By Dr. Manfred GerstenfeldMay 18, 2020

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,570, May 18, 2020

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Many governments have responded to the coronavirus pandemic by pushing aside civil rights. It is not yet clear whether this shift in national attitudes toward fundamental rights will continue over the long term or how that trend will manifest. During the crisis, governments approved the tracking of citizens as well as other tools that infringed their privacy. Once the need for emergency measures has passed, discussions—both civil and legal—will grow more intense over how much longer civil rights should remain compromised.

In response to the coronavirus pandemic, many governments approved the wholesale infringement of their citizens’ civil rights. Large populations accepted the dramatic curtailment of their civil liberties for weeks and even months on end on the understanding that that curtailment was temporary. One wonders, now that the crisis is beginning to abate, whether their rights will be fully restored.

Many governments approved tracking measures and other privacy-breaching capabilities that can have long-term consequences. Albert Fox Cahn of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project said, “We could so easily end up in a situation where we empower local, state, or federal governments to take measures in response to this pandemic that fundamentally change the scope of American civil rights.”

Once most of the emergency measures have ended, discussion is likely to intensify about the extent to which civil rights were abolished at the height of the crisis. Robert Seegmüller, chairman of an organization of German constitutional judges, said that future courts will have to decide whether his country’s constitution gives parliament the right to transfer so much of its operational competence to the executive branch. He added that it has not yet been determined whether the closure of many institutions in the first weeks of the crisis was legally acceptable.

The first step in tackling these questions is to identify the fundamental rights that were limited or canceled entirely. The most important was the right to move freely in the streets of one’s own city, a right that was summarily stripped from citizens during periods of lockdown. Lockdowns also infringed people’s freedom to gather or to visit friends or family. (During the lockdown in the UK, Prof. Neil Ferguson, an epidemiologist and the top British government adviser on the virus issue, had to resign his position after it became known that in direct contravention of the social distancing limits he himself had convinced the government to impose on the general public, he had allowed his lover to visit him repeatedly at his home.)

The obligation to wear a face mask outside one’s home is another major limitation of civil rights. This precaution not only infringes personal freedom but makes people difficult to recognize. In Western societies, recognition of faces is part of the culture. In some European countries the wearing of veils is forbidden. One cannot detach this issue from prior debates in these societies about expressions of Muslim fundamentalism. Similarly, social distancing rules have prohibited handshakes, which are a hallmark of Western culture and one to which religious Muslims have long objected (when they compel contact with women).

It is part of the culture of Western society to be able to socialize in physical proximity. The obligations of social distancing have had many consequences for this tradition. People in southern European countries kiss good friends on the cheek when they meet, a habit that has had to be abandoned. British pubs, where friends have gathered for generations, have been decimated by the crisis. Social distancing will go on in many places after the crisis is over, with British Chief Medical Officer Professor Chris Whitty forecasting that it will go on for another year.

The crisis has also had a sharp impact on the free movement of people across borders, which, though not exactly perceived as a civil right, was considered normal and a development in which many Europeans took great pride. Several European countries closed their borders during the pandemic, and the EU closed its external borders to foreign nationals.

Lockdowns and social distancing have had a heavy impact on religious freedom. While individuals are permitted to pray at home, religious gatherings are still prohibited in many countries. This is irrespective of how important community meetings are for some religions. In the US, multiple lawsuits have been filed arguing that coronavirus-related restrictions violate the First Amendment’s guarantee to freely exercise religion.

For the most part, the crisis has not limited freedom of speech, with the right to demonstrate often permitted during lockdown. The German Constitutional Court decided health concerns linked to the outbreak were not grounds for a general ban on demonstrations. Several anti-lockdown demonstrations were held in German cities toward the end of the emergency, some of which turned violent. There were also public protests against the lockdown in the US.

Privacy is a fundamental right, and data protection is a growing concern. Even before the coronavirus, it was generally known that companies like Google and Facebook have access to a wealth of data on huge numbers of individuals. Facebook had to pay a $5 billion fine to the US government for deceiving users about its ability to keep personal information private. This occurred as a result of the Cambridge Analytica data breach. The security, freedom, and privacy triangle will probably become a major area of debate.

The more populations distrust their governments, the more problematic tracking applications become. Governments claim the data acquired through such apps will be anonymized—but as the data is held at central databases, full anonymity is cast into doubt.

In some countries, there is serious fear of the abuse of power by governments and police overreach. Belgian Minister of Interior Affairs Pieter De Crem sent a letter in early April to mayors and chiefs of police calling on them to apply rigorous measures to people who went to stay in their second homes. Drones were employed to locate offenders near the coast, a measure that prompted liberal politicians to protest the use of the emergency conditions to set up the beginnings of a police state.

Another civil rights issue concerns equality. In places where there were more people in need of respirators than there were available, choices had to be made. Equality would mean that those who came first were given respirators, but in many places, priority was determined by the patient’s state of health and age. Triage protocols for critical care provision during a pandemic are a policy choice that values the right to life of some over others.

Major economic intervention will be necessary to mitigate the effects of the economic recession that is likely to follow the pandemic in many countries. Government measures in pre-virus society often ran into both public protests and legal problems. Governments may well decide they cannot afford to delay measures to restart the economy. This can lead to emergency measures that can in turn limit civil rights. It would be very problematic if parliaments are not allowed proper verification procedures, provided they do not stall decision-making.

The Hungarian parliament has given up part of its rights, which has led to limitations on speech. PM Victor Orban can declare emergency measures by decree. If he wishes, he can prolong those measures without the approval of parliament. The measures allow jail sentences of up to five years for distribution of “fake news” about the pandemic or the government. The Hungarian government has accused some independent media of propagating “fake news.”

Thirteen members of the EU have signed a declaration warning of the danger to fundamental rights posed by some responses to the coronavirus emergency. They express concern about risks to the state of law that can occur as a result of certain emergency measures. The declaration does not mention any specific country, but it is understood that it is addressed to the Hungarian Parliament. It is telling that about half the EU member states have not signed it.

A fundamental question has to be asked: Is it by chance that the great majority of the sick and the dead were in Western liberal democracies? Is there something inherent in the societal modus operandi that causes those governments to have more difficulty reacting to and controlling an emergency situation than non-democratic states?

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Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­ is a Senior Research Associate at the BESA Center and a former chairman of the Steering Committee of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. He specializes in Israeli–Western European relations, antisemitism, and anti-Zionism, and is the author of The War of a Million Cuts.

By George Friedman Geopolitical Future

The COVID-19 disease, which seems likely to be with us for a long time, has done its part to define history. But it has not suspended history. Though there is much we still don’t know about the disease, we do know that all nations have been affected by it. The death toll is significant but does not threaten to annihilate populations as other diseases have. It has, however, inflicted damage on economies that will take years to repair. Either science will defeat it or the world will adjust to living with it. But that branch in the logic will not come for a while.

Since nations continue to exist, the distrust between them remains – in many cases, it has intensified. As things evolve, the relationships between nations will return to their traditional role. As there is little more to be said for now about the virus that has not been said already, we need to return to the consideration of geopolitics, which like diseases can cause massive casualties. Were this the bubonic plague, we would be returning to the relationship between Rome and Florence. Today we will return to the relationship between the U.S. and China.

When we last visited these two nations, the United States had placed tariffs on some Chinese exports to the U.S., hurting and angering China and leaving it no effective counter. The Chinese built their economy the same way the United States had between 1890 and 1929: by exporting cheap manufactured goods and agricultural products. The international system needs cheap products, and the exporter must export to increase domestic prosperity and create a self-sustaining society. The advantage of an exporter is it makes money. The disadvantage is it depends on the willingness and ability of its customers to buy. So when, for example, the post-World War I depressions took hold of Europe, Europe’s ability to buy U.S. products became a major cause of the Great Depression.

China suffered a blow in 2008, when the global recession following the subprime loan crisis cut into China’s exports dramatically. More recently, tariffs imposed by the U.S. threatened to create a massive imbalance in the Chinese economy. Chinese industry vastly outgrew domestic Chinese demand, producing more than Chinese consumers could buy. The U.S. move was designed to destabilize China, which had been emerging as a major power suffering a major vulnerability. The U.S. took advantage of it.

At roughly the same time, it was revealed that the Chinese were operating concentration camps of sorts for Uighurs, Turkic Muslim minority populations in far western Xinjiang province, as demonstrations and riots broke out in Hong Kong. Try as it might, China’s excellent propaganda had a harder time convincing the world that it was passing the U.S. as a great power. China’s gross domestic product was about $14 trillion and the United States’ was just under $22 trillion, and China has many more people. The U.S. military is able to operate globally. The Chinese are trying to find a lever in the South China Sea. Propaganda aside, China was to the U.S. what the U.S. was to Britain in 1900. Looked at from that point of view, the U.S. could be ambitious but had to be cautious. Britain could be contemptuous at its own risk.

China is not in any way the equal of the U.S., either economically or militarily. Propaganda is not trivial but it can not be decisive. Or more precisely, it could not be decisive yet. Britain in 1900 was celebrating its very real glory. By the 1920s, it was defaulting on its vast debt to the United States, in the midst of economic agony, struggling to hold its position in Europe, fearing reasonably that its empire was in danger.

There are of course many differences between the three countries, but the core dynamic had similarities. One of these similarities is that British investment in the United States was a centerpiece of both nations’ economic strategies. British capital was critical to U.S. industrialization and to ranches in the West. Similarly, U.S. investment in China was critical to China’s industrial development, as was the import of Chinese goods. The United States and China were linked economically as were the U.S. and Britain. And we should remember that when Britain fought in World War II to save its empire, it was the United States that compelled the British to follow a military strategy that made its loss of empire inevitable. Winston Churchill accused Franklin Roosevelt of trying to destroy the British Empire. Roosevelt was shocked and offended by the charge.

China remains inferior to the U.S. in all measures, but it has risen to the point where the U.S. can no longer accept China’s military ambitions nor finance the Chinese economy. China wants badly to resume the economic relationship it had with the United States, while having the U.S. accept its need to dominate first the South and East China seas and then the Pacific, while also projecting economic power and later military power globally. The United States is dominant in North America. It fought for control of the Pacific and the Atlantic in World War II. From China’s point of view, the geography of the Western Pacific and the ability of the U.S. to blockade China is an existential threat.

China has little appetite for risk. Starting a war carries with it the chance of losing. Nor can China trust the U.S. So it is laying the groundwork for an opportunity or an aggressive decision by the United States. Facing historically hostile enemies like Japan and South Korea and, more recently, Taiwan and Indonesia, the Chinese lack a meaningful alliance structure. North Korea is a useful but dangerous tool with which to goad the United States. Other than that, it has a strategy of making random investments around the world to demonstrate its growing power. As propaganda, it works. The use of investments in, say, Serbia is less clear strategically.

China therefore has three core strategic problems. Challenging the U.S. for command of the sea is a dangerous game. While countries such as Russia might fear the U.S. as much as China does, geography prevents cooperation, so China lacks a meaningful alliance structure. Finally, China’s main adversary, the U.S., is also indispensable for the Chinese economy.

China’s solution to this dilemma, bravado aside, is twofold. The first is to hope that the U.S. gets involved in a war like World War I, as Britain did. The other is to confront the U.S. in another domain: space. Success in the latter might create an opportunity for the former. Thus for China, space and missiles provide a military option but don’t solve the economic problem.

The U.S. is obviously aware of the military challenge. It has announced a massive withdrawal of forces from the Middle East to devote more time and attention to Russia and China. Patriot missiles have been removed from Saudi Arabia and bases in Iraq have closed. At the same time, the U.S. has withdrawn B-52s from Guam, indicating it is focusing on a space-based missile option against China. But in the end, both nations are in deterrence mode. Neither can afford losing a war against the other.

The major U.S. weapon against China is economic. Here the virus opens opportunities. The U.S. is dependent on China for vast amounts of products, a supply chain that gave the U.S. the benefit of low-cost manufacturing, and the Chinese an industrial base. The Chinese move is to expel and block the U.S. supply chain, but Beijing can’t do it while also maintaining social stability. And the U.S. has options to replace the Chinese supply chain.

The solution on both sides is to hurl insults. The Americans hint that the Chinese are responsible for the coronavirus. The Chinese have a global effort to show that the virus has crippled the United States permanently and that China is now the leading power. Propaganda wars may be fun to watch, and hurling insults should perhaps be an Olympic sport, but power is not a matter of perception, at least not when bombs start landing and bankruptcies mount. The U.S. will continue to hurl insults while undermining the Chinese by shifting the supply chain. China will continue seeking a military advantage.

China and the U.S. have been hammered by the virus. The hopes, imperatives and constraints of both countries relative to each other have been bent but not broken by the epidemic. As it was before so it will be in the future.

ISW’S OVERWATCH PODCAST SERIES

By Dr. James M. DorseyMay 18, 2020

BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 1,569, May 18, 2020

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Combatting the coronavirus pandemic and coping with its economic fallout may be Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s most immediate challenge. Equally urgent is repairing strained relations with the US and ensuring the kingdom’s competitiveness with Iran as the two rivals compete for China’s favor.

Saudi Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman may feel the global coronavirus pandemic and its economic fallout are the more immediate of his problems as the kingdom gradually lifts restrictions put in place to stymie its spread.

However, looming large on the horizon is a potential rift with the US resulting from the kingdom’s oil price war with Russia, which contributed to the collapse of oil markets and an existential crisis for America’s shale industry.

President Donald Trump is believed to be weighing a ban on import of Saudi oil in a bid to force the kingdom to reroute tankers carrying some 40 million barrels of crude to the US.

More fundamentally, Prince Muhammad has put the kingdom’s relationship with the US at risk without having any real alternatives. At this time, an agreement among oil producers to cut production amounts to at best a timeout in a price war that is all about market share.

The price war has further strained Saudi Arabia’s ties to the US Congress, which was already troubled by the war in Yemen, the kingdom’s record of human rights abuse, and the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul in 2018.

Recent Saudi judiciary reforms, including the abolishing of flogging as a legal punishment and death sentences for minors who commit crimes, were an effort to respond to criticism but were unlikely to turn the tide.

Speaking for Congressmen representing US shale states, North Dakota Senator Kevin Cramer warned that “Saudi Arabia’s next steps will determine whether our strategic partnership is salvageable.”

Salvaging Saudi-US relations may be Prince Muhammad’s only option.

Russian president Vladimir Putin is unlikely to have taken kindly to a reported shouting match over the phone with the crown prince at the outset of the price war.

Signaling that the production cuts are a ceasefire rather than an end to the war, Saudi Arabia and Russia continued to fight it out on oil markets with the kingdom undercutting Russia with discounts and special offers, according to a Reuters investigation.

Strained relations did not prevent the two countries from moving forward with an agreement on Russian wheat sales to the kingdom. A first Russian shipment of 60,000 tons set sail for Saudi Arabia last month.

Irrespective of the state of Saudi-Russian relations, Russia’s call for replacing the US defense umbrella in the Gulf with a multilateral security arrangement that would involve the US as well as China, Europe, and India is a skeleton with no flesh.

Russia has neither the wherewithal nor the will to shoulder responsibility for Gulf security. Nor do the other states envisioned by Russia as participants in a revised Gulf security arrangement.

Moreover, the proposal is stillborn as long as Saudi Arabia refuses to engage with Iran with no preconditions. During the coronavirus pandemic, the kingdom has hardened fault lines with the Islamic Republic rather than take opportunities to build bridges with goodwill gestures.

China has no appetite for a major military role in the Middle East despite having established its first foreign military base in Djibouti and contributing to anti-piracy operations off the coast of Somalia.

Equally troubling for Prince Muhammad is the fact that he cannot be certain that China would maintain its neutrality if US-Iranian tensions were to explode into all-out war. When the chips are down, Tehran may be of greater strategic significance to Beijing than Riyadh.

Iran’s geography, demography, and highly educated population give it a leg up on Saudi Arabia for Chinese favor. So does the fact that China and Iran see each other as the bookends of Asia and share a civilizational history that goes back thousands of years.

Iran also plays a pivotal role in China’s Belt and Road-related efforts to link to Europe by a rail line that would traverse Central Asia and the Islamic Republic. This route would end the expensive and time-consuming process of having to transfer goods to ships at one end of the Caspian Sea and then load them back onto trains on the Caspian’s opposite shore.

Prince Muhammad’s maneuvering to strike a balance in securing Saudi Arabia’s place in a world of contentious big power relationships is reflected in coverage by the kingdom’s tightly controlled media of Chinese and US efforts to combat the pandemic.

Andrew Leber, a student of Saudi policymaking, noted that “China’s mixed record in boosting its image in Riyadh is a reminder that soft-power competition is not a zero-sum game. Even as Saudi outlets have grown more willing to air criticisms of China, some have derided the efforts of President Donald Trump and his administration to blame COVID-19 on Beijing.”

Leber’s analysis of Saudi media coverage suggests that Prince Muhammad is seeking to keep all doors open. Still, it will take a lot more than vacillating media coverage and reform of the kingdom’s penal code to polish Saudi Arabia’s tarnished image in the US and level the playing field with Iran when it comes to China.

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Dr. James M. Dorsey, a non-resident Senior Associate at the BESA Center, is a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies at Singapore’s Nanyang Technological University and co-director of the University of Würzburg’s Institute for Fan Culture.

 Fighters opposed to Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi fire a multiple rocket launcher near Sirte in Libya, Sept. 24, 2011. Gadhafi was killed a month later, and Libya has been in chaos since. Photo by REUTERS/Goran Tomasevic/File Photo.

Semih Idiz

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2020/05/turkey-libya-intervention-turns-tide-to-erdogan-sarraj.html#ixzz6MruCahSv