVID-19 vaccine is 92 percent efficacious after three doses. The island has three other vaccine candidates in the pipeline too, one of which is the Soberana 2, which Cuba’s health agency says has a 91 percent effective rate when combined with a booster vaccine called Soberana Plus.

Cuba began rolling out two of its most promising vaccine candidates despite neither having been approved by the country’s regulatory body for emergency use.

Cuba has been joined by Chile, which also began vaccinating children between the ages of 3 and 5-years-old in December.

Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Texas, told The Guadian that, vaccinating young children “is essential,” especially here in the U.S. given the high number of children hospitalized with the highly transmissibly omicron variant. A strong public health communication plan is also essential.

“The vaccine ecosystem is fragile,” said Hotez. “If you get it wrong, especially with someone’s child, it can have spillover effects and derail other vaccine programs.”

The American Academy of Pediatrics reported over 3.5 million child cases of COVID-19 in January 2022, while over 11.4 million children have tested positive for the virus since the onset of the pandemic. However, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that as of Jan. 21, about 29 percent of 5-11-year-olds have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, while about 20 percent have been fully vaccinated.

The U.S. could begin making headway on vaccinating children under the age of 5, as the Food & Drug Administration is expected to expand the use of Pfizer-BioNTech's COVID-19 vaccine to children ages 6 months to 5 years by the end of February, according to NBC News.
Cuba has come up with 5 Covid vaccine candidates


A Cuban industrial complex prepares to start production of one of the country's newly developed COVID vaccines.
CREDIT: YANDER ZAMORA/POOL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES


BY Jason Beaubien
FEB 01, 2022 
 NPR

In the early days of the Covid pandemic, Cuba decided it was going to make its own vaccine – even though vaccine development historically takes years, even decades, to bear fruit.

Why did the Communist island nation decide to go it alone?

It didn't want to rely on the whims of foreign governments or international pharmaceutical companies to immunize its people. Cuba didn't even sign up for the COVAX program, backed by the World Health Organization, that was promising to purchase vaccines in bulk and distribute them equitably around the globe.

Cuba was taking a gamble that it could develop a vaccine before the coronavirus swept across on the island.

"I don't like the word 'gamble'," says Cuban virologist Amilcar Pérez Riverol about his nation's strategy. "I prefer the word 'risky'."

Pérez Riverol left Cuba in 2013 and now works as researcher at the São Paulo Research Foundation at São Paulo State University in Brazil. But he writes regularly about the Covid situation in Cuba on his Facebook page and elsewhere. He used to work in the labs in Havana that were tasked with developing Cuba's home-grown vaccines.

And he was confident that Cuban scientists could win this race against the virus. "I was there, I worked there. I know the people who work there, the spirit they have, the institution they have," he says. It was a huge project, but when they launched it, he says he thought, "Yeah, they can do that."

Cuba's vaccine development effort wasn't just risky from health perspective. Politically if the rest of the world got vaccine far earlier than Cuba, it would be a huge blow to the government. Pérez Riverol says getting a Cuban-made vaccine became an all-consuming project for the country.

"It became the top priority for the whole country, not only for the scientific community or the health authorities," he says. "But also from the political point of view the message was 'get this done.' Because it was the only opportunity to get people vaccinated."

Cuba now has five vaccines in various stages.

Three of the vaccines, Soberana 1, Soberana 2 and Soberna Plus, were developed at the Finlay Institute in Havana. The other two, Abdala and Mambisa, came out of Cuba's Center for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology. Soberana 2, Soberana Plus and Abdala are authorized by the Cuban authorities for use and export while the other two (one of which is a nasal spray) are still in clinical trials. None of them have yet been authorized by the World Health Organization or any other major international regulator

But they've allowed Cuba to boast one of the highest Covidvaccination rates in the world. More than 85% of the island nation is fully immunized against the virus — a far higher vaccination rate than the U.S. It even tops every country in Europe except Portugal. The country is even giving the shots to kid as young as 2 years old.

At a time when many other low- and middle-income nations continue to struggle to get enough doses, Cuba is exporting vaccine to Iran, Venezuela, Mexico, Nicaragua and Vietnam.

Pérez Riverol says Cuba was able to pull off this pharmaceutical feat for a number of reasons.

First, Cuba already had a robust vaccine manufacturing sector. The country of 11 million people produces most of its own inoculations for its routine childhood immunization program, targeting diseases such as yellow fever, whooping cough, diphtheria, tetanus.

"They have the whole infrastructure, you know," Pérez Riverol says. "They've been working on vaccines for more than 30 years."

And second, they didn't attempt to re-invent the wheel. They took existing vaccines for other diseases and tweaked them by adding a portion of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

All the Covid vaccines developed in Cuba are what are known as protein subunit conjugate vaccines.

"This is a technology that we've had around for a while," says Amira Roess, a professor of global health and epidemiology at George Mason University and a non-resident scholar at the Middle East Institute.

This type of vaccine, Roess says, "is something that a lot of companies and a lot of countries have tons of experience with." These vaccines are like the sturdy 1950's Ford Fairlane coupes that still chug through Havana's streets. By comparison, the flashy new mRNA Covid vaccines from Pfizer and Moderna would be high-tech Teslas.

Roess says it makes sense that Cuba used this old-school vaccine platform to build its Covid shots.

The Abdala vaccine – named after a dramatic poem by José Martí, the 19th Century activist for Cuban independence from Spain – was developed by the Center for Genetically Engineered Biotechnology and is based on the same technology the center uses in its hepatitis B vaccine, says Pérez Riverol.

The vaccine called Soberana 2 – or Sovereign 2 — is based on an existing influenza vaccine produced by the Finlay Institute.

"So actually, all these [Cuban Covid] vaccines have like an older cousin or an older brother," says Pérez Riverol.

Data released by the Cuban government in October of 2021 prior to the omicron surge showed the vaccines developed in Havana to be up to 92% effective against SARS-CoV2.

Cuba's success in developing Covid vaccine at a pace on par with some of the world's largest pharmaceutical companies may seem surprising. The country has been in economic and social turmoil. It's been facing shortages of food, fuel and foreign currency, that sparked major street protests last summer. Pandemic lockdowns further battered the economy, depriving the country of one of it's largest sources of revenue- tourism. U.S. President Trump in his final days in office, ramped up sanctions against the communist island, making it even harder for Cuba to import raw materials and pharmaceutical manufacturing equipment.

But William LeoGrande, a professor of government at American University in Washington, D.C. who's written extensively about Cuba, wasn't surprised that Cuba's bet on a domestic vaccine paid off. LeoGrande says many people in the U.S. often underestimate the sophistication of the Cuban biotech industry.

"The reason is because there are large sectors of the Cuban economy that really don't work very well," he says. "And so the image that that creates here in the United States is that nothing works in Cuba. But the reality is that there are some sectors and biotechnology is one of them that work pretty well."

LeoGrande says Cuba's rapid development of five Covid vaccines was a major coup for the Caribbean nation.

"Cuba was able to vaccinate virtually the entire population without having to worry about access to foreign vaccines while most of the Third World is not yet vaccinated because the vaccines are all produced in the developed countries," he says. "And finally, Cuba may be able to generate some revenue by selling the vaccines to other developing countries at a time when it is really in desperate need of foreign exchange currency."

One potential stumbling block for exporting Cuban Covid vaccines is that hasn't made progress in getting regulatory authorization for the products from the WHO. Individual countries are still welcome to authorize the shots locally if they so wish but a stamp of approval from WHO or another major regulator would make it far easier for Cuba to export these medical products.

Cuba has submitted Soberana 1, Soberana 2, Soberana Plus and Abdala for Emergency Use Listing by the WHO but their application hasn't moved forward. Notes on the WHO's website tracking the status of vaccine applications says that the regulatory body is still "awaiting information on strategy and timelines for submission" regarding the communist nation's Covid vaccines.

Cuba ran clinical trials for its vaccines yet the data from those studies hasn't been published in peer-reviewed scientific journals.

Pérez Riverol says part of the problem is a culture in Cuba that publication for researchers isn't a priority.

"Because you don't get funding in Cuba for a published paper," he says. "The government gives you the funding. So it's different to what happened in the rest of the world."

He's confident the data will get published eventually, but he says it's been a question of priorities.

"Their priorities were to focus in working on the vaccine and get the clinical trials done" so that people could get immunized, he says. "Not to write a paper or get that paper published."

Even though Cuba didn't want to rely on other countries for vaccine, there was one moment during a terrible Delta surge in August 2021 when they brought in extra doses of Sinopharm from China.

But throughout the rest of the pandemic, they've done what so many other nations couldn't — controlled their own fate when it came to getting vaccines.

[Copyright 2022 NPR]
Brands Are Overconfident With Their Privacy Approach

The Harris Poll
Sean Gladwell/Getty Images

By: Trishla Ostwal | Adweek | Jan 21, 2022

Most brands believe the future without third-party cookies will have a moderate or large impact on how they acquire customers, and their ability to deliver quality customer service to them, according to a report by customer engagement and data management Redpoint Global with the Harris Poll.

While brands are setting plans in motion for this reality, there’s a gap between how confident companies are feeling about their ability to deliver good customer service, which relies on customer data, and how people feel brands are performing.

“The gap is multi-dimensional,” said John Nash, chief marketing and strategy officer at Redpoint Global. “Consumers are expected to be understood. They expect things to be personalized, and they expect it to be in a consistent manner,” he said.

The company commissioned the Harris Poll to conduct quantitative research amongst 150 marketers and 1,500 consumers across the U.S. and found several gaps between a marketers’ consumer experience strategy and peoples’ expectations.
First-party quality data in a cookie-less world

Consumers feel privacy is an area that brands are falling short, followed by consistency and customer understanding. Whereas brands recognize customer understanding to be among their top challenges, the report reads.

A world without third-party cookies has marketers concerned. A majority (65%) admit that this shift is likely to have a big or moderate impact on their ability to acquire new customers. While 71% admit it will have a big to moderate impact on their ability to deliver an exceptional customer experience.

Many brands recognize the need to offer something of value to people in return for collecting their data: 57% are considering incentives, while 53% are investing more in first-party data systems and 51% are pursuing alternative identifiers.

The report suggests several options brands can consider to incentivize people, including tailored experiences and offers, plus features like location-based in-store pick-up.

The study found only 39% of people were willing to let all brands use tracking cookies to improve their experience. That increases to 67% who are willing to let some brands they explicitly approve use tracking.

Marketers, however, need to keep in mind the key theme of consumers getting something in return. Otherwise, the report show, about 74% of consumers are willing to opt out of all cookies on devices and browsers, if given the option.

Almost all marketers heavily rely on data quality and investment to drive marketing effectiveness. Nearly 99% of marketers, according to the research, prioritize data quality and feel they are making good progress. But consumer sentiments suggest otherwise: Only about two-thirds of consumers are confident that brands have a high-quality view of their data.

There is also a discrepancy in how both these audiences perceive the challenges when it comes to customer data. For brands, inaccurate data, difficulty to act on and fragmented or incomplete data sets pose the biggest concerns. On the other hand, consumers feel that brands have data that is outdated, inaccurate, and inconsistent.

“With data quality as the conduit to much of the customer experience (e.g., personalization), it is crucial that marketers ensure the information they have on their customers covers all of these bases,” reads the report.

MEXICO
AMLO on offensive after story reveals son’s million-dollar home in US

Media company Latinus also revealed José Ramón López drives a Mercedes-Benz SUV

Interior of the home lived in by the president's son, José Ramón López and his wife, Carolyn Adams, in Houston, Texas. SCREEN CAPTURE
Published on Tuesday, February 1, 2022

President López Obrador has defended the integrity of his government after a news outlet and an anti-corruption group revealed that his eldest son lives in an expensive home in Houston, Texas, and drives a car worth almost US $70,000.

Latinus and Mexicans Against Corruption and Impunity (MCCI) reported that José Ramón López Beltrán, 40, and his wife Carolyn Adams live in a new house in the northwest of Houston that could be worth as much as $948,475.

The house is registered in the name of Adams, a Brazilian-American woman who has worked in Mexco as a lobbyist for an energy company.

Driverless Cars Won’t Be Good for the Environment If They Lead to More Auto Use Today


Giovanni Circella
Director, 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program of University of California, Davis

Scott Hardman
Professional Researcher, Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Center at University of California Davis

Drivers who used autopilot drove an average of nearly 5,000 more miles per year than those who didn’t. In an interview with 36 drivers of partially automated vehicles, they generally said they were more willing to sit in traffic and took more long-distance trips.
Photo: Thomas Hawk/Flickr via CC BY-NC 2.0

For years, self-driving car technology has remained tantalizingly just beyond the horizon. Bold predictions notwithstanding, fully automated vehicles still haven’t appeared in showrooms. But the technology appears poised for a leap forward in 2022.

Companies including Mercedes-Benz, BMW and Honda are bringing so-called Level 3 AVs to market that will let drivers take their hands off the wheel under specific conditions, and virtually every major auto manufacturer is testing self-driving systems.

Automated vehicles hold tremendous promise. Cars that handle most or all of the driving tasks could be safer than human drivers, operate more efficiently and open up new opportunities for seniors, people with disabilities and others who can’t drive themselves. But while attention has understandably focused on safety, the potential environmental impacts of automated vehicles have largely taken a back seat.

We study automated vehicle technologies and how consumers are likely to use them. In two recent studies, our research teams found two creative ways to assess the real-life impacts that automated vehicles could have on the environment.

By analyzing drivers’ use of partially automated vehicles and simulating the expected impact of future driverless vehicles, we found that both automated vehicle types will encourage a lot more driving. This will increase transportation-related pollution and traffic congestion, unless regulators take steps to make car travel less appealing.

More Miles, More Carbon Emissions

Research has previously suggested that automated vehicles could cause people to drive more than they currently do, leading to more congestion, energy consumption and pollution. Riding in a car as a passenger is much less stressful than driving, so people might be willing to sit through longer trips and battle more traffic if they can relax and do other things during the journey. The promise of a relaxed, comfortable commute to work could even make some people move farther away from their workplaces and accelerate suburban sprawl trends.

People would also have the ability to send their cars on “zero-occupancy” trips, or errands without passengers. For example, if you don’t want to pay for parking downtown, at some point you may be able to send your car back home while you’re at work and summon it when you need it. Convenient, but also twice the driving.

This could be a big problem. The transportation sector is already the leading contributor to U.S. greenhouse gas emissions. States like California with aggressive plans to combat climate change have recognized that reducing the number of vehicles miles that people travel is a critical strategy. What if automated vehicle technology makes it harder to achieve these goals?

The Real-World Environmental Impacts of Automated Cars

While we and other researchers have predicted these outcomes through modeling, no one has been able to verify them because fully automated vehicles aren’t commercially available yet. We found two innovative ways to use currently available technologies to study the real-world impacts of automated vehicles.

In a study published in mid-2021, we surveyed 940 people who drive partially automated vehicles. Systems like Tesla’s Autopilot can assist with driving tasks and reduce the burden of driving, although to a lesser degree than fully automated vehicles will.

We found that drivers who used Autopilot drove an average of nearly 5,000 more miles per year than those who didn’t. In interviews with 36 drivers of partially automated vehicles, they generally said they were more willing to sit in traffic and took more long-distance trips, all because of the increased comfort and reduced stress provided by semi-automated systems.

In a separate study conducted in late 2019 and early 2020, we simulated the function of a fully automated vehicle by providing 43 households in Sacramento, California, with a chauffeur service to take over the family driving duties and tracking how they used it. These households increased their vehicle miles traveled by 60% over their pre-chauffeur travel, and dramatically reduced their use of transit, bicycling and walking. More than half of the increase in vehicle travel involved sending chauffeurs on zero-occupancy trips without a household member in the car.

Limiting Pollution From Automated Car Use

These findings show that automated vehicles will encourage a lot more driving in the future and that partially automated vehicles are doing so now. Is there any way to reap its benefits without making climate change, air quality, and congestion worse?

Requiring future automated vehicles to use zero-emission technology, as California is doing, can be a big help. But until the U.S. develops a 100% carbon-free electricity system, even electric cars will produce some upstream emissions from power generation. And all car travel causes other harmful impacts, such as water and air pollution from brake and tire wear, collisions with wildlife and traffic congestion.

To prevent an explosion in driving and associated harms, regulators and communities need to send signals that driving isn’t free. They could do this by putting a price on car travel – particularly on zero-occupancy trips.

The main policies that have this effect today are federal and state fuel taxes, which currently average around 49 cents per gallon for gasoline and 55 cents per gallon for diesel fuel. But the impact of fuel taxes on drivers’ behavior will decline with the adoption and spread of electric vehicles. This means that the transportation sector will need to develop new funding mechanisms for ongoing costs like maintaining roads.

In place of fuel taxes, state and federal governments could adopt user fees or charges for the number of vehicle miles that drivers travel. Correctly pricing the cost of private vehicle travel could encourage travelers to consider cheaper and more efficient modes, such as public transit, walking and bicycling.

These fees could be adjusted based on location — for example, charging more to drive into dense city centers — or other factors such as time of day, traffic congestion levels, vehicle occupancy and vehicle type. Modern communication technologies can enable such policies by tracking where and when cars are on the roads.

Another option would be to promote shared fleets of automated vehicles rather than privately owned ones. We envision these as commercial companies, similar to Uber, Lyft and other ride-sharing providers. Having a car available when needed could make it possible to forgo car ownership and could serve travel demand much more efficiently by essentially acting as on-demand transit. These networks could also help riders reach fixed-route public transportation services that operate on main transportation corridors.

All of these policies will be most effective if they are adopted now, before automated vehicles are widespread. A transportation future that is automated, electric and shared could be environmentally sustainable — but in our view, it’s unlikely to evolve that way on its own.

A version of this article originally appeared on The Conversation.



Giovanni Circella
Director, 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program of University of California, Davis
Giovanni Circella is the director of the 3 Revolutions Future Mobility Program and the Honda distinguished scholar for New Mobility Studies at the University of California, Davis, and a senior research engineer in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering of the Georgia Institute of Technology.



Scott Hardman
Professional Researcher, Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Center at University of California Davis
Scott Hardman is a professional researcher in the Plug-in Hybrid & Electric Vehicle Research Center, in the Institute of Transportation Studies at the University of California Davis. Scott holds a PhD in Hydrogen Fuel Cells and their Applications from the University of Birmingham, UK.



How the demise of an arms control treaty foreshadowed Russia’s aggression against Ukraine

By Amy J. NelsonAdam Twardowski | February 1, 2022

Ukrainian servicemen seen along the frontline outside of Svitlodarsk, Ukraine on January 30. (Photo by Stringer/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

As the threat of Russian military aggression against Ukraine intensifies, and with diplomacy yielding little so far, some experts have called for a “new European security architecture.” Others, meanwhile, have argued that there is plenty in the way of an existing security architecture to support peace on the continent—Russia just needs to return to the negotiation table. If the Ukraine scenario feels like a bolt from the blue, it’s because public commentary has provided little contextual fodder for a broader understanding of its origins.

Even more striking, however, is the degree to which coverage and analysis of the crisis has omitted discussion of the Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) Treaty and its related agreements. The CFE Treaty was explicitly designed over 30 years ago to forestall the scenario of a massive conventional arms buildup on the border of a neighboring treaty member—as is now happening, with the Russian Federation massing forces on Ukraine’s eastern border. The CFE Treaty remains in force today, providing for advance notification of significant troop movements and prohibiting the buildup of destabilizing armaments “from the Atlantic to the Urals.” The United States and 28 European countries continue to adhere, despite Russia’s withdrawal over a decade ago.

Russia’s withdrawal from the treaty is an important part of the story of how we arrived at this moment. But the entire story is larger; it involves the gradual dismemberment of a group of interlocked agreements that, together, constituted a European security architecture that worked reasonably well—until some of the countries involved decided it was not working and began to withdraw from pieces of the architecture over the last 15 years or so. Eventually these withdrawals—often the result of Russia’s discontent—undermined that security architecture in its entirety.

Not only do arms control treaties offer rich histories and storied narratives, but the life of an arms control treaty also often tells a story itself. SALT I, for example, tells the story of US-Soviet détente and the nuclear reductions that constituted an incredible and hard-won diplomatic and security breakthrough. The Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) tells the story of an emergent and serious problem of nuclear breakout 50-plus years after the advent of a once-emerging technology, and how that prospective breakout challenges an international regime viewed as privileging the already privileged, the nuclear-haves versus the nuclear-have-nots.

Arms control systems are composed of treaties and regimes that are generally nested within a broader security architecture. In Europe, the CFE Treaty, Vienna Document, and Open Skies Treaty implemented objectives for the broader security architecture covering the countries participating in the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE). Calls today for a new security architecture therefore necessarily implicate arms control and should be examined in this context.

Following a backbreaking 16 years of failed negotiations (for the Mutual and Balance Force Reductions Treaty), the CFE Treaty was signed in Paris on November 19, 1990, amid the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of the post-World War II security order in Europe. Agreement on the treaty’s terms arrived with a groundswell of goodwill and optimism. The treaty represented a generational opportunity to establish a new architecture on the continent by placing identical limits on conventional armaments on the territory of NATO and Warsaw Pact member states. It established a secure and stable balance of conventional forces in Europe at dramatically lower levels in five categories of equipment: tanks, armored combat vehicles, artillery, attack helicopters, and combat aircraft.

The CFE Treaty’s Joint Consultative Group was established as a forum to resolve ambiguities in its interpretation and consider ways to enhance its effectiveness, among other aims. The group, composed of delegations from the 30 parties to the Treaty, met on a weekly basis for nearly two decades. Other pillars of this arms control system and the broader security architecture both preceded and followed. The OSCE, which grew out of the 1975 Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE), sought to establish an “inclusive, values-based forum, with equal buy-in from all participating states, for pan-European security in the broadest sense,” including Russia, given that NATO was a collective defense alliance that “presume[s] a specific potential adversary.”

Apart from the CFE, other important elements of the European security architecture from this period include the Vienna Document on Confidence and Security-Building Measures, signed in 1990 and revised most recently in 2011, which requires each OSCE member to submit an annual report on “the structure, size, equipment, and rough disposition of its conventional armed forces, as well as its exercises, deployments, and other military activities that result in the movement of large numbers of troops.” Many OSCE states voluntarily reduced their armed forces significantly after the war in the Balkans to levels well below those originally stipulated by the Vienna Document. In effect, the Vienna Document’s application to situations in which forces exceed 13,000 troops, 300 tanks, 500 armored combat vehicles, or 250 pieces of artillery became obsolete. Nevertheless, the Vienna Document, is actively maintained via weekly meetings at the OSCE and has provided much-desired transparency across the continent for decades. Curiously, Russia has just this week temporarily suspended its implementation of the Vienna Document, citing COVID reasons.

The Open Skies Treaty, another pillar of the arms control system from this period, was signed in 1992 and came into force in 2002. It aimed to raise confidence among its participants by facilitating aerial surveillance flights manned by teams from both the flying state and the observed state. While the treaty had 34 party states, both the United States and Russia withdrew in 2020 and 2021 respectively after the Trump administration accused Russia of repeated violations. The Open Skies Consultative Commission (OSCC), which implements the treaty, is a related body of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and regularly meets at its headquarters

Seven years after the original CFE Treaty entered into force, in 1999, members negotiated the Adapted Conventional Armed Forces in Europe Treaty at the Istanbul Summit to ditch the outdated NATO/Warsaw Pact distinction and replace the alliance-based ceilings with national ceilings for each participating state. The Adapted CFE Treaty also offered mechanisms for countries to grant or withhold consent for the stationing of forces on their territory, as well as increased transparency through reciprocal inspections and data exchanges. Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, and Russia all ratified the Adapted CFE Treaty.

However, in what would eventually lead to the treaty’s (and ultimately the security architecture’s) unraveling, NATO members made their ratification of the Adapted CFE Treaty contingent on Russia’s fulfillment of the so-called Istanbul commitments, which had been negotiated at the same summit. The Istanbul commitments required Russia to end its military deployments in Moldova and Georgia. After Putin came into power, Russia resisted implementing the Istanbul commitments, signed by his predecessor, Boris Yeltsin.  Putin rejected the notion that a treaty provision could dictate where Russia could move troops around within its own territory. This was a major turning point in the narrative of the conventional security architecture in Europe, setting the stage for a series of changes that led to the current crisis on Ukraine’s border:

  • In July 2007, Russia suspended its implementation of the CFE treaty, ostensibly over objection to the insistence of members of NATO that ratification of the Adapted CFE Treaty was linked to Russia’s implementation of the Istanbul Commitments. Thereafter, Russia refused to provide data on its military forces or to allow inspections on Russian bases/military sites. After the United States unilaterally withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty in 2002, Russia was, by 2006, seeking sought major revisions to the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty. Both treaties were keystones to Russia’s national defense posture. The aftermath of the Kosovo conflict, especially Moscow’s annoyance with how the United States interpreted the UN Security Council resolution on ending that conflict, also undermined Russia’s confidence that its national interests (including its historical relationships, particularly in regard to Serbia) were being respected by Russia’s US and NATO partners.
  • In November 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated: “The (CFE) treaty no longer meets military and political realities in Europe and therefore does not duly protect the Russian Federation’s security interests.”
  • In April 2008, at the NATO-Russia Council meeting, Putin said “there is no legal link” between the Adapted CFE Treaty and Russia’s Istanbul commitments to withdraw troops from Moldova and Georgia and warned that “the crisis surrounding the CFE Treaty” was one of the “serious obstacles” to constructive NATO-Russia relations. At that time, in fact, Russia was already in violation of its commitments in Moldova, where it had insisted on keeping a Commonwealth of Independent States “peacekeeping” forces in the disputed Transdniestria region (internationally recognized as part of Moldova, situated on the Moldovan-Ukrainian border). But the Kremlin insisted that this had no bearing on its compliance with and implementation of the CFE Treaty.
  • In August 2008, under President Medvedev, Russian troops occupied Georgian territory, effectively annexing Abkhazia and South Ossetia, internationally recognized as part of the Republic of Georgia.

Despite these revisionist actions, Russia continued to participate in the CFE Treaty’s Joint Consultative Group until 2015, although the United States announced in 2011 that it would stop carrying out certain obligations under the treaty with respect to Russia (such as hosting Russian inspections on US military bases in Europe) in response to Russia’s actions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Finally, in March 2014, Moscow invaded and annexed the Ukrainian territory of Crimea and supported secessionists in the Donbas region in the southeast of that country.  Russia’s violation of Ukraine’s territorial integrity brought security relations between the West and Russia to a new post-Cold War low.  On March 15, 2015, Russia declared it would “completely halt” its participation in the CFE Treaty because of the members of NATO-had refused to ratify the Adapted CFE Treaty. By this point, the declaration was moot: Russia had long ceased to observe its own obligations under the treaty.

What then does the story of the CFE Treaty teach us about the current crisis?

First, the CFE Treaty was a landmark “hard” arms control agreement—with legally binding provisions limiting the quantity of armaments as well as troop levels. The treaty was implemented simultaneously with politically-binding “soft” confidence and security-building measures under the Vienna Document as well as the legally binding Open Skies Treaty. These three instruments were designed to support each other, working in concert to address unique security issues while complementing each other. The CFE Treaty met and exceeded its mandate for parties to reduce the quantity of military hardware on the European continent, with over 50,000 pieces of equipment destroyed or put out of service under the agreement. The OSCE countries conducted thousands of visits to inspect and verify military units under Vienna Document. As of 2019, over 1,500 observation flights were conducted among the 34 parties to the Open Skies Treaty. In combination, these three agreements were highly successful in contributing to a security framework within Europe for nearly two decades. Notably, the implementation of each agreement was monitored and managed by a consultative body composed of its respective memberships. All three bodies met on a regular basis on the premises of the OSCE and were staffed by permanent delegates to the OSCE. Even today, battered and bruised, the “CFE Treaty remains the only legally binding instrument in the field of arms control in the OSCE area.”

Another interesting aspect of the CFE Treaty is that the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe evolved around it, redefining its priorities for security on the continent and remaining the hub through which treaty-related transparency and information flowed. During its own evolution and modernization, the OSCE broadened its ambit to include a focus on free and fair elections for its member states, which would come to irk the Russians, as well as issues such as terrorism and the defense of minority rights. These new areas of focus were part of an effort to maintain the OSCE’s relevance in a security environment that had changed considerably with the collapse of the Soviet Union.

While the agreements’ consultative groups attempted to adapt the agreements to the changing security dynamics in Europe, they may have enabled the CFE treaty to live on well past the security threat it was originally designed to mitigate. At its origin, the CFE Treaty provided for lower ceilings on military hardware in individual regions, including so-called flank ceilings designed to limit Russian stockpiles in the north and south of the treaty territory. By 1995, members states were all well below treaty limits. Technology had evolved or there was believed to be a sufficiently peaceful balance of forces. In a sense, the architecture outlived the arms control regime—though the faltering regime was a sign of what was to come. Moreover, perhaps the Vienna Document and the Open Skies Treaty surpassed the CFE Treaty itself in meaningful contributions to the contemporary security of member states.

Despite all this institutional evolution, the treaty and its broader regime have needed a more thorough modernization as the need for information and transparency has eclipsed the need for tank, artillery, and other military equipment ceilings. Yet this process has faltered. As the Bonn International Center for Conflict studies put it: “Germany has been arguing for some time for the idea of replacing a system of territorial ‘ceilings’ on weapons and troop levels with an arrangement for ‘verifiable transparency’ in military affairs. But, in recent years, neither Russia nor the United States has shown much interest in reviving the conventional arms control process in Europe.” By 2011, we could say that prior efforts at the modernization and adaptation of this novel and innovative regime/arms control system had faltered, but that, curiously, the OSCE and NATO lived on, evolving and adapting their missions to respond to the emergent threats.

Not for lack of effort, the CFE crisis has remained unresolved for a truly shocking length of time. These authors can think of no other arms control treaty and few other international crises that have endured so long. The broader lesson here is likely that when arms control issues cannot be resolved over an extended period, the problem is a broader security (architecture) one—not an arms control one. As such, the current crisis carries in its wake the cousin crisis of the collapse of the arms control systems writ large – we don’t have the security architecture or security environment to meaningfully use arms control treaties for security improvements right now. Indeed recent Russian draft agreements have amounted to proposals to reconfigure entirely the European security architecture, while NATO/US responses consist of provisions that would enhance transparency and stability on the continent in large measure via arms control confidence-building measures.

Now, to say that the decaying conventional arms control regime somehow permitted Russian behavior or that Russia wouldn’t have mounted aggressive actions to annex disputed regions on the continent had it stayed party to the CFE Treaty would be deeply incorrect. It’s highly unlikely that today’s crisis, which could see Russia attack Ukraine if NATO does not say it will not allow Ukraine join the alliance, would have been prevented by the CFE Treaty had Russia continued to adhere. While any attempt at imagining an alternative history (counterfactual) is fraught with risk, it is fair to ask whether the slow dismantlement of an entire arms control system, in which the CFE Treaty was a major pillar, helped to make it possible for the eventual erosion of the broader European security architecture.

A dismal conclusion

So, what does the conventional arms control version of the current crisis with Ukraine reveal? The pressing need for a new security architecture? A glitch in the arc of progress of the liberal order? Is this story one of an arms control treaty’s protracted failure? Or its useless endurance?

We believe this is the story of the slow and arduous dismantlement of an entire arms control system, nested within the broader security architecture, to serve the national objectives of one treaty partner to the exclusion of all others, and that arms control agreements, no matter how robust, require the political will of all involved to remain relevant. In the early 2000s, the Russian Federation increasingly viewed the CFE Treaty as a speed bump preventing it from enacting national priorities—it no longer wanted such constraints to interfere with its strategic objectives.

While it is impossible to know if the arms control system’s endurance would have prevented Russia’s aggression (again: highly unlikely), and the resentment toward NATO that provoked it (the flimsy rationale), the only outcome we could certainly expect from the erosion of this conventional arms control system is the dismantlement of the broader security architecture we are experiencing today. It is the inevitable endpoint on the trend line. The endgame of Putin’s actions remains to be seen. However, what is certain is that the dismantlement of the European security architecture will be a dismal consequence. In this context, calls for a new conventional arms control treaty to highlight the urgent need for renewal and stability in the region appear, unfortunately, as nonstarters: The world has never been further from an arms control solution or CFE renewal than at this moment in time.

Acknowledgements: The authors wish to thank anonymous former officials for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this article.

How to mix sanctions and diplomacy to avert disaster in Ukraine

By David CortrightGeorge A. Lopez | February 1, 2022

Exercise with Teikovsky missile unit. Credit: Ministry of Defence of the Russian Federation. CC BY 4.0.

After a month of intensive political work at home and with allies abroad, the Biden administration may have assembled the right mix of sanctions and related policy tools to forestall Russian military action against Ukraine. The success of sanctions, according to our research, relies on four factors. First, sanctions must be multilateral in design, implementation, and enforcement. Second, in both their threat and multi-stage imposition, they must be clear, credible, and powerful. Third, all parties that threaten economic sanctions must be willing to incur costs. Finally, the sanctions must not simply be punitive but must be accompanied by diplomatic efforts to resolve the crisis.

World citizens await news about how Putin will proceed in a crisis of his own making on the Ukrainian border. As they wait, they have reason to be cautiously optimistic that Biden is pursuing a textbook model of sound economic statecraft that may reduce the likelihood of war.

The sanctions are multilateral. Rather than proceeding directly to impose sanctions, the Biden administration has spent the past month rallying European allies. He sought to have them join US sanctions and pursue direct diplomatic engagement with Russia to end the crisis. Multilateral sanctions are more likely to succeed than unilateral measures, according to one study.

The United States and several European countries are also working together on diplomatic efforts. The United States has initiated talks with Russia on East-West strategic issues such as the future of NATO expansion, the alignment of Russian and NATO military forces in the region, and possible arms control agreements. Meanwhile, Germany and France have engaged Ukraine and Russia in talks to address conflict issues within Ukraine. These engagements are in their early stages, but observers are already seeing modest progress.

French President Macron had a one-hour phone call with President Putin last Friday to reaffirm France’s commitment to Ukraine’s independence. While Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov said last week that the US proposal for talks on strategic issues contains a “kernel of rationality,” there is no evidence yet of the two sides closing the differences that divide them. Yet Russia, Ukraine, Germany and France produced a statement from their talks indicating that they would respect and fully adhere to the cease-fire agreement negotiated previously in the Minsk accords.

The sanctions are clear, powerful, and multi-stage. The Biden administration’s extensive sanction proposals were developed in coordination with Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chair Bob Menendez of New Jersey, a Democrat. Menendez and his Senate colleagues developed bi-partisan legislation to impose sanctions that will damage the Russian economy deeply and quickly if Russia invades Ukraine.

These sanctions fall into two general categories: financial restrictions and export controls. The financial sanctions target Russia’s most powerful banks from participating in the dollar-based economy. They also cut access to the SWIFT system of global financial communications and credit facilitation. The export sanctions prohibit firms and countries from exporting to Russia technological equipment that uses US-built or US-designed microchips.

Barring Russian firms from the dollar economy and denying access to SWIFT would severely and quickly devastate Russia’s powerful energy export sector. Access to Western credit markets and foreign investment would dry up. Without hard currency financing, the Russian economy would experience significant chaos, some of which will likely reverberate negatively back to Europe. A senior official of Germany’s Christian Democratic Union has warned that unplugging Russia from the SWIFT system would be “an atomic bomb for the financial markets.”

Regarding the export sanctions, the United States already imposed microchip sanctions on Russian aerospace firms in 2014. The new sanctions reportedly would more broadly target Russia’s growth sectors and strategic industries, including the oil and gas sector and its aircraft and arms industries. In 2019, Washington’s microchip sanctions against the Chinese tech firm Huawei led to a collapse of the company’s international sales. No one knows whether such sanctions would have the same impact on Russian firms.

The United States and Europe are willing to incur the cost of sanctions. While a Russian invasion of Ukraine would destabilize the world, the prospective sanctions would negatively impact the US and European economies. Yet if the sanctions are to succeed, the United States and its European allies will need to preserve multilateral unity and endure these costs. Europe’s annual trade with Russia is nearly $200 billion, which far surpasses America’s $30 billion. In this scenario, Europe has a lot to lose—even more than the United States.

Germany has deferred final decisions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline between Germany and Russia until July, risking a colder winter and gas shortages in the months ahead. Slower gas deliveries from Russia have already led to higher prices for European consumers. Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock nonetheless told parliament in Berlin that Germany is preparing a strong package of sanctions covering many aspects “including Nord Stream 2.”

If the United States threatens to use export control mechanisms to stop the supply of microchips to Russia, it will introduce additional risks to the global economy. Weaponizing the semiconductor industry would likely have ripple effects on supply chains, especially at a time of chip shortages. “We are in uncharted waters,” said an industry representative after being briefed about the new sanctions by White House officials.

The sanctions encourage diplomatic engagement. Washington’s concrete threat of strong sanctions, with support from European states, shows Moscow the high price it will pay if it invades Ukraine. Threats can be an effective means of obtaining concessions, especially when the expected costs of sanctions in the targeted regime are high, as they are in this case.

All sides claim to have no interest in war. To guarantee this goal, the United States must now move ahead with new urgency and all diplomatic tools working overtime. These range from tough negotiations with Russia to forge mutual concessions, sustained cooperation with European allies, and passage of the US Senate sanctions bill to solidify sanctions leverage. Sanctions-based diplomacy offers the best option for avoiding a military confrontation, especially the one currently brewing on the Russia-Ukraine border which would no doubt have catastrophic consequences.