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Outgoing UN Expert Calls for Global Grassroots Movement to Dislodge 'Diesel Mafia'
The growing global recognition of the human right to a clean environment "is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature," said David Boyd.
May 07, 2024
After spending six years traveling the world in his role as the United Nations special rapporteur on human rights and the environment, Canadian law professor David Boyd said Tuesday that the growing global recognition of the right to a healthy environment gives him hope—but warned that with a world economy based on exploitation, campaigners face major challenges in ensuring environmental justice for all.
In his final interview as the U.N.'s top expert on the subject, Boyd told The Guardian that during his tenure, the international body's Human Rights Council formally recognized that a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment is a fundamental human right in 2021, and the U.N. General Assembly did the same in 2022.
"These are landmark advances in international human rights," Boyd said in a statement last month.
But with top fossil fuel producers including the United States arguing that the U.N. resolution is not legally binding, and refusing to join 161 other countries in enshrining the right to a healthy environment for their own citizens, Boyd said his experience as special rapporteur has shown him that "this powerful human right is up against an even more powerful force in the global economy, a system that is absolutely based on the exploitation of people and nature."
"I started out six years ago talking about the right to a healthy environment having the capacity to bring about systemic and transformative changes," Boyd told The Guardian. "And unless we change that fundamental [economic] system, then we're just re-shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic."
The environmental law expert said the failure of world leaders to universally agree to a "human rights-based approach" to the climate, biodiversity, and air pollution crises "has absolutely been the Achilles' heel" of international treaties like the Paris climate agreement, with no mechanisms forcing countries to rapidly draw down their greenhouse gas emissions to help avoid planetary heating above 1.5°C.
"It has driven me crazy in the past six years that governments are just oblivious to history. We know that the tobacco industry lied through their teeth for decades. The lead industry did the same. The asbestos industry did the same."
Governments pledged to phase out "inefficient" fossil fuel subsidies in 2021, but last year subsidies for the industry had risen by $2 million, hitting $7 trillion.
Fossil fuel and other industry lobbyists are still being welcomed to global summits on plastic pollution and the climate, Boyd pointed out.
"It just absolutely boggles my mind that anybody thinks they have a legitimate seat at the table," said Boyd. "It has driven me crazy in the past six years that governments are just oblivious to history. We know that the tobacco industry lied through their teeth for decades. The lead industry did the same. The asbestos industry did the same. The plastics industry has done the same. The pesticide industry has done the same."
Boyd's criticism "hits the nail on the head," said Mark Dummett, deputy program director of Amnesty International.
Boyd said a global grassroots movement is needed to dislodge "the diesel mafia," his term for "powerful interconnected business and political elites" who "are still becoming wealthy from the existing system."
Organizers must continue using "tools like human rights and public protest and every other tool in the arsenal of change-makers," he advised.
Boyd spent his time as special rapporteur traveling to countries including Portugal, the Maldives, Chile, and Fiji, where he spoke to people directly affected by plastic waste, rising sea levels, air pollution, extreme heat, and other climate impacts.
He went on his final mission to the Maldives, the world's lowest lying country, in April, finding "numerous atolls submerged under water, according to The Guardian.
"These islands are just like jewels scattered across the Indian Ocean, and yet for anyone who understands the science of climate change, it's just a heartbreaking place to visit because of sea level rise, storm surges, coastal erosion, acidification, rising ocean temperatures, and heatwaves," Boyd said of the Maldives, 80% of which scientists have said could be uninhabitable by 2050. "The future is really daunting for people in the Maldives... The climate emergency is an existential threat that overshadows all the other issues."
If people in the Maldives and around the world "don't have a living, healthy planet Earth, then all the other rights are just words on paper," said Boyd.
The outgoing rapporteur said environmental legal groups will likely increasingly file lawsuits against governments that aren't doing their part to mitigate the climate crisis—a tactic that the U.N. Environment Program said last year could be a key driver of change in climate policies.
"I expect in the next three or four years, we will see court cases being brought challenging fossil fuel subsidies in some petro-states," said Boyd. "These countries have said time and time again at the G7, at the G20, that they're phasing out fossil fuel subsidies. It's time to hold them to their commitment. And I believe that human rights law is the vehicle that can do that."
Last month, the European Court of Human Rights ruled that the Swiss government violated the human rights of senior citizens by refusing to abide by scientists' warnings and swiftly phase out fossil fuel production.
Environmental law expert Astrid Puentes Riaño stepped into Boyd's former role this month, saying she will prioritize "the implementation of the human right to a clean, healthy, and sustainable environment," following the U.N.'s formal recognition of the right.
The implementation of the right provides "a vital opportunity for greater understanding of the obligations of states to respect, protect, and fulfill this right, as well as the role of non-state actors," she said. "This will be my main task as rapporteur to be implemented through the reports, visits, communications, events and other activities to develop."
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'True Climate Hero' Mohamed Nasheed of the Maldives Injured in Suspected Bomb Attack
"Cowardly attacks like these have no place in our society," said Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid.
May 06, 2021
This is a developing news story... Check back for possible updates...
Former Maldives president and climate champion Mohamed Nasheed was injured Thursday in a suspected bomb attack as he was getting into his car in the nation's capital of Male.
Nasheed, who became Maldives' first democratically elected president in 2008 and is currently the nation's parliament speaker, was reportedly rushed to a local hospital for treatment following the attack. Authorities have not yet offered details on Nasheed's condition.
While an investigation is ongoing, one Maldives official suggested the blast may have been caused by an "improvised explosive device, possibly rigged up to a parked motorcycle."
"Cowardly attacks like these have no place in our society," said Maldives Foreign Minister Abdulla Shahid. "My thoughts and prayers are with President Nasheed and others injured in this attack, as well as their families."
News of Nasheed's injury prompted well wishes from activists in honor of his passionate work on behalf of climate justice during and after his presidency, which ended in a coup in 2012.
Bill McKibben, co-founder of U.S.-based advocacy group 350.org, tweeted, "Praying for Mohamed Nasheed, former [president] of the Maldives and a true climate hero, who was the victim of a bombing attack today in Male. He's in the hospital in serious condition."
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American Farmers Are Reaping the Climate Denial Whirlwind
Last year it was the residents of Paradise, California who paid the price, when their city burned to the ground in a matter of hours. Today it is farmers. Tomorrow it might well be me, or you.
Jun 05, 2019
It's commonly thought on the right (and sometimes on the left) that the United States will not be harmed too much by climate change. With our wealth, geography, and relative isolation from the rest of the world, we will be able to fence out climate refugees and continue to drive gas-guzzling SUVs until the end of time.
This idea is sorely mistaken. It's true that America will not be as catastrophically harmed as Bangladesh, India, or the Maldives. But we are far from immune--just witness this season's epic flooding across the Midwest, which has drowned farmland throughout the region. American farmers are paying for a generation of U.S. dithering and denial about climate change.
The last 365 days in the U.S. have been the wettest since modern records started being collected 124 years ago. A NASA analysis found that from "May 1, 2018, to April 30, 2019, the lower 48 states collectively averaged 36.20 inches (919.48 millimeters) of precipitation, a full 6.25 inches (158.75 mm) above the mean." This can be seen in satellite groundwater measurements from a few weeks ago:
Note especially how wet the Midwest is. Constant storms have caused enormous flooding across the entire region, not to mention a record-breaking streak of tornadoes, and farmers are suffering as a result. As of May 26, "U.S. corn planting [was] just 58% complete, compared with 49% last week and the five-year average of 90%." The figures in Illinois and Indiana were just 35 percent and 22 percent, respectively. Meanwhile, "Soybean plantings in the 18 states that represent 95% of the 2018 soybean acreage are only 29% complete, vs. the five-year average of 66%."
"I've never had a yield where I couldn't get my crop planted," Indiana farmer Kendall Culp told The Washington Post. "This is unprecedented, what we're facing." Even Culp's 80-year-old father had never seen it this bad.
Read full article here.
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Diego Garcia: The "Unsinkable Carrier" Springs a Leak
A court ruling against colonial exploitation could threaten a strategic U.S. military base in the Indian Ocean. Indigenous advocates say it’s about time.
Apr 14, 2019
The recent decision by the Hague-based International Court of Justice that the Chagos Islands -- with its huge U.S. military base at Diego Garcia -- are being illegally occupied by the United Kingdom (UK) has the potential to upend the strategic plans of a dozen regional capitals, ranging from Beijing to Riyadh.
For a tiny speck of land measuring only 38 miles in length, Diego Garcia casts a long shadow. Sometimes called Washington's "unsinkable aircraft carrier," planes and warships based on the island played an essential role in the first and second Gulf wars, the invasion of Afghanistan, and the war in Libya. Its strategic location between Africa and Indonesia and 1,000 miles south of India gives the U.S. access to the Middle East, Central and South Asia, and the vast Indian Ocean. No oil tanker, no warship, no aircraft can move without its knowledge.
Most Americans have never heard of Diego Garcia for a good reason: No journalist has been allowed there for more than 30 years, and the Pentagon keeps the base wrapped in a cocoon of national security. Indeed, the UK leased the base to the Americans in 1966 without informing either the British Parliament or the U.S. Congress.
The February 25 Court decision has put a dent in all that by deciding that Great Britain violated United Nations Resolution 1514 prohibiting the division of colonies before independence. The UK broke the Chagos Islands off from Mauritius, a former colony on the southeast coast of Africa that Britain decolonized in 1968. At the time, Mauritius objected, reluctantly agreeing only after Britain threatened to withdraw its offer of independence.
The Court ruled 13-1 that the UK had engaged in a "wrongful act" and must decolonize the Chagos "as rapidly as possible."
"The Great Game" in the Indian Ocean
While the ruling is only "advisory," it comes at a time when the U.S. and its allies are confronting or sanctioning countries for supposedly illegal occupations -- Russia in the Crimea and China in the South China Sea.
The suit was brought by Mauritius and some of the 1,500 Chagos islanders who were forcibly removed from the archipelago in 1973. The Americans, calling it "sanitizing" the islands, moved the Chagossians more than 1,000 miles to Mauritius and the Seychelles, where they've languished in poverty ever since.
Diego Garcia is the lynchpin for U.S. strategy in the region. With its enormous runways, it can handle B-52, B-1 and B-2 bombers, and huge C-5M, C-17, and C-130 military cargo planes. The lagoon has been transformed into a naval harbor that can handle an aircraft carrier. The U.S. has built a city -- replete with fast food outlets, bars, golf courses and bowling alleys -- that hosts some 3,000 to 5,000 military personnel and civilian contractors.
What you can't find are any native Chagossians.
The Indian Ocean has become a major theater of competition between India, the U.S., and Japan on one side, and the growing presence of China on the other. Tensions have flared between India and China over the Maldives and Sri Lanka, specifically China's efforts to use ports on those island nations. India recently joined with Japan and the U.S. in a war game -- Malabar 18 -- that modeled shutting down the strategic Malacca Straits between Sumatra and Malaysia, through which some 80 percent of China's energy supplies pass each year.
A portion of the exercise involved anti-submarine warfare aimed at detecting Chinese submarines moving from the South China Sea into the Indian Ocean. To Beijing, those submarines are essential for protecting the ring of Chinese-friendly ports that run from southern China to Port Sudan on the east coast of Africa. Much of China's oil and gas supplies are vulnerable, because they transit the narrow Mandeb Strait that guards the entrance to the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz that oversees access to the oil-rich Persian Gulf. The U.S. 5th Fleet controls both straits.
Tensions in the region have increased since the Trump administration shifted the focus of U.S. national security from terrorism to "major power competition" -- that is, China and Russia. The U.S. accuses China of muscling its way into the Indian Ocean by taking over ports, like Hambantota in Sri Lanka and Gwadar in Pakistan that are capable of hosting Chinese warships.
India, which has its own issues with China dating back to their 1962 border war, is ramping up its anti-submarine forces and building up its deep-water navy. New Delhi also recently added a long-range Agni-V missile that's designed to strike deep into China, and the right-wing government of Narendra Modi is increasingly chummy with the American military. The Americans even changed their regional military organization from "Pacific Command" to "Indo-Pacific Command" in deference to New Delhi.
The term for these Chinese friendly ports --"string of pearls" -- was coined by Pentagon contractor Booz Allen Hamilton and, as such, should be taken with a grain of salt. China is indeed trying to secure its energy supplies and also sees the ports as part of its worldwide Road and Belt Initiative trade strategy. But assuming the "pearls" have a military role, akin to 19th century colonial coaling stations, is a stretch. Most the ports would be indefensible if a war broke out.
An "Historic" Decision
Diego Garcia is central to the U.S. war in Somalia, its air attacks in Iraq and Syria, and its control of the Persian Gulf, and would be essential in any conflict with Iran. If the current hostility by Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the U.S. toward Iran actually translates into war, the island will quite literally be an unsinkable aircraft carrier.
Given the strategic centrality of Diego Garcia, it's hard to imagine the US giving it up -- or rather, the British withdrawing their agreement with Washington and de-colonizing the Chagos Islands. In 2016, London extended the Americans' lease for 20 years.
Mauritius wants the Chagos back, but at this point doesn't object to the base. It certainly wants a bigger rent check and the right eventually to take the island group back.
It also wants more control over what goes on at Diego Garcia. For instance, the British government admitted that the Americans were using the island to transit "extraordinary renditions," people seized during the Afghan and Iraq wars between 2002 and 2003, many of whom were tortured. Torture is a violation of international law.
As for the Chagossians, they want to go back.
Diego Garcia is immensely important for U.S. military and intelligence operations in the region, but it's just one of some 800 American military bases on every continent except Antarctica. Those bases form a worldwide network that allows the U.S. military to deploy advisors and Special Forces in some 177 countries across the globe. Those forces create tensions that can turn dangerous at a moment's notice.
For instance, there are currently U.S. military personal in virtually every country surrounding Russia: Norway, Poland, Hungary, Kosovo, Romania, Turkey, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Georgia, Ukraine, and Bulgaria. Added to that is the Mediterranean's 6th Fleet, which regularly sends warships into the Black Sea.
Much the same can be said for China. U.S. military forces are deployed in South Korea, Japan, and Australia, plus numerous islands in the Pacific. The American 7th fleet, based in Hawaii and Yokohama, is the Navy's largest.
In late March, U.S. Navy and Coast Guard ships transited the Taiwan Straits, which, while international waters, the Chinese consider an unnecessary provocation. British ships have also sailed close to Chinese-occupied reefs and islands in the South China Sea.
The fight to de-colonize the Chagos Islands will now move to the UN General Assembly. In the end, Britain may ignore the General Assembly and the Court, but it will be hard pressed to make a credible case for doing so. How Great Britain can argue for international law in the Crimea and South China Sea, while ignoring the International Court of Justice on the Chagos, will require some fancy footwork.
In the meantime, Mauritius Prime Minister Pravind Jugnauth calls the Court decision "historic," and one that will eventually allow the 6,000 native Chagossians and their descendants "to return home."
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Bold New Campaign Highlights How 'Nature Can Save Us' From Climate and Ecological Breakdown
"The protection and restoration of these ecosystems can help to minimize a sixth great extinction, while enhancing local people's resilience against climate disaster."
Apr 03, 2019
A group of activists, experts, and writers on Wednesday launched a bold new campaign calling for the "thrilling but neglected approach" of embracing nature's awesome restorative powers to battle the existential crises of climate and ecological breakdown.
Averting catastrophic global warming and devastating declines in biodiversity, scientists warn, requires not only overhauling human activities that generate planet-heating emissions--like phasing out fossil fuels--but also cutting down on the carbon that is already in the atmosphere.
In a letter to governments, NGOs, the U.N. Convention on Biological Diversity, and the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, the Natural Climate Solutions campaign calls for tackling these crises by not only rapidly decarbonizing economies, but also by "drawing carbon dioxide out of the air by protecting and restoring ecosystems."
"By defending, restoring and re-establishing forests, peatlands, mangroves, salt marshes, natural seabeds, and other crucial ecosystems, very large amounts of carbon can be removed from the air and stored," the letter says. "At the same time, the protection and restoration of these ecosystems can help to minimize a sixth great extinction, while enhancing local people's resilience against climate disaster."
The letter urges the politicians, nonprofits, and international bodies to support such solutions with research, funding, and political commitment--and to "work with the guidance and free, prior and informed consent of indigenous people and other local communities."
The campaign also put out a short video that outlines "how nature can save us from climate breakdown."
The video notes that "exotic and often dangerous schemes have been proposed" to reduce atmospheric carbon--referencing controversial geoengineering suggestions favored by some politicians and scientists--"but there's a better and simpler way: let nature do it for us."
Writer and environmentalist George Monbiot, a leader of the campaign, laid out the scientific support for this approach to carbon drawdown in an essay on the campaign's website as well as in his Wednesday column for the Guardian.
Detailing the potential impact of restoring lands worldwide, Monbiot wrote for the newspaper:
The greatest drawdown potential per hectare (though the total area is smaller) is the restoration of coastal habitats such as mangroves, salt marsh and seagrass beds. They stash carbon 40 times faster than tropical forests can. Peaty soils are also vital carbon stores. They are currently being oxidized by deforestation, drainage, drying, burning, farming, and mining for gardening and fuel. Restoring peat, by blocking drainage channels and allowing natural vegetation to recover, can suck back much of what has been lost.
"Scientists have only begun to explore how the recovery of certain animal populations could radically change the carbon balance," he acknowledged, pointing to forest elephants and rhinos in Africa and Asia and tapirs in Brazil as examples.
"Instead of making painful choices and deploying miserable means to a desirable end," Monbiot concluded, "we can defend ourselves from disaster by enhancing our world of wonders."
Key supporters of the campaign include youth climate strike leader Greta Thunberg; journalist Naomi Klein; author and activist Bill McKibben; Penn State climate scientist Michael Mann; former Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed; and activist Yeb Sano, along with more than a dozen others who signed the letter.
"Healing and restoring the natural world is key to carbon drawdown," Klein tweeted Wednesday, "plus it makes life fuller and richer and can create millions of jobs."
Proud to be part of this great call. When we think about a #GreenNewDeal we tend to focus on the built environment - but healing and restoring the natural world is key to carbon drawdown, plus it makes life fuller and richer and can create millions of jobs. https://t.co/532LtBTWQ6
-- Naomi Klein (@NaomiAKlein) April 3, 2019
Despite the high profiles of many supporters, the campaign launch did not attract the attention of the corporate media.
Monbiot took to Twitter to call out broadcast outlets for failing to cover not only the climate and ecological crises, but also potential solutions like those offered by the new campaign. As he put it, "They are living in a world of their own."
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Global Warming Decimating World Fisheries--And Studies Warn It's On Track to Get Worse Without Urgent Action
"Adapting to existing climate change effects and implementing the Paris agreement is crucial for the future of the planet's ocean fisheries."
Feb 28, 2019
Rising ocean temperatures driven by human-generated greenhouse gases are already damaging the world's fisheries--and that toll is on track to get worse without urgent global action to cut planet-warming emissions.
"We were surprised how strongly fish populations around the world have already been affected by warming, and that, among the populations we studied, the climate 'losers' outweigh the climate 'winners.'"
--Christopher Free, UC Santa Barbara
A pair of new studies published Thursday adds to a growing body of research which warns that anthropogenic global warming poses a mounting threat to both populations of marine fish and the more than 56 million people worldwide who depend on fisheries for survival.
First, a study in the journal Science found that from 1930 to 2010, the maximum sustainable yield--or the amount of fish that can be caught annually without endangering future harvests--fell by about 4.1 percent among the 124 marine species analyzed across 38 ecoregions, with some regions seeings declines as high as 35 percent.
"We were surprised how strongly fish populations around the world have already been affected by warming, and that, among the populations we studied, the climate 'losers' outweigh the climate 'winners,'" Christopher Free, a postdoctoral scholar at UC Santa Barbara who oversaw the research while earning a doctorate at Rutgers University, said in a statement.
Given the impacts Free's team observed--with the most severe losses in productivity seen in the Sea of Japan, North Sea, Iberian Coastal, Kuroshio Current, and Celtic-Biscay Shelf ecoregions--the researchers strongly suggested proactive changes in fisheries management.
"We recommend that fisheries managers eliminate overfishing, rebuild fisheries, and account for climate change in fisheries management decisions," Free said. "Policymakers can prepare for regional disparities in fish catches by establishing trade agreements and partnerships to share seafood between winning and losing regions."
He added that "knowing exactly how fisheries will change under future warming is challenging, but we do know that failing to adapt to changing fisheries productivity will result in less food and fewer profits relative to today."
Adapting to climatic changes is important to the future of fisheries--but so is addressing the root cause of those changes, as was highlighted by another study published in Science Advances.
"Adapting to existing climate change effects and implementing the Paris Agreement is crucial for the future of the planet's ocean fisheries, while facing the growing challenges of supporting healthy and peaceful societies into the future."
--Rashid Sumaila, UBC
After comparing potential consequences for fisheries if warming hits 1.5degC above pre-industrial levels--the 2015 Paris agreement's end-of-century benchmark--versus the 3.5degC anticipated under a "business as usual" emissions scenario, researchers concluded that pursuing the global climate accord's top goals is "crucial" to safeguarding ocean ecosystems and economies of nations that are highly dependent on the fishing industry.
"Achieving the agreement is projected to increase sustainable global fish catches of the top revenue-generating fish species studied by 7.3 percent per year or 3.3 million metric tons," according to the study--and about 90 percent of that increase would occur in the territorial waters of developing country waters.
"The largest gains will occur in developing country waters, such as Kiribati, the Maldives, and Indonesia, which are at greatest risks due to warming temperatures and rely the most on fish for food security, incomes and employment," explained Rashid Sumaila, lead author of the study and a professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC).
The Science Advances report points out that marine fisheries provide about 260 million full- and part-time jobs worldwide--notably in nations such as India, Indonesia, and Nigeria--and that "seafood products remain a critical export commodity for many developing countries."
"A steady supply of fish is essential to support these jobs, food sovereignty, and human well-being," Sumaila said. "Adapting to existing climate change effects and implementing the Paris Agreement is crucial for the future of the planet's ocean fisheries, while facing the growing challenges of supporting healthy and peaceful societies into the future."
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If Asia Leads on Climate, the World Will Follow
China and South Korea could be game changers on climate — and create a more peaceful region in the process.
Nov 09, 2017
There's been precious little good news from Asia these days. Washington and Pyongyang continue to trade threats of war. Right-wing nationalist Shinzo Abe won reelection as prime minister in Japan last month. Major storms have hammered several countries in the region, most recently Typhoon Damrey in Vietnam.
And now, in the wake of those typhoons comes a mighty wind from the United States. Donald Trump, in the longest foreign trip of his presidency, is currently visiting South Korea, Japan, China, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The silver lining on this Ugly American Tour: Trump probably won't start a war in a region where he's currently traveling.
Lost among all this bad news has been some very good news out of Asia. It hasn't received much media attention here, probably because it only peripherally involves the United States.
Last week, South Korea and China ended a yearlong spat over the deployment of a U.S. missile defense system called Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD). China, believing the system to be designed to eliminate its nuclear deterrent, punished South Korea economically for welcoming THAAD. Now a new government in Seoul, led by liberal president Moon Jae-in, has announced that it would not add to the existing THAAD system or participate in the proposed regional missile defense that Washington wants to set up. That was enough for China to reengage economically.
It's a delicate balance for South Korea -- to maintain its alliance with the United States and yet repair relations with China. The Trump administration is much happier with the passive-aggressive attitude of Tokyo -- passively accepting U.S. hegemony while aggressively pursuing an offensive military posture -- than with Seoul's somewhat more independent position. Witness the time Trump lavished on Abe on this current trip including a round of golf. South Korea, meanwhile, had to make due with a brief stopover and a strident lecture by the president before the National Assembly.
Here's a radical idea for China and South Korea: Forget Donald Trump, forget the United States, and forget the Cold War divide in Northeast Asia.
The two countries ought to build on their newly repaired relationship. They can make like Germany and France after World War II. But instead of a new regional order based on coal and steel, Beijing and Seoul should establish something completely new: an Asian Environmental Community that promotes renewable energy and sustainable growth.
A New Geopolitical Moment
Much has been made of Trump's reeling in of American influence around the world, at least on the soft-power side of things, and China's eager efforts to capitalize on the new global opportunities. Perhaps future historians will look back at this moment as the time when China began to replace the United States as the anchor of the international community. Or perhaps they will identify this era as the moment when everything began to unravel, from the EU to the UN.
But let's imagine a different scenario in which the threat of climate change plays the same integrative function as alien invaders in Hollywood films. The planet is at risk: let's all fight the common enemy together!
True, the world so far hasn't gotten the message. This week the latest round of meetings began in Germany to discuss the commitments made in the Paris climate agreement of two years ago. The Trump administration, aside from a few token representatives, has been conspicuously absent. Also absent was any real hope that the agreement would achieve its goal of keeping the rise in global temperature from hitting a 2 degree Celsius increase above pre-industrial levels.
Reports The New York Times: "No major industrialized country is currently on track to fulfill its pledge, according to new data from the Climate Action Tracker. Not the European Union. Not Canada. Not Japan." Even if they do meet their commitments, it still won't be enough. According to a recent Nature study, even if humans stopped all use of fossil fuels immediately, the planet would still register a 2 degree Celsius increase by 2100.
Not even the announcements that both Syria and Nicaragua will join the Paris agreement, leaving Trump's America as the only outlier, can alleviate this grim news. The Maldives, Mumbai, and Miami are sinking: It's time to make plans to move to Mongolia.
Room for Improvement
Enter South Korea and Japan. Here are two economic powerhouses -- in the most economically dynamic region of the world -- with great PR on climate change.
"Tackling climate change is a shared mission for mankind," Chinese Premier Xi Jinping said at the launch of the Paris agreement. "Let us join hands to contribute to the establishment of an equitable and effective global mechanism on climate change, work for global sustainable development at a high level, and bring about new international relations featuring win-win cooperation."
Sounds good. And China has pushed forward with impressive investments into renewable energy -- $360 billion by the end of the decade -- along with stopping the construction of over 100 new coal-fired power plants. Although China is set to reach peak emissions a decade or more before its 2030 goal, the country remains the largest emitter of greenhouse gasses, having surpassed the United States in 2007. In 2015, it released nearly twice as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as did the United States, and coal still supplies two-thirds of its energy needs. In other words, China has a long way to go before it can claim substantive leadership in stopping global warming.
South Korea has also talked a good game. Former president Lee Myung Bak created the Global Green Growth Initiative, now a multilateral body based in Seoul, to promote sustainability. In 2009, Lee told the UN, "To proactively respond to climate change, Korea adopted 'Low Carbon Green Growth' as a guiding vision for our nation and a strategy for further development. We are currently working to enact a
Framework Law on Green Growth and establish a Five-Year Plan for Green Growth. Thereby, we will not only transform our economic and industrial structures, but also change our very lifestyles to become more future-oriented."
In reality, however, South Korea backtracked from the pledges made during the Lee era. Under his successor Park Geun Hye, now detained on charges of corruption, Korea made a U-turn on greenhouse gas emissions and decided to rely even more heavily on coal for energy generation. As a result of this change of policy, the Institute for Climate Change Action declared South Korea one of four global "climate villains" at the end of 2016.
In other words, both China and South Korea have made impressive commitments to lower the global thermometer even as they continue to be a big part of the problem. But let's focus on the future. There's a new government in Seoul. And China has a chance to replace the United States as the global leader on this issue.
So, let's take it to the next level.
Asian Environmental Community
When France and Germany formed a new partnership in 1950, the architects had much grander ambitions than simply coordinating the production of coal and steel. They wanted to ensure a peaceful Europe.
In his famous declaration that year, French Foreign Minister Robert Schuman made the case for cooperation with former enemy Germany:
Five years, almost to the day, after the unconditional surrender of Germany, France is accomplishing the first decisive act for European construction and is associating Germany with this. Conditions in Europe are going to be entirely changed because of it. This transformation will facilitate other action which has been impossible until this day.
Europe will be born from this, a Europe which is solidly united and constructed around a strong framework. It will be a Europe where the standard of living will rise by grouping together production and expanding markets, thus encouraging the lowering of prices.
Up to now, East Asia has been divided ideologically, by territorial disputes, and by different economic visions. The Korean peninsula is a potent representation of all these conflicts. With its One Belt, One Road (OBOR) program, China has offered one way of uniting the region through massive infrastructure development. For many countries in the region, it's a deal they can't refuse. The aforementioned GGGI is working to "green" OBOR and even draw China, South Korea, and Japan into trilateral coordination.
There are good arguments for including Japan in a new Asian Environmental Community from the very beginning. Particularly at the municipal level, Japan has made great strides in reducing its carbon footprint. However, there's considerable resistance in Korea to greater foreign policy coordination with Japan. Japan has outstanding territorial disputes with both China and South Korea. And the Abe administration is focused on breaking out of its constitutional restraints on fielding an offensive military. For all those reasons, it would be best to focus first on achieving consensus between Seoul and Beijing.
So, what would this new Asian Environmental Community do?
Both South Korea and China set rather unambitious targets under the Paris agreement. Their first task would be to establish a more ambitious agenda for cuts in carbon emissions. There's no reason why both countries can't follow the example of Uruguay, which has managed to wean itself almost entirely from oil imports over the last two decades. The economic benefits should be attractive to both Seoul and Beijing: The cost of electricity has dropped considerably in Uruguay, the sustainable energy sector generates more jobs than the oil sector, and the country now exports its (clean) energy to its neighbors. Both China and South Korea have traditionally relied on imported oil and gas: This kind of import substitution should appeal to both liberals and conservatives.
Next, the two countries could partner on a much more thoroughgoing greening of OBOR, not just incorporating some sustainable elements but ensuring that the new transportation lines, ports, and power plants are carbon neutral. Yes, the massive undertaking has already started, with nearly 1,700 projects over the last three years. But it's still at the beginning stages, with plenty of future investment to green.
But a new Asian Environmental Community could be more ambitious still.
Just as Robert Schuman imagined that the coal and steel agreement between France and Germany would bring a broken Europe back together, at least the western half of it, the partnership of China and South Korea could offer a way for Asia to sidestep its myriad disagreements and come together around the one thing that all countries can support. As with early European cooperation, the environmental partnership would be mutually beneficial. Coordinated production of renewable energy -- solar panels, wind turbines -- could take advantage of economies of scale to bring down prices even more. Generation of clean energy for export could help energy-poor countries go beyond their Paris commitments.
And all this cooperation might just spill over into other realms, making resolution of territorial disputes, economic disagreements, and even North Korea's nuclear program that much more likely. Never has Northeast Asia been more in need of a virtuous circle of engagement.
Asia set the standard for electronics, for Internet connectivity, and for mind-blowingly telescoped economic development. Now it's time for China and South Korea to establish a new global green benchmark. The world is desperate for mind-blowingly telescoped environmental development. Let Asia lead the way again.
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Climate Change: When the Military Makes More Sense Than the Politicians
Maybe the generals can be our Paul Revere’s. Maybe.
Sep 10, 2017
The American idea was that the military's zest for battle would be curtailed by a civilian-led government. Now generals Mattis, McMaster, Kelly et al. are seen internationally as the last ditch guarantors of common sense. They have their work cut out for them as King Goofus the Tweet launches adolescent taunts at potential enemies from the Oval Office and calls real national security threats like climate change a "hoax." The experience of the mad dogs of war often breeds caution and an instinct for danger. Colin Powell warned George W. Bush privately against the crazy invasion of Iraq though he later betrayed his own good sense and joined the gang bang.
Our myopic politicians see Kim Jong-Un, Vladimir Putin, and Bashar al-Assad as the biggest threats facing the nation and the world. It would be so consoling if those nasty people were actually our biggest threat. Those leaders and their nations all have needs that the lost art of diplomacy could find and use that reality constructively.
No, the biggest threat, the biggest threat our species has faced in 10 thousand years, is global warming and the military are again out front. They don't call it a hoax. In the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review they call the dramatic climate change "an accelerant of instability" and a "threat multiplier." In October 2015 three former defense secretaries joined other experts saying the climate change is "shaping a world that is more unstable, resource-constrained, violent, and disaster-prone."
Africa is a case in point. Andrew Holland , writing in Scientific American writes: "In northern Nigeria deforestation, overgrazing and increased heat from global warming have turned what was once productive farmland and savanna into an extension of the Sahara Desert. Lake Chad has lost more than 90 percent of its original size from drought, mismanagement and waste." The population of already overcrowded Africa is likely to double by 2050 leading to explosive conditions already in evidence.
It is precisely from the chaos of this toxic mix that radical groups like Boko Haram have sprouted. The military know this. The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA said that climate change fueled Syria's civil war . Deep and long droughts drove hundreds of thousands of people from their farms into cities like Aleppo and Raqqa making fertile breeding ground for ISIS. The New York Times reports that as pasture land has dried up in places like Kenya violent and murderous battles are being fought just to get grass for the animals. Climate change is a major causative factor in all of this. It is indeed a "threat multiplier" and the threats do not stay within the borders of the poorest most affected nations. Despair also goes global and explodes in our streets.
President Trump calls anthropogenic global warming "a hoax." Maybe his generals could sit him down and give him a little primer on this epochal threat to planetary security. We have had 378 months of above average temperatures. That's no hoax. Scientists say Arctic ice is in "a death spiral." That's no hoax. People fish off Bangladesh in what was once a busy market before rising seas claimed it. That's no hoax. MIT professor Alan Lightman reports: "Due to irreversible erosion, California has been losing its coastline at the rate of eight inches per year." A home that was thirty feet from a cliff overlooking the Pacific is now three feet from the edge, poised for the plunge. That's no hoax. Temperatures rose in Iraq and Kuwait to 129 F in July 2016 and to 112 F in parts of France and Italy in August 2017. That's no hoax. "For every degree Celsius that temperature rises, agricultural scientists calculate, wheat yields drop 10 percent in the Earth's hotter midriff," as Alan Weisman reports in his tellingly entitled book Countdown. That's no hoax. Environmental refugees no longer come only from island states like the Maldives and Tuvalu and from Bangladesh. They come from Houston and will be coming from inundated cities on our coasts. On top of all that we are awakening the sleeping giant in the earth. As vulcanologist Bill McGuire says changing climate triggers earthquakes, tsunamis, and volcanoes, unleashing forces that make our destructive power seem puny. And that is coming and that is no hoax. Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, energized by the heated waters of the sea, are portents of a "new normal." The records they are breaking are not a hoax.
In just a couple of decades these threats to civilization as we have known it will be irreversible. Republican climate change denialism coupled with their goal of maximizing fossil fuel extraction is in Noam Chomsky's words "almost a death knell for the human species." Respected climatologist Michael E. Mann said: "I fear that this may be game over for the climate."
When we are scared we can act. We got scared of small pox and an international effort ended it. We got really scared with the shrinkage of the ozone over Antartica and we responded internationally. In World War II, the United States stoked by fear transformed its economy and its industrial production in a matter of months.
We need fear. Big fear. Green fear. Maybe the generals can be our Paul Revere's. Maybe.
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Can the Politicians Heed the Lessons of Hurricane Harvey?
Hovering Hurricane Harvey, loaded and reloading with trillions of gallons of water raining down on the greater Houston region--ironically the hub of the petroleum refining industry--is an unfolding, off the charts tragedy for millions of people. Many of those most affected are minorities and low-income families with no homes, health care or jobs to look forward to once the waters recede.
Will this tragedy teach us the lessons that so many politicians and impulsive voters have been denying for so long?
Aug 30, 2017
Hovering Hurricane Harvey, loaded and reloading with trillions of gallons of water raining down on the greater Houston region--ironically the hub of the petroleum refining industry--is an unfolding, off the charts tragedy for millions of people. Many of those most affected are minorities and low-income families with no homes, health care or jobs to look forward to once the waters recede.
Will this tragedy teach us the lessons that so many politicians and impulsive voters have been denying for so long?
"Will this tragedy teach us the lessons that so many politicians and impulsive voters have been denying for so long?"
The first lesson is that America must come home: we must end the Empire of Militarism and of playing the role of policeman of the planet. Both of these habitual roles are backfiring and depleting trillions of taxpayer dollars that could be better used toward rebuilding our country's infrastructure, strengthening our catastrophe-response networks and preparing for the coming megastorms like Hurricane Harvey. A projected trillion dollars being spent by Obama, and now Trump, just to upgrade nuclear weapons will only spur another arms race with Russia and China. This money could be more productively spent protecting Americans from immediate threats, such as natural disasters from man-made climate change.
Politicians must stop overstuffing a bloated military budget and leaving our country fiscally unprepared to handle mass epidemics and mass megastorms. In short, will they stop leaving our country defenseless against the prospects of huge levels of mortality and morbidity?
Second, Congressional and White House deniers of man-made climate disruption must renounce their dogmatic ignorance and confront the reality in the scientific warnings about the accelerating wrath of a provoked natural world.
Last month, I asked Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe--who has called climate change a "hoax"--what level of evidence would change his mind about climate change. He has not replied yet. But that is the question that should be asked of all Trumpsters, including the voters who share their disregard: Just what series of climate events - what piles of scientific measurements and documentations now in the Arctic, the Andes, Antarctica, Greenland, the Maldives, etc. - could change their minds?
Third, our elected officials must accept that continuing to waste trillions of dollars on corporate subsidies, bailouts, giveaways and lack of enforcement of costly crime--crony capitalism--further weakens our country's capacity to foresee and forestall omnicidal disasters.
Enough, also, of the Congressional Republicans starving the IRS budget so it cannot collect more of the many billions of dollars in uncollected global corporate taxes. These Republicans don't seem to connect the size of deficits, which they detest, with uncollected tax revenue, now estimated by the IRS to exceed $350 billion a year.
"Voters need to be more demanding if they are to break the chains of a rigged electoral system that deprives them of choice, of voice and, most importantly, of the sovereign power they possess in our Constitution."
Maybe someone should finally write a book entitled "Listen, Voters." It could start by asking why enough voters keep electing politicians, who sweet talk them, only hook up with corporations and an ideology of corporatism that adversely affects the very voters who put them into office, along with many other Americans. If these voters, who so often vote against their own interests, do a little homework before Election Day, they can easily separate the fakers and the sell outs from the real candidates, who may not have silver tongues and corporate backing, but have a consistent record of being on the side of the people.
Voters need to be more demanding if they are to break the chains of a rigged electoral system that deprives them of choice, of voice and, most importantly, of the sovereign power they possess in our Constitution.
The August 29, 2017 Washington Post paused from its extensive coverage of the destruction in Houston to laud the "Flood of Courage" in its lead editorial. It wrote of the "massive - and inspiring - volunteer rescue response...With nothing more than their own courage, good people ventured into the rushing gullies and culverts, risking their lives to save others in the unrelenting rain."
While Trump tweets and hopefully reconsiders his earlier cruel budget cuts for FEMA and other life-saving federal agencies - such as the Centers for Disease Control and the EPA - the people are swinging into action on the ground. May they swing into wise and just action in the next elections - both as new candidates and, high horizon, informed voters. For there is a much better America to be had.
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Saudi Arabia and Qatar: Tribal Feud with Regional and Global Implications
On the morning of June 5, Saudi Arabia and four of its regional friends decided to sever diplomatic, economic, and transportation ties with Qatar and its ruler Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Such a feud within the Gulf Cooperation Council--which comprises Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Oman--is not new, especially between Qatar and its most immediate neighbors, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.
Jun 07, 2017
On the morning of June 5, Saudi Arabia and four of its regional friends decided to sever diplomatic, economic, and transportation ties with Qatar and its ruler Emir Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Such a feud within the Gulf Cooperation Council--which comprises Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, and Oman--is not new, especially between Qatar and its most immediate neighbors, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. But the severity of the Saudi-engineered boycott of Qatar, the reasons given, and the implied demands for Qatari capitulation are unprecedented and potentially carry serious regional and global implications. The UAE, Bahrain, and Egypt, plus the pro-Saudi government in Yemen, the UAE-backed regime in eastern Libya, and the Maldives, lined up behind the Riyadh's move, using similar language to that in the Saudi official statement announcing the break with Qatar.
The key imponderable is whether the Saudi action, regardless of the veracity of the official justification, aims at regime change in Qatar by replacing Tamim bin Hamad with another Al Thani who could act as a Saudi quisling. If the Saudis indeed intend to depose Sheikh Tamim, the kingdom would not play such a dangerous game without a nod from Washington. Perhaps Saudi Arabia and its de facto ruler and Minister of Defense Muhammad bin Salman feel emboldened by President Trump's recent visit to the kingdom. Regime change in the Gulf Arab sheikhdoms over the past two centuries has been accomplished through overt or covert support from external powers, first by the British and now the Americans.
If the Qatari emir rejects the Saudi demands--including abiding by the GCC "commitments and agreements," ceasing "hostilities against the Kingdom," and standing "against terrorist groups and activities"--does Riyadh plan to send troops into Qatar and forcibly remove him from office? Will post-Tamim Qatar join Bahrain in becoming another Saudi vassal state in the GCC? Will the Saudi defense minister use such an aggressive adventure as a diversion from his disastrous and stalemated war in Yemen? What will happen to the huge Al Udeid American airbase and its 10,000 US troops in Qatar? Are the Trump administration and Congress prepared for yet another war in the volatile Gulf region in the name of fighting Iran and terrorism? Is this Saudi adventurism in the neighborhood another sign of the kingdom's power projection beyond its borders, and does it really frighten Iran and force it to bend to Saudi--and even American--wishes?
The anti-Qatar action is a clumsy demonstration of the kingdom's desire to challenge Iran for regional hegemony. What makes the Saudi boycott even more puzzling is the fact that, in addition to Qatar, two GCC member states--Kuwait and Oman--maintain working relations with Iran and have not severed relations with Qatar.
Two other points add to the intrigue of the Saudi-Qatari spat. Both states adhere to the Sunni Wahhabi Salafi interpretation of Islam, which has spawned "jihadism" and terrorism across the region and globally. They have also both supported and financed, at least initially, al-Qaeda affiliate groups fighting against the Assad regime in Syria.
A key analytic question is whether the draconian Saudi measures against Qatar will ultimately lead to the GCC's demise. Such a course of action is not unthinkable. Since the end of the first Gulf war and the eviction of Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991, GCC members generally have pursued their own separate military, economic, and political national interests regardless of their membership in the GCC. By severing relations with Qatar so publicly, drastically, and unexpectedly--with very little room for diplomatic compromise--Saudi Arabia might be signaling that the GCC has outlived its usefulness.
If Kuwaiti attempts to reconcile differences between Riyadh and Doha, as happened in previous disputes, succeed with the Tamim regime remaining in power and without much capitulation, then the Saudi boycott would amount to no more than a tempest in a teapot, and the Saudi regime would be exposed as no more than a schoolyard bully. If, on the other hand, Qatar gives in to the Saudi demands and Tamim stays in power as a pliant ruling potentate, the kingdom would emerge as an Arab hegemon on the western side of the Gulf, leaving the GCC in tatters. Saudi Arabia would then boast to its neighbors that being closely aligned with the Trump administration pays off.
Regardless of the outcome of Kuwaiti diplomacy, Iran is unlikely to be deterred by Saudi mini-power games and would continue its ascendancy as a regional hegemon unaffected by the tribal squabbles in Arabia. Sunni extremism would remain unabated, regional instability would likely increase, and Saudi Arabia and the UAE would remain bogged down in their futile Yemen war.
Old Tensions
Tensions within the GCC go back to its creation in May 1981. However reluctantly, Gulf Arab emirates acceded to Riyadh's invitation to enlist because they supported the organization's three main objectives: help preserve tribal family rule; stifle all anti-regime democratic protests and preserve autocracy; and enlist Western military support to defend the Gulf Arab littoral from the perceived threat of Iran following its 1979 revolution.
Qatar and other smaller Gulf Arab states were terrified by Tehran's interest at the time in exporting its Islamic revolution to the other side of the Gulf and stoking anti-regime popular uprisings akin to what happened in Iran itself. As part of research for my book on the GCC in the early 1980s, I asked the then and current Bahraini prime minister, Khalifa bin Salman, about the Bahraini regime's response to the Iranian revolution. He told me that in order to survive, "They better go for democracy!" Of course, he had no intention of democratizing Bahrain and made the statement only in jest. When I posed the same question to the then ruler of Qatar and grandfather of the current emir, he replied, "Democracy is good," but his people "have not yet learned the rules of democracy!"
When I asked a Qatari government official what he thought of the GCC, he whispered in slang Gulf Arabic, "Hatchi!" (just talk). Despite their membership in this exclusive ruling family regional arrangement, Qatar and Bahrain almost went to war against each other on more than one occasion. The GCC has served primarily as a tool in the Saudi foreign policy kit. Bahrain, the country most dependent on the kingdom, has benefited from the GCC, thanks to Riyadh's financial largesse. The UAE has also used the GCC occasionally to serve its regional ambitions, either in coordination with Saudi Arabia or separately. Like Qatar, Kuwait and Oman have pursued their foreign policies, especially toward Iran and other regional state and non-state actors, as individual states, not as GCC members.
Despite the lofty rhetoric over the years that the GCC was a prelude to Gulf unity or a precursor to an EU-type Arab regional union, the past 36 years have shown that the GCC is merely an alliance of convenience, more for show than for genuine regional security. It has helped member states share intelligence against their peaceful dissidents and coordinate their strategies for combating reform and pro-democracy movements. It has helped family rule survive as entrenched autocracies, not as modernizing states in which their citizens have a say in the governing process.
By announcing its multi-faceted breach with Qatar, Saudi Arabia may well have pounded the final nail in the GCC coffin. Unfortunately, the Saudis have not pondered the long-term implications of their action. For example, Qatar and perhaps other emirates could move closer to Iran; security cooperation with Washington could become muddled; containing extremism and terrorism would become more difficult; and al-Qaeda's affiliate in Yemen could become more brazen. Humiliating and isolating Qatar will not necessarily enhance Saudi Arabia's regional prestige or power position against Iran. Nor will it hasten the end of the ruinous Yemen war.
New Claims
In its official statement, the Saudi regime listed several "grave violations" allegedly committed by Qatar. Among other things, it accused the Qatari ruler of "instigating against the Saudi State and infringing on its sovereignty," supporting various terrorist and other groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaeda, and the Islamic State, using its media to attack Saudi Arabia, and undermining the war in Yemen. Based on these "violations," Saudi Arabia proceeded to sever all relations with Qatar--diplomatic, economic, food imports, and flights--and ordered all Qatari citizens, including diplomats, to leave the kingdom. The Saudis also ordered Qatar to pull its 1,000-troop contingent from the so-called Coalition to Support the Legitimacy in Yemen. They may yet go one step further and demand Doha's expulsion from the GCC.
These so-called grave violations could be boiled down to three key grievances: Qatar's relations with Iran; its refusal to brand the Muslim Brotherhood a "terrorist "organization, as Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt have done; and its support for the Pan-Arab Al Jazeera network. Qatar shares the largest natural gas field in the world with Iran and cannot possibly extricate itself from that. From the very beginning, Qatar viewed the Saudi war in Yemen as an unnecessary adventure in which the new Saudi defense minister wanted to show Riyadh's military muscle in the face of perceived Iranian threats and support for the Houthis. Saudi Arabia has also accused Qatar of promoting sectarianism, but in fact the kingdom has been the region's biggest promoter of Sunni-Shia tensions. Saudi Arabia, the strongest GCC member, has resented Qatar's freedom of action regionally and internationally and viewed it as an impudent upstart that has failed to observe tribal etiquette and show deference to its Saudi elder sister. Furthermore, Saudi Arabia and other family autocracies have long seethed at Qatar for allowing Al Jazeera to spread its pro-reform message across the Arab world and supporting the Arab Spring and the Muslim Brotherhood as a genuine, indigenous Islamic activist organization. It called Abdel Fattah al-Sisi's military deposition of the democratically elected president Muhammad Morsi a "coup," which of course infuriated both Sisi and the Saudis.
The Saudi-Qatari feud is not good for regional stability and security and certainly does not serve America's long-term security and economic interests in the region. Riyadh's action also undercuts the global effort to fight terrorism and contain Sunni extremism and radicalism. Saudi tensions with Iran are less sectarian and more a struggle for power and regional hegemony.
Fighting Iran is a dead-end for Saudi Arabia. The history of the past century has shown that Gulf security can best be served by cooperation, not conflict, between Riyadh and Teheran. Riyadh, Teheran, and most importantly Washington should learn this lesson and act on it. The reverberations of the CIA's involvement in illegally removing the Iranian leader Muhammad Mosadeq from power in 1953 are still with us today. Despite President Trump's tweets in support of the Saudi action against Qatar, the Trump administration can ill afford to take sides or to get involved in another Saudi military adventure in the Gulf.
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