Urban Trees Can Absorb More CO₂ Than Cars Emit During Summer

March 4, 2026 
By Eurasia Review


According to the model, among all vegetation types, urban trees make the greatest contribution to offsetting carbon dioxide emissions in cities. On some summer days, their absorption can cover the emissions from Munich’s urban traffic and even exceed them at times. Because soil respiration exceeds photosynthesis, grassy areas release more carbon dioxide than they bind and are therefore considered a source of CO₂ on an annual basis. Jia Chen, professor of environmental sensing and modeling, and her doctoral student Junwei Li conducted biospheric field measurements in urban parks from April 2024 to February 2025, to validate their model results.

Trees as CO₂ sinks, grasslands as net sources

Previous biogenic flux models are mostly based on satellite data with a resolution of around 500 meters. This means that smaller green spaces or individual trees in the city can hardly be detected, and the actual vegetation area is significantly underestimated. Researchers at TUM have developed a model that depicts CO₂ flows in urban areas with a resolution of ten meters, enabling it to map urban vegetation more accurately than previous models. In the future, the methods, which were deployed in Munich and Zurich, will be applied to other cities.

“The current study shows that the urban vegetation landscape is very heterogeneous. Our high-resolution analysis reveals which areas actually have an impact on the climate,” says Jia Chen, professor at the TUM School of Computation, Information and Technology. “Of course, the results must be viewed in an overall context. Green spaces offer additional advantages over sealed surfaces. Among other things, they lower the temperature in the city in summer, serve as infiltration areas, and improve the quality of life.”

The research results were produced in collaboration with the University of Basel, EMPA, and DLR, with support from the EU project “ICOS Cities.”

We May Be Underestimating The True Carbon Cost Of Northern Wildfires

A controlled burn executed by the group Life2Taiga in 2024 in a boreal forest in Småland, Sweden. 

CREDIT: Johan Eckdahl/UC Berkeley

February 28, 2026 
By Eurasia Review


Wildfires in the northern boreal forests of Alaska, Canada, Scandinavia and Russia may be more damaging to the climate than previously thought, a new UC Berkeley-led study suggests.

That’s because these fires don’t just burn through trees; they can also penetrate deep into the carbon-rich layers of soil underneath many boreal forests, releasing carbon that has been accumulating for hundreds or even thousands of years. These carbon-rich soils, also known as peat, are primarily found in the far north, where the cold, wet climate prevents vegetation from fully decomposing and leads to a buildup of partially decayed organic matter over time.

The study found that major models of wildfire carbon emissions — which are largely based on data from fires at lower latitudes, and use satellite images of visible flames to guide their estimates — are not properly accounting for the impact of fire on these underground carbon stores.

“Many of the fires that matter most for the climate don’t look dramatic from space,” said study lead author Johan Eckdahl, a postdoctoral scholar in Berkeley’s Energy and Resources Group. “Peatlands and organic soils can smolder for weeks to years, releasing enormous amounts of ancient carbon.”

In the study, published today in the journal Science Advances, Eckdahl and his co-authors reconstructed the carbon emissions from 324 wildfires that burned in Sweden in 2018. By combining detailed national forest datasets with field measurements, they were able to create a high-resolution “map” of wildfire emissions, showing how variations in local climate and ground conditions can impact the amount of carbon that is stored in a forest and released by wildfire.


When they compared their detailed reconstructions with six of the most widely used global fire emissions models, the researchers found striking inaccuracies. Some regions showed large overestimates, while emissions from deep belowground carbon stores were dramatically underestimated.

For example, the models overestimated carbon emissions in the county of Gävleborg, a region that experienced large, high-intensity wildfires in drier forests that were clearly visible by satellite.

However, in the neighboring county of Dalarna, where low-intensity fires that were less noticeable by satellite burned into thick soil layers, the models underestimated carbon emissions by up to a factor of 14.

“Sweden is a very large country, but it’s quite small compared to Siberia and Canada,” Eckdahl said. “We may be severely underestimating the impact of the recent extreme fire seasons in these regions.”

To measure the impact of wildfire on soil carbon, the team collected data at 50 of the sites that burned in 2018, 19 from high-intensity fires and 31 from low-intensity fires. At each site, they measured the depth of the organic-rich soil layer — which can vary from a few inches to many feet — and collected soil samples. By comparing the carbon content of the burned soil with soil from unburned forest land, they could calculate the amount of carbon released by the fire.

“Once you’re out there, it’s a simple task — just dig some holes — but the hard part is getting to the sites,” Eckdahl said. “Sweden has a good network of forest roads, but in Siberia, I hear it’s a real trek, which is one reason why we’re severely missing measurements from that region.”

As part of the Western Fire & Forest Collaborative, Eckdahl is now working with colleagues at UC Berkeley and across the nation to adapt these approaches to fire-prone forests in the Western U.S. While these forests may not have the same carbon-rich soil layers as boreal forests of the far north, there are still a variety of factors — including the local climate, the types of trees and vegetation present and the soil quality — that can have a dramatic impact on the wildfire emissions. Eckdahl’s focus will be on studying bacteria and fungi in the soil, and how they can help a forest recover after a wildfire.


“Forests in the Lower 48 and those far up north may look very different, but they share the common currency of carbon,” said Eckdahl. “By improving our understanding of how this element flows between the land and the atmosphere, we can better anticipate the impact of future fire regimes in a warming world and design smarter strategies to reduce climate risks on society.”

Lars Nieradzik of Lund University and Louise Rütting of the Brandenburg University of Technology are co-authors of the paper.

2026 In Focus: Five Neuralgic Points Of Global Uncertainty – Analysis

IFIMES
By Dejan Azeski
February 28, 2026 


If anyone thought that 2020 or 2022 marked the peak of global chaos, 2026 suggests that such assumptions may have fallen short. This year is taking shape as a period of exceptional turbulence, fuelled not only by the bombastic rhetoric of world leaders but also by the tangible force of their actions. Five key “neuralgic points” of global uncertainty – the status of Greenland, Iran’s internal and external dynamics, Hungary’s parliamentary elections, the spillover of the Venezuelan crisis towards Cuba, and the prospective formation of an “Islamic NATO” – herald what may become the most complex and unpredictable period of the modern world.

The abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, violent protests in Iran, increasingly serious plans for the annexation of Greenland, and threats against Cuba – these are but a few of the explosive events that have marked the very start of 2026. If the opening weeks are anything to go by, this year indeed holds promise, albeit in a deeply unsettling sense.

After everything we have witnessed over the past five years, there was hope that the coming period might restore at least a semblance of reason. However, the opposite appears more likely: we stand on the threshold of a year defined by unprecedented transformations and political theatre unlike any our generation has ever seen.

The US military rebuffs Trump’s Greenland push, but the plan remains on the table

Recent reports from the United States suggest that Donald Trump has instructed special forces commanders to draft a plan for an invasion of Greenland. Yet, senior military officials are, for the time being, strongly opposed to the idea.


Sources claim that “hawks” within the president’s security circle, led by political adviser Stephen Miller, have been emboldened by the purported success of the operation that led to the arrest of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Their objective is to secure US control over Greenland as soon as possible, before Russia or China makes a strategic move of its own in the Arctic.

British diplomats believe that Trump is additionally motivated by domestic political considerations, namely a desire to divert public attention away from economic woes ahead of the midterm elections later this year, in which Republicans risk losing control of Congress.

The same sources indicate that Trump requested that the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) prepare an invasion plan, but the Joint Chiefs of Staff declined, deeming such an operation illegal and politically untenable without congressional backing. In its place, less controversial options were put forward, such as intercepting Russian “ghost ships” – a clandestine fleet allegedly used by Moscow to evade sanctions – or even limited military operations against Iran.


Diplomatic sources also refer to the existence of a so-called “escalation scenario”, whereby Trump could resort to military force or political coercion to sever Greenland’s institutional ties with Denmark. One diplomatic cable characterised it as “the worst-case scenario”, warning that it could result in the “disintegration of NATO from within”.

Some European officials go even further, arguing that the destabilisation of NATO is precisely one of the objectives of the hardline MAGA faction surrounding Trump. Given that Congress would in all likelihood refuse to authorise a formal US withdrawal from NATO, the occupation of Greenland could compel European member states to leave the Alliance of their own accord, effectively bringing it to an end.

At the same time, several European states have deployed troops to Greenland under a NATO mission, both to reinforce security in the Arctic and to deter any potential unilateral action by Washington.

For the first time in over two centuries, the United States finds itself in open strategic disagreement with the United Kingdom and France – a grave precedent in modern transatlantic history.

Iran: between mounting domestic destabilisation and external confrontation

The wave of protests that engulfed Iran at the end of last year and continued throughout 2026 represents the most formidable test of the Islamic Republic’s stability in recent decades. Although the demonstrations have not resulted in a political breakthrough, they have laid bare profound structural frailties of the Iranian system – economic, social, and legitimacy-based.


The economic factor remains the key driver of discontent. Prolonged international sanctions, the depreciation of the Iranian rial, rampant inflation and chronically high youth unemployment have created an explosive social mix. However, the protests rapidly assumed an overtly political character, as reflected in slogans directed against Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and in the symbolic rehabilitation of the monarchist narrative (“Long live the Shah”). Such rhetoric suggests that part of Iranian society is no longer seeking partial reforms within the existing system, but rather its fundamental transformation.

The bellicose rhetoric of US President Donald Trump regarding a “readiness to help” the demonstrators must be understood within the wider framework of US strategy towards Iran. Washington combines a normative discourse on human rights with a classic policy of deterrence and pressure. Threats of military intervention function primarily as strategic signals – to Tehran, but also to regional partners such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the UAE – confirming that the American security architecture remains active.

Nevertheless, a direct military intervention would entail enormous risks: the destabilisation of the Strait of Hormuz, escalation through Hezbollah and Shiite militias in Iraq and Syria, and a potentially broader conflict with Russia and China, which view Iran as a pivotal element of the emerging multipolar order.

The Iranian authorities interpret the protests as part of a long-standing Western strategy of “soft subversion”– a narrative that has served as a central pillar of the regime’s legitimacy since 1979. The introduction of communication blackouts and the brutal repression of demonstrations indicate that Tehran does not see the protests as a social phenomenon, but rather as an existential threat to the regime.

At the same time, Iran is striving to consolidate its relations with Moscow and Beijing, positioning itself as a cornerstone of the anti-Western axis, particularly in the context of the war in Ukraine, the crisis in the Middle East, and the intensification of global major-power competition.

The European Union has condemned the repression and voiced support for the demonstrators, but it remains constrained in its ability to project strategic power. EU policy towards Iran balances normative discourse (human rights, democracy) and pragmatic interests (the nuclear agreement, energy, migration), thereby limiting its effective influence on the ground.

Iran today stands at a strategic crossroads: public discontent is growing, yet the regime continues to command robust repressive and ideological instruments of control. Meanwhile, escalating US rhetoric heightens the risk of inadvertent confrontation within an already fractured Middle Eastern security landscape.


The protests in Iran are, therefore, not merely an internal matter – they form part of a broader global rivalry among major powers, in which Iran represents a crucial geopolitical node between the West, Russia and China.

Parliamentary elections in Hungary: a turning point for Central Europe’s geopolitical course

One of the defining political questions in Europe this spring is whether Hungary will see a change in government. The forthcoming parliamentary elections are not relevant solely for Budapest; they carry wider geopolitical implications for Central and Eastern Europe, particularly in light of Hungary’s strategic role as Ukraine’s western neighbour and, at the same time, an internal “dissenter” within the European Union.

According to the latest polls, the opposition currently holds an advantage, yet long-serving Prime Minister Viktor Orbán still holds substantial political, institutional and media leverage. After nearly fifteen years of uninterrupted Fidesz rule, a dip in approval ratings is to be expected. However, the central question remains: is there an opposition capable of capitalising on voter dissatisfaction and offering a credible alternative to the existing illiberal model of governance?

Opposition leader Péter Magyar has accused former European Commissioner Olivér Várhelyi of failing to “disclose the full truth” regarding an alleged Hungarian espionage affair that has for months eroded Orbán’s political legitimacy. According to his claims, Hungarian intelligence operatives, posing as diplomats, attempted to recruit staff within EU institutions, while Várhelyi reportedly concealed key information from his tenure as Hungary’s ambassador to the EU.

Magyar further accused Minister János Lázár of supervising the deployment of intelligence operatives in Brussels during his time in office, which the opposition cites as evidence of the systemic politicisation and instrumentalisation of state institutions in the interests of the ruling elite.

Orbán, however, is far from a passive political actor. Historian Anne Applebaum links him to ideological circles close to the American MAGA movement, arguing that he has developed an illiberal model of governance that formally relies on democratic institutions while fundamentally transforming their normative and functional substance. Against this backdrop, Orbán has strategically reframed the elections as a referendum on support for Ukraine and its potential EU membership, thereby mobilising a nationalist voter base and shifting the focus away from domestic scandals towards issues of sovereignty, identity and war.

The outcome of the elections remains uncertain. Orbán still retains the ability to adjust electoral legislation and institutional procedures, while opposition actors may face administrative marginalisation or disqualification. Consequently, Hungary’s electoral process is increasingly viewed as a test of the resilience of democratic institutions within the EU.

An added paradox is that Péter Magyar was once a close ally of Orbán, while his former wife, Judit Varga, was one of the key figures in Fidesz and served as Minister of Justice. Magyar maintains that he left Fidesz due to the party’s departure from its pro-European orientation; his detractors, however, portray his political realignment as driven by personal ambition and opportunistic repositioning.

The election campaign has been further encumbered by serious personal allegations. Judit Varga publicly accused Magyar of domestic violence and blackmail, branding him a traitor. Her statements, made following a court hearing in Budapest, triggered profound public polarisation and galvanised pro-government media outlets against the opposition leader. Magyar denied the accusations, describing them as a politically motivated smear campaign, and released audio recordings that allegedly point to political pressure on the judiciary, further reinforcing perceptions of institutional corruption and the erosion of the rule of law.

The Hungarian elections thus represent more than a national political contest: they serve as an indicator of Central Europe’s future geopolitical direction, its stance towards Ukraine and Russia, and the internal cohesion of the European Union in confronting growing trends of illiberal democracy.

Broader political context: a crisis of legitimacy and fragmentation of the political elite

The divorce between Judit Varga and Péter Magyar in 2023, coupled with the subsequent scandal surrounding an amnesty in a paedophilia case, has severely undermined the credibility of the Orbán government and accelerated the process of fragmentation within the ruling elite. These developments created space for a new political dynamic, in which Magyar capitalised on the institutional and societal vacuum to establish the opposition Tisza party. According to current polls, Tisza holds the lead ahead of the fateful parliamentary elections scheduled for April.

A potential change of government in Hungary would carry broader geopolitical implications far beyond national borders. Orbán’s downfall could weaken the illiberal bloc within the European Union and redefine Budapest’s relations with Ukraine, Russia and its transatlantic partners. Conversely, his political survival would further consolidate the populist axis in Europe, deepening ideological and political rifts across both the EU and NATO.

Regional danger: Venezuela’s crisis spills over into Cuba

US President Donald Trump delivered a stark warning to the Cuban authorities, urging them to strike a deal with Washington. “There will be no more oil or money going to Cuba – zero! I strongly suggest they make a deal before it is too late,” Trump wrote on the platform Truth Social.

Trump noted that for decades, Cuba had survived on vast quantities of oil and financial aid from Venezuela in exchange for “security services” provided to the regime. “Most of those Cubans are dead from last week’s US operation, and Venezuela no longer needs the protection of thugs and blackmailers who held the people hostage,” the American president added.

He further emphasised that Venezuela can now count on the support of the United States – “the most powerful military in the world” – and that Washington stands ready to preserve regional stability. He reiterated that oil and money from Venezuela would cease to flow to Cuba, calling on the authorities in Havana to find a swift solution.

Venezuela, long Cuba’s primary oil supplier, has come under renewed pressure following the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro by US forces. Trump has reportedly requested that interim President Delcy Rodríguez redirect Venezuelan oil to the United States, a move that would deprive Cuba of a vital energy and financial lifeline.

Global media outlets cite US intelligence assessments warning of severe problems within the Cuban economy. According to information from multiple sources, key sectors, such as agriculture and tourism, are burdened by frequent power outages, trade sanctions, and other economic challenges. The potential loss of oil and financial support from Venezuela could further destabilise the Cuban administration, which has ruled the island since Fidel Castro’s 1959 revolution.

This situation illustrates how regional political upheavals in Venezuela directly affect Cuba’s strategic and economic position, rendering the island vulnerable to geopolitical pressures and evolving power dynamics in Latin America.

Turkey joins the alliance of Saudi Arabia and Pakistan – is an Islamic NATO taking shape?

Turkey is preparing to join a defence alliance between Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, whose principle of collective defence stipulates that any act of aggression against one member shall be treated as an attack on all. According to sources familiar with the negotiations, the creation of this so-called “Islamic NATO” is at an advanced stage, with an agreement expected to be reached imminently.

Geopolitical realignment in the Middle East and South Asia

The anticipated expansion of the defence alliance could lead to a significant shift in the regional balance of power. It bears recalling that the Saudi-Pakistani pact, signed in September last year, includes a collective defence clause reminiscent of Article 5 of NATO – an alliance of which Turkey is a member and which commands one of the world’s largest military forces.

Sources indicate that the interests of Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan are increasingly converging across the Middle East, South Asia and parts of Africa. Ankara views the alliance as an instrument for strengthening its own security and deterrence, particularly amid growing uncertainty over the commitment of the United States and NATO under Donald Trump’s administration.

Analysts assess that Saudi Arabia would contribute financial power, nuclear capabilities, ballistic missiles and manpower to the alliance, while Turkey would bring military experience, a developed defence industry and geopolitical influence in the region. Pakistan, for its part, would offer strategic connectivity in South Asia and a long-standing tradition of military cooperation with both countries.

Turkey’s accession to the alliance would signal a new phase in relations between Ankara and Riyadh, following years of tension. In recent years, the two countries have intensified economic and military cooperation, including a recent joint naval meeting held in Ankara.

Turkey and Pakistan share a decades-long military partnership encompassing F-16 upgrades, drone technology transfers and joint exercises. Turkey’s entry into the alliance could further consolidate this trilateral bloc, creating a regional counterbalance to traditional Western influence and potentially redefining the geopolitical dynamics of the Middle East, South Asia and North Africa.


IFIMES – International Institute for Middle-East and Balkan studies, based in Ljubljana, Slovenia, has special consultative status with the Economic and Social Council ECOSOC/UN since 2018. IFIMES is also the publisher of the biannual international scientific journal European Perspectives. IFIMES gathers and selects various information and sources on key conflict areas in the world. The Institute analyses mutual relations among parties with an aim to promote the importance of reconciliation, early prevention/preventive diplomacy and disarmament/ confidence building measures in the regional or global conflict resolution of the existing conflicts and the role of preventive actions against new global disputes.

Fears Grow For Ordinary Afghans After Further Clashes With Pakistan

By UN News

February 28, 2026


Reports on Friday that major cities in Afghanistan have been bombed by the Pakistan military in a new escalation between the two countries have raised fears for civilians already struggling under the harsh rule of the de facto Taliban authorities.

The UN Secretary-General António Guterres said he was “deeply concerned by the escalation…and the impact that violence is having on civilian populations.”

He called for an immediate cessation of hostilities and reiterated his call for the two countries to “resolve any differences through diplomacy.”

Echoing that call for dialogue between Kabul and Islamabad, top Human Rights Council independent expert on Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, said that growing tensions between the two countries have increased the difficulties and dangers for Afghans forced to return to their country.
Fearful future

“I was recently in Pakistan, I spoke to Afghans there, who are extremely fearful of their futures,” he said.


“They believe that returning to Afghanistan will not only be a life in poverty, but for certain groups, human rights defenders, journalists, members of security, for previous government security forces, they run a real risk of violent retaliatory attacks. And we have been seeing an uptick in those in recent months.”

The independent Special Rapporteur on Afghanistan, who does not work for the UN and is not paid for his work, called for “cool heads” amid rising regional and geopolitical tensions, underlining hopes that “third parties will be listened to”.

In recent years, Afghanistan has seen huge numbers of nationals – estimated at 2.7 million in 2025 – return from neighbouring countries including Pakistan, whose jets reportedly struck major cities including Kabul and Kandahar overnight into Friday.

Pakistan’s defence minister said on Friday that his nation was embroiled now in “open war” with Afghanistan. There have been months of sporadic clashes across the border – despite a ceasefire being declared last October.
Humanitarian hardship

The dramatic escalation will increase hardships for the people of Afghanistan, Mr. Bennett noted, as he stressed the disastrous humanitarian conditions confronting them, linked to the Taliban’s return to power in August 2021.

Healthcare is just one area of daily life deeply and negatively impacted by the de facto authorities, whose decrees purportedly aimed at promoting virtue and tackling vice have been widely condemned outside the country as a form of gender apartheid severely impacting women and girls.

“In large parts of the country, medical treatment is segregated, so women must be treated by other women, and men by men,” Mr. Bennett explained. “There’s overall a reduction in medical workers, not just doctors; we’re talking midwives, nurses, the whole health worker system.”


Although there is some evidence that the Taliban’s restrictive decrees on health care are not implemented as strictly everywhere, “it’s not just the treatment, it’s getting to the treatment [that] is problematic; there’s such restrictions on freedom of movement”, Mr. Bennett explained.

Afghanistan’s health system was already fragile before the Taliban overran Kabul after decades of conflict, poverty and under investment, Mr. Bennett continued, as he underlined the risk of a “full scale health catastrophe, especially for women and girls”.

Around 6 Deaths A Year Linked To Clubbing In The UK

March 4, 2026
By Eurasia Review


Around 6 deaths a year are linked to clubbing in the UK, finds a 15 year retrospective study published online in Emergency Medicine Journal.


Physical assault, including stabbings and head trauma, or too much ecstasy (MDMA) are the primary causes, the findings indicate.

UK nightclubs attract close to 100 million visitors every year and boast a revenue of just under £1 billion. Risky behaviours while clubbing are common, but current evidence on deaths associated with nightclubs is limited to small case series or isolated critical incidents, with no national data, explain the researchers.

To explore this further and characterise the nature and frequency of these deaths, the researchers extracted relevant data primarily from publicly available UK media coverage, which was corroborated by open source legal proceedings and coroners’ reports covering 2009 to 2024 inclusive.

Deaths associated with nightclubs referred to clubbers found dead inside the venue and those who died within a few hours of being there, typically on the same night.


Between 2009 and 2024, 89 people died in, or shortly after having been at, a total of 75 nightclubs across the UK, averaging around 6 annual deaths during the 15 year period.

Their average age was 22, but ranged from 15 to 54. Seven were under the age of 18. Most (78%) of those who died were male.

Serious injuries (45 cases; 51%), most of which were the result of assault (40 cases; 89%); and drug overdose (36 cases; 40%), almost all of which (34 cases; 94%) were attributable to ecstasy (MDMA) alone or when combined with ketamine or cocaine, were the primary causes of death.

Drug deaths were concentrated among those aged 21 and under (27;75%), and young women were significantly more likely to die from drug-related causes than from trauma or other causes: 39% vs 11% for young men.

Blunt head trauma in 19 cases—mostly as a result of arguments in 13—and stabbings in 16 cases accounted for most of the deaths caused by serious injuries; one person was shot.

The average age of a trauma death was 24, but ranged from 16 to 50.

Restraint was associated with 5 deaths, with alcohol a contributory factor in 4 cases, and drugs in 2 cases. Underlying heart conditions accounted for 3 deaths. Another 5 fatalities were the result of overcrowding and being crushed to death (2 separate incidents).

There were repercussions for the nightclubs involved: only 1 in 3 (25) of the 75 venues associated with a fatal incident remained open under the same name.

“These findings are consistent with previous research in the UK from 1997 to 2023,” note the researchers, showing that nightclub fatalities “while rare, remain a recurring problem.”

The researchers acknowledge some limitations to their findings, including that despite routinely obtaining toxicology reports, UK coroners’ attribution of MDMA toxicity is made on the balance-of-probabilities standard.


As there’s no universally accepted definition of MDMA toxicity, some of the cases classified as “MDMA deaths” might have been misclassified or might have been multifactorial, with MDMA a contributory, but not a strictly causal factor, they point out.

And deaths that occurred days or weeks after visiting a nightclub, but associated with that venue, were probably not captured in the media reports they looked at, they add..

Nevertheless, they conclude: “These findings highlight predictable and preventable risks, supporting targeted harm reduction strategies, improved venue safety, and enhanced emergency response planning.”

Strong Alcohol Policy Could Reduce Cancer In Canada

LABELS=BIGGER BEER BOTTLES

CISUR scientist Adam Sherk holds a beer bottle with a mock-up of a cancer warning label. He is lead author of a new study looking at the impact cancer warning labels and pricing tied to alcohol content could have on cancer cases and deaths in Canada. 

CREDIT: University of Victoria

March 4, 2026 
By Eurasia Review


If Canadian jurisdictions mandated warning labels on alcohol and minimum pricing tied to the number of standard drinks in a container, it could prevent hundreds of cancer diagnoses and deaths, according to a new study led by University of Victoria’s Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR).

The research, published in Lancet Public Health, set out to see how different alcohol policy scenarios could potentially reduce the number of alcohol-related cancers in Canada. The researchers looked at five scenarios: two involving setting price minimums tied to standard drinks in a container — also known as minimum unit pricing—with prices set at $1.75 and $2.00 per standard drink; a warning label with rotating messages and one that just warned against alcohol and cancer risk; and one that combined the $2.00 minimum unit price with a cancer warning label.

“These are evidence-based policies that jurisdictions are considering — there’s a cancer-warning bill in the Canadian Senate right now, and some provinces have implemented or are thinking about implementing minimum unit pricing — but they’re under-used,” says Adam Sherk, CISUR scientist and the study’s lead author. “We wanted to see just how big of a difference bringing in these policies could make in reducing alcohol-related cancers.”

Researchers used modelling to see the impact these policy changes could have on cancer incidences and deaths. The combination of a $2.00 minimum price and a cancer warning showed the strongest reduction, leading to 674 fewer cancer cases (down to 8,824 from 9,498) and 216 fewer deaths (going from 3,866 to 3,617) once the effects were fully realized. The reduction was largest in lower-income populations and younger age groups.

“We believe this is the first study to model the impacts of warning labels on cancer cases and deaths, but cancers are just one of many potential health harms related to drinking,” says Sherk. “If you included the many other alcohol-caused harms, like accidents or liver disease, the reduction in deaths would be even higher.”

This research was supported by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research’s Catalyst Grant: Alcohol research to inform health policies and interventions, and was done in collaboration with researchers at the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) and Public Health Ontario.

Largest High-Precision 3D Facial Database Built In China, Enabling More Lifelike Digital Humans

March 4, 2026 

By Eurasia Review


In an elderly-care themed skit during the 2026 Spring Festival Gala (Chunwan), a lifelike android was modeled on actress CAI Ming. Why are humanoid robots becoming so lifelike and indistinguishable from real humans? One key technology enabling virtual humans to express vivid emotions, recognize identities, and demonstrate embodied intelligence is three-dimensional (3D) facial keypoint detection.

However, due to the lack of large-scale, accurately annotated 3D facial datasets, most current 3D facial landmark detection algorithms rely on two-dimensional (2D) texture assistance or non-real digital 3D faces. The performance of these algorithms is limited by the accuracy of texture mapping and the differences between digital faces and actual human faces.

In a study published in IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems for Video Technology, a research team led by Prof. SONG Zhan from the Shenzhen Institutes of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, together with Dr. YE Yuping from Fujian University of Technology, developed a new curvature‑fused graph attention network (CF‑GAT) capable of predicting facial landmarks directly from raw point clouds.

The researchers developed a custom 3D/4D facial acquisition system and conducted standardized data collection. The resulting database included approximately 200,000 high-fidelity 3D facial scans, complemented by a multi-expression 3D face dataset, a standardized 3D facial landmark dataset, a high-precision 3D human body dataset, and a dynamic 4D facial expression dataset. This multimodal biometric dataset was selected for Fujian Province’s 2025 High-Quality AI Dataset Program.

Moreover, the researchers designed the CF‑GAT for unordered point clouds. They adopted a geometry‑driven sampling strategy that extracts a simplified point set while preserving essential curvature information. This curvature was then encoded as an explicit geometric prior and integrated into the attention mechanism, allowing the network to capture subtle local shape variations. Through a graph attention structure that models both local and global relationships among points, the network predicted 3D landmark coordinates without relying on 2D textures or template models.


Experiments showed that the proposed network achieved higher robustness to noise, stronger generalization across diverse facial shapes, and more accurate localization of fine‑grained landmarks. The work demonstrates how large‑scale, high‑quality datasets can reshape algorithmic performance, enabling models to learn richer geometric patterns and adapt more effectively to real‑world variability.

Recycling Jumps When Garbage Collection Drops

March 4, 2026 
By Eurasia Review

Despite some modest progress over the past two decades, Canada’s waste diversion efforts remain wanting: according to the Canadian government, only 27 per cent of the country’s waste is recycled, composted or otherwise diverted from disposal. In 2022, 26.6 million tonnes of solid waste wound up in landfills or was incinerated — an 11 per cent increase from 2002.

Canada lags far behind recycling rates in other countries, particularly the United Kingdom and especially in Wales, where household recycling rates approach 70 per cent.

A new Concordia study suggests that a number of factors influence household recycling rates. Examples include culture, income, education, population density and how often garbage is collected.

The study, published in the journal Waste Management, was conducted by doctoral students Jonathan Wilansky, from the Department of Geography, Planning and Environment, and Kailun Cao, from the Department of Economics. The researchers examined data and policies from 297 council districts across England and Wales to see which policy combinations were associated with the highest household recycling rates.

“We found that less frequent garbage collection coupled with weekly food waste collection and free yard waste collection correlated with higher recycling rates,” Wilansky says. “That surprised us at first, but it makes sense: hanging on to waste for two or three weeks becomes burdensome, so people are motivated to recycle and compost to get rid of it. We get more recycling and fewer garbage trucks on the road.

“Of course, this only works if you have reliable and convenient recycling and composting systems,” he adds.

Council-level data

Wilansky and Cao gathered detailed information from municipal websites on a range of factors. They considered collection frequency for residual waste and recyclables, whether councils required residents to sort materials, and whether food and yard waste were collected. They also looked at whether these services were free.

The researchers paired their findings with 2021 census data on income, education, age, housing type, household composition, unemployment and language spoken at home. Then they used regression modelling to isolate the effects of policy and demographics on recycling rates.

Their analysis showed that districts that collected garbage once every three weeks or more had significantly higher recycling rates. The researchers note that how frequently recycling was picked up had no significant effect, nor did requiring residents to sort recyclable material into multiple bins. This indicates that the convenience of a single recycling bin may not matter to recycling habits as much as once thought.

Districts that combined weekly food waste collection, free yard waste collection and garbage collection every three weeks had median recycling levels of around 61 per cent.

There were also some striking demographic findings: age, median income and the proportion of apartment dwellers were not significant predictors of recycling habits. However, areas with higher levels of education were associated with higher recycling rates.

Districts with higher unemployment, single-person households and student populations recycled less often. Areas with higher population density were also associated with lower recycling rates.

Culture and commitment matter

Welsh government policy — which encourages recycling through programs and education — was credited with outperforming English districts, where recycling gains seem to have plateaued. The researchers say this suggests clear national targets and culture influence recycling outcomes.

They recommend that governments optimize limited resources by focusing recycling awareness programs on communities where rates are lowest and implementing the policy mix that yields the highest recycling rates. However, the researchers warn that surpassing recycling targets and reaching future ones will require more ambitious programs and commitment.

Wilansky says the study has important lessons for Canada: the principal reason the team chose to study UK recycling was the availability of publicly accessible data, which most Canadian districts lack.

“Our recycling levels are nowhere near the UK’s, but our paper shows that simple, quick changes to the existing infrastructure can lead to significant improvements.”

You Bet Your Life (Insurance): U.S. Private Equity Comes For Your Annuity – Analysis

March 4, 2026 
By Eileen Appelbaum


There are signs that private equity’s destabilizing role in the insurance industry is growing.


In 2020 and 2021 (as we wrote at the time), large private equity (PE) firms were buying up life insurance companies to gain control of their huge annuity assets. Insurance companies had invested the premium payments for clients’ retirement savings in safe, publicly traded and highly liquid stocks and bonds. But years of low interest rates crippled this asset business, and the returns on these investments were no longer adequate to fund the required annuity payments.

As a result, insurance companies were anxious to unload their annuity portfolios. Large PE firms saw an opportunity to quickly increase their assets under management by acquiring or taking control of managing these annuity assets.

An annuity is a long-term contract with an insurance company that provides retirement income to individuals, who pay a premium that is invested by the insurance company and grows tax-deferred. When the individual grows old, they receive regular payments that fund their retirement. Annuities are attractive to private equity firms because they are a source of ‘permanent capital’ that replenishes as premium payments flow in and offset outflows to recipients of annuity payments. PE firms were confident they could increase returns on these assets and make them profitable by investing some of these annuity assets in illiquid private market equity buyout and credit funds. Smaller PE firms also got involved by buying up smaller insurance companies.

At the end of 2020, PE firms controlled $471 billion (nearly 10 percent) of annuity assets and had acquired 50 of the 400 annuity companies in the US. Apollo, which had a majority stake in Athene, the life insurance company it had founded in 2009, acquired all of its annuity assets In 2021 — worth about $194 billion at the time. Apollo said that it planned to invest about 5 percent of Athene’s funds in riskier, fee-paying alternative assets, including its own PE and debt funds. In 2021, Blackstone paid $2.2 billion to American International Group (AIG) for a 9.9 percent stake in its life insurance and annuities unit and gained control of the investment decision of much of its portfolio of annuity assets. Blackstone also struck a deal in 2021 to buy a life insurance unit of Allstate Corporation. As a result of these transactions, Blackstone’s insurance assets under management reached $150 billion by the end of 2021. The insurance assets it controls accounted for a third of Blackstone’s overall assets under management that year. In July 2020, KKR announced it was buying the life insurance and retirement income company Global Atlantic Financial Group for $4.4 billion and taking over management of about $70 billion of Global Atlantic’s assets. The deal raised the assets KKR managed on behalf of insurance companies from about $26 billion to more than $96 billion, and increased KKR’s total assets under management by 30 percent.


Fast forward to the fall of 2025, and we see that this trend towards investing in private assets is intensifying. According to Mark Friedman of PwC, there has been a seismic shift; he reports that a recent survey found close to three-quarters of insurers now own private assets, and a second survey of 410 insurance companies found that 91 percent planned to increase their allocations to private markets over the next two years.

Indeed, Apollo, Blackstone, KKR and their rivals have loaded up their own annuity businesses with private credit investments. And clients holding annuity contracts have found themselves with increasingly risky assets. Back in 2020, risky private investments made up a small share of annuity asset investments. But this proved to be a successful strategy, boosting the returns of the life insurance companies owned by the large PE firms — enabling them to undercut rivals and increase market share. Other life insurance companies soon followed, including traditional companies like MassMutual that now hold a large number of private market illiquid bonds.
Murky Level 3 Assets Add More Risk

Fueling concerns about these investments is that they include so-called Level 3 assets. The lack of transparency in private equity and other private markets is well-known. But these illiquid assets are even more opaque; they lack reliable market pricing, and often have unreliable private ratings or no formal rating from a rating agency. There are no market mechanisms for determining the price of these assets or the amount of reserves insurance companies with these assets should hold.


PE firms express confidence in the ratings of these assets, but regulators and others question whether they are overvalued. In just a few years, investments in riskier assets that include Level 3 assets reached 18 percent of the insurance industry’s $3.8 trillion in fixed income holdings. Level 3 assets accounted for about a third of Athene’s and Global Atlantic’s total assets in the third quarter of 2025. The concerns that were raised a few years ago that annuity assets of PE-owned insurance companies would be used to bailout or boost the performance of affiliated private equity funds are no longer theoretical. The highly regarded AM Best insurance rating agency found that about a fifth of investments by Athene’s US Life Group and by KKR’s Global Atlantic now come from loans to affiliated funds. In particular, private equity-owned insurers are allocating a lot of their investments to affiliated credit funds.

PE-owned insurers are, as the Financial Times put it, the lifeblood of private credit. This self dealing is also a concern. Are PE firms using annuity assets of insurance companies they own to provide loans to their affiliated private equity and private credit funds to shore up struggling portfolio companies, or distressed loans made by their credit funds? The lack of transparency makes it impossible to quantify.
The Serious Risks Facing Annuity Policy Holders

Evaluating PE investments is challenging because little reliable public information exists about how these firms invest insurance assets, making it difficult to gauge the effect on returns to beneficiaries. Moving annuity investments into private credit funds with Level 3 assets increases the risk that some of these investments will fail, slashing the retirement income of beneficiaries. It also provides PE firms with opportunities to earn high fees for managing the assets. These fees also reduce returns to annuity holders and may wipe out the added return to compensate annuity holders for the higher risk these assets carry. Level 3 loans are especially illiquid, making them more difficult to trade than other private market investments. This makes them difficult to sell to meet annuity retirement obligations as well as redemptions by policy holders in the case of a personal emergency or an economic slowdown and cash crunch.


The surge in redemptions in the fourth quarter of 2025 compared with the third quarter raised questions about whether some insurers might fail and leave their annuity policyholders dependent on reduced payments from state guaranty funds for retirement income. The International Monetary Fund raised another issue; their 2023 study found that PE-backed insurers have fewer liquid assets than is the case for all insurers, making them more vulnerable to an increase in corporate defaults and credit downgrades caused by a slowing economy.

The situation is rife with conflicts of interest, most notably PE firms providing valuations for credit funds with Level 3 loans and asking annuity holders to trust them. But even rated bonds can be problematic. Rating firms have conflicts of interest since they are paid by the companies whose bonds they rate. The ratings potentially understate the riskiness of the bonds. Regulators and others concerned about the financial stability of insurance companies and their annuity asset investments question whether this debt is riskier than the ratings indicate, meaning that insurers could experience unexpected losses, making them unable to pay promised benefits to people counting on annuities to fund their retirements. Opportunities for corrupt self-dealing are widely available as PE firms can use the insurance assets to shore up the finances of failing or struggling funds they own.
Cracks Emerging in Private Credit Funds

Evidence of potential problems arising from investments in private credit funds by insurance companies, whether owned by PE or not, are beginning to emerge. Unrelated problems at two life/annuity insurance companies have heightened concerns about the financial stability of private equity-owned insurers.

In 2015, PE firm Golden Gate Capital established Nassau Financial as a life insurance platform. In 2016, Nassau Financial acquired troubled life and asset insurance company Phoenix, among other companies, and renamed it PHL Variable Insurance Company. To reduce its liabilities, PHL entered several reinsurance deals with Nassau-owned or affiliated reinsurance companies based in Bermuda in 2019. But these deals failed to put PHL on a sustainable course. On March 31, 2025, the Connecticut Insurance Department (CID) took PHL into “rehabilitation” to try to restore it to financial stability. CID found that PHL had negative $900 million in capital and surplus, its assets will be exhausted in 2030, and it will be unable to pay approximately $1.46 billion owed to policy holders at that point. PHL’s auditor said it doubted the company could move forward as a going concern.

By December, it had become clear that PHL could not be rehabilitated, and CID turned to liquidation as the better option. The regulator found that PHL lacked enough assets to make restructuring a viable option, and that liquidation would lead to larger payouts to policyholders. In the meantime, until a final order determines PHL’s fate, policy holders are caught in a Catch-22. While CID sought to rehabilitate PHL, it froze more than $500 million of policyholders’ retirement income, leaving many of them in the lurch. To add insult to injury, policyholders had to keep their policies active. This meant policyholders had to continue paying premiums without knowing if they would ever receive the payments they were counting on to fund their retirement. This led to a steady increase in lapsed policies. These policy holders will not receive any benefits from the premiums they had paid for years or even decades. While those with active policies have continued to receive retirement benefits, All benefits will cease 30 days after a liquidation notice is released. Active policy holders will be eligible for reduced benefits from the state’s insurance guaranty program.


The second example involves Atlantic Coast Life (ACL), Sentinel Security Life (SSL), and Haymarket insurance. ACL and SSL are units of PE firm Advantage Capital, known as A-CAP. The asset manager is PE firm 777 Partners and Bermuda-based reinsurer 777 Re, whose principals are Josh Wander and Steve Pasko. 777 Partners began leveraged buyouts of soccer teams in Britain, France, Australia, Germany, Spain, Italy and Belgium, and quickly met resistance from managers and fans. Wander and Pasko spent millions of dollars acquiring stakes in European clubs, and some of that money allegedly came from the two insurance/annuity companies owned by A-CAP. In 2023, the empire of European clubs collapsed. Lawsuits filed against 777 Partners and 777 Re are asking for tens of millions of dollars in repayment. Corruption is also alleged by a London PE firm with a fund that focuses on investments linked to life insurance companies. The PE firm is suing Wander, Pasko and the CEO of A-CAP because 777 Re used $350 million it had committed to another company as collateral for a loan from the London firm. The implications for the PE-owned life/annuity companies in the US are not yet known, but are likely to be negative.

PE firm 777 has been in other trouble with regulators. In 2024, insurance regulators in Utah and South Carolina told five insurance companies to reduce their investments in 777 Partners because they were overcommitted to the PE firm and exceeded the maximum investment allowed.

Large PE firms that own insurance/annuity companies are nervous that the many small PE firms emulating their money-making ways will bankrupt the insurance companies they own — which they fear may bring down the lucrative house of cards they have built in the last 4 or 5 years. They don’t want regulators to turn their focus to the dangers of this use of insurance company assets to fund private credit funds. The company giving them angina is Acquarian, a small private equity firm founded in 2017. Acquarian plans to acquire Brighthouse Financial, a problem-ridden life insurance company with more than $230 billion committed to life and annuity policy holders. The deal is not yet final. Apollo and Carlyle, major PE firms, had previously looked into acquiring Brighthouse and decided against it after evaluating the challenges and demands of the company.


In November 2025, Aquarian made an offer to acquire Brighthouse at the eyebrow-raising price of $4.1 billion, double the valuation that other PE firms came up with. The concern is that companies like Aquarian and Brighthouse are using annuity assets to make ever more risky investments in order to break into a crowded field and gain market share. And they are right to be concerned. Regulators are raising questions about the difficult-to-measure risks to the financial system from this money-making PE business model in the private credit market.

Investors have already begun voting with their feet, dumping shares in the fourth quarter of 2025 in PE firms including Ares, Blue Owl, KKR and Apollo. Concerns that annuity investments may be overvalued have bubbled up over the past year. The triggering event for the wave of redemptions at the end of 2025 was a fear that many software companies that have borrowed from PE-owned private credit funds are vulnerable to AI and may not be able to repay the loans they took out. The lack of transparency surrounding private credit funds makes it impossible to evaluate just how vulnerable they are. But some investors are not waiting to find out.

Eileen Appelbaum

Eileen Appelbaum is co-director of CEPR and fellow at Rutgers University Center for Women and Work. She has held visiting positions at the Wissenschaftszentrum (Berlin), University of Manchester and Leicester University (UK), University of South Australia, and University of Auckland (New Zealand). Prior to joining CEPR, she held positions as distinguished professor and director of the Center for Women and Work at Rutgers University and as professor of economics at Temple University. She holds a PhD in economics from the University of Pennsylvania.

LIBERTARIAN ANTI-IMPERIALISM

The Iran War Exposes The Farce Of American ‘Representative Democracy’ – OpEd

March 4, 2026 
 MISES
By Ryan McMaken



The Trump administration has unilaterally—without any Congressional debate or vote, of course—forced Americans into yet another war. This time, the war is a large-scale military campaign against Iran. Was there any groundswell of public support for this war? Did the Congress vote to spend more American tax dollars on another war? Apparently not. According to a March 1 poll from Reuters, only 27 percent of Americans polled said they support the US’s new war on Iran. Needless to say, few Americans have been calling their representatives in Congress asking for yet another Middle Eastern war.

So, why is the US now at war with Iran? Not even the administration appears to know for sure. After the war had already begun, the White House repeatedly changed its stated rationale for opening hostilities against Iran. At the beginning the US regime had been claiming it wanted regime change in Iran to “liberate” Iranians. Yet, by Monday, when Trump listed his reasons for starting the war, he didn’t mention regime change at all. Rather, the administration now seems to have settled on claims that the Iran regime was creating a missile program that, somehow, endangers the United States. Yet, virtually no one believes that the Iranian regime has ever had long-range missiles capable of getting anywhere near US territory. Rather, the only “threat” to the United States is a threat to US bases which the US government has insisted on building 10,000 miles from US territory, and which have nothing to do with the safety of Americans in the United States.

On Monday, Rubio said that the United States began the war because the State of Israel planned to attack Iran, and that this would lead to Iranian reprisals against US bases. Rubio was essentially stating that Tel Aviv forced the US into the war. Trump today directly contradicted his Secretary of State—as well as the GOP Speaker of the House and GOP Senator Tom Cotton—and claimed “I might’ve forced their hand.”

Completely absent from all these confused and retroactive attempts to justify the war is any mention of the American people, their tax dollars, their freedoms, or even their alleged representatives in Congress. Nor is this surprising. The current war is a timely reminder that the US ruling elites regard the US taxpayers and ordinary Americans as little more than inconvenient afterthoughts in the formation of US foreign policy. At the same time, the US regime also claims to have the moral high ground precisely because the American regime is supposedly “democratic” with the support of “the people.”


Indeed, the Trump administration overall has helped make it abundantly clear that US elections and public opinion are almost completely irrelevant to the foreign policy. Throughout his campaigns, Donald Trump repeatedly claimed to be the peace candidate, announcing in his speeches that he would end wars, rather than start them. In the days before the 2024 election, the GOP posted this image in social media, clearly presenting the Trump administration as “the pro-peace ticket”:

Yet, less than a year into his second term, Donald Trump’s foreign policy looks largely indistinguishable from that of the foreign policy of Barack Obama or Joe Biden. Indeed, if the current war drags on, we’ll be able to say Trump’s foreign policy is reminiscent of the George W. Bush administration.

It was clear during the campaign that the Trump ticket was trying to take advantage of public sentiment which favored less US involvement in foreign wars. With American foreign policy, however, elections don’t matter. This was recently emphasized by the bumbling US ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, in a recent interview with Tucker Carlson. Carlson began with a simple question for Huckabee:


Carlson: How much does it matter what Americans think?

Huckabee: Well, it matters every bit what Americans think.

Carlson then points out that about 21% of Americans support war with Iran. He asks Huckabee if that’s enough for the US regime to start a war with Iran. Huckabee states “We don’t live in a world where you have a poll taken to find out whether our policy should be in a particular direction…”

Carlson then points out that Huckabee had just said public opinion matters a lot and Huckabee says “we care deeply about it…”

Carlson: “If we’re ignoring it, in what sense to we ‘care deeply about it?’”

Huckabee then offers a non sequitur: “I think we care deeply when we see there’s a threat.” Huckabee then continued with more word salad in a desperate attempt to make a connection between public opinion and his preferred policy of repeatedly starting elective wars with Middle Eastern regimes that are no threat to the US population.

The reality, of course, is closer to Rubio’s explanation for the US’s involvement in the war: following the lead of the State of Israel.

This is apparently fine with Ambassador Huckabee, of course, who in his Carlson interview, was asked if Huckabee thinks the State of Israel has a “right” to take over most of the Middle East. Carslon stated: ”Does Israel have the right to that land?” Huckabee responded ”It would be fine if they took it all.”

And what if most Americans don’t share this opinion? Clearly, the US regime doesn’t care, and neither does Huckabee, or Donald Trump.


In spite of all the US regime’s posturing about “the will of the people” and “representation” in Congress, what really matters in Washington is serving powerful interest groups. The taxpaying public simply exists as a resource to be bled dry in favor of wars, protectionism, and federal spending which serves the ruling elite’s complex system of patrons and clients that keeps the elite in power.

When it comes to US foreign policy in the middle east, the dominant interest group is the State of Israel. This is executed through the American-Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC) and other elements of what foreign-policy scholars John Mearsheimer and Stephen walt call “the Israel lobby.” When Mearsheimer and Walt released their book The Israel Lobby in 2007, they were predictably accused of anti-semitism. Yet, the book was ahead of its time in describing how pro-Israel interest groups have been extremely successful in gaining financial, military, and strategic favors for Israel from US policymakers. It has all been done at the expense of American taxpayers. The result has been an American foreign policy elite that overwhelmingly favors incessant foreign intervention to favor a foreign state—the State of Israel—regardless of any concern for the cost borne by Americans or the potential for drawing the US into broader conflicts that do not in any way increase the security of the United States.

In 2007, The Israel Lobby seemed controversial to many. In 2026, it is merely a statement of the obvious—that US foreign policy is tailored to favor certain interest group, rather than the interests of ordinary voters. This, however, is how all interest group politics works. The voting public doesn’t matter, and it hasn’t mattered for a long time.

This is shown in empirical studies that have tried to find a connection between public opinion and actual policies favored in Washington. The connection is tenuous at best.

For example, in a 2014 study by Martin Gilens and Benajmin Page, the authors note that when it comes to “impacts on U.S. government policy … average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.” Gilens and page note that “the preferences of economic elites … have far more independent impact upon policy change than the preferences of average citizens do.”

This can be seen in Trump’s own fundraising given how one of his biggest donors, billionaire Miriam Adelson, is notable for an extreme pro-Israel position. This is, not surprisingly, reflected in Trump’s foreign policy.

The final conclusions of Gilens and Page are clear:


In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule—at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes. When a majority of citizens disagrees with economic elites or with organized interests, they generally lose. Moreover, because of the strong status quo bias built into the U.S. political system, even when fairly large majorities of Americans favor policy change, they generally do not get it.

Perhaps no group of “economic elites” is more influential in foreign policy than those who control campaign funds distributed through pro-Israel interest groups like AIPAC, or through the spending of wealthy individuals like Adelson.


Other studies have come to similar conclusions. For example, in a 2017 paper on voter preferences, John Matsusake concluded that legislator preferences don’t correlate with voter preferences:


[W]hen legislator preferences differed from district opinion on an issue, legislators voted congruent with district opinion only 29 percent of the time. The data do not show a reliable connection between congruence and competitive election, term limits, campaign contributions, or media attention. The evidence is most consistent with the assumption of a citizen-candidate model that legislators vote their own preferences.

There is, of course, no such thing as a “district opinion,” but the general idea is clear enough: if a legislator’s campaign war chest depends on pleasing a specific interest group, then the preferences of the voters don’t really matter.

Similarly, in a 2016 study from Michael Barber, he writes on how votes in the US Senate bear little relation to public opinion: “[S]enators’ preferences diverge dramatically from the preference of the average voter in their state. The degree of divergence is nearly as large as if voters were randomly assigned to a senator.”

So, if policymakers are largely independent of the voters who the policymakers ostensibly “represent,” then what determines federal policy?

The current war is just the latest reminder that pluralism is wrong and elite theory is right. There is no “we the people.” There is no “representative democracy.” And, when it comes to the big stuff like war, federal spending, and the central bank, elections don’t matter. It’s why, no matter who gets elected, US foreign policy proceeds more or less as usual, year after year after year.

This is why it doesn’t matter that only about one in four Americans is interested in being on the hook for yet another Middle Eastern war with no apparent benefits for any average American. This is why the administration continues to engage in shifting claims about the origins of this conflict. The administration knows that claims about Iran being a threat to the American people are not tenable, and are on the same level as claims about Iraqi WMDs. Nor can the regime just come right out at say “our pro-Israel funders told us to fight Iran.” So, we have Rubio telling us the war was a “preemptive strike” against the potential blowback from US-funded Israeli strikes on Iran. This explanation is already falling apart, which is why Trump now denies it.

In the end, the regime doesn’t even really need to come up with a plausible explanation. The political fallout will settle largely on the current administration, and this will have little effect on the real governing elite which remains in control regardless which party is ostensibly “in power.” 

About the author: 

Ryan McMaken (@ryanmcmaken) is editor in chief at the Mises Institute, a former economist for the State of Colorado, and the author of two books: Breaking Away: The Case of Secession, Radical Decentralization, and Smaller Polities and Commie Cowboys: The Bourgeoisie and the Nation-State in the Western Genre. He is also the editor of The Struggle for Liberty: A Libertarian History of Political Thought. Ryan has a bachelor’s degree in economics and a master’s degree in public policy, finance, and international relations from the University of Colorado. 

Source: This article was published at the Mises Institute