Category: History

  • A warm rapport with the “world’s coolest dictator”

    A warm rapport with the “world’s coolest dictator”

    The answer is not yet in. But since 2023, Bukele has doubled down on his project as the “world’s coolest dictator,” to quote a phrase he once used on his X profile. And he has won some high-profile admirers in the United States.

    Bukele has repeatedly renewed his March 2022 state of emergency, which suspended constitutional guarantees and by definition is temporary. It has now been extended 39 times over three continuous years since inception. Bukele’s arrest tally, according to a report by human-rights watchdog Cristosal, is now up to at least 87,000 people — more than the death toll of the country’s 12-year civil war, which ended in 1992. 

    Bukele, who is still just 44, won re-election last year after sweeping aside term-limit restraints. A constitutional reform, approved by a pliant legislature, now empowers him to seek as many future terms as he wants.  

    A new kind of leader or more of the same?

    Bukele’s embrace of digital public services, bitcoin and his tech-bro demeanor seems to suggest he wants to be thought of as a new, modern kind of leader. For all that, he is still following the path of many old-fashioned Latin American caudillos or strongmen before him.

    State surveillance and pressure on human rights groups, corruption watchdogs and journalists have ramped up this year to such an extent that Cristosal has pulled its staff out of the country. Everyone, that is, except Ruth López, its lead anti-corruption investigator, who was arrested in May and is still being held on alleged embezzlement charges.

    The Salvadoran Journalists Association has closed its offices too, and will operate from outside the country, following passage of a controversial “foreign agents” law in May which targets the finances of nongovernmental organizations receiving funds from abroad. Bukele’s government accuses many such groups of supporting MS-13. Since April 2023, the independent Salvadoran news outlet El Faro has been legally based in Costa Rica because of what it calls campaigns by the Bukele government to silence its voice.

    “Autocrats don’t tolerate alternative narratives,” it said at the time. And still, the Trump administration likes what it sees.

    Prisons and deportations

    Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced on a February visit to El Salvador that Bukele had agreed to use his CECOT mega-prison to house criminals of any nationality deported from the United States — and even to take in convicted U.S. citizens and legal residents, too.

    This proposed offshoring of part of the U.S. incarcerated population would be for a fee, Bukele clarified, that would help fund his own country’s prisons like the CECOT. 

    The United States then deported more than 200 alleged Venezuelan gang members as well as a group of alleged Salvadoran mareros to El Salvador. The Venezuelans were held at the CECOT until being sent home in a prisoner swap deal for a group of Americans held in Venezuela.

    It would be illegal to deport a U.S. citizen for a crime, as Rubio seemed to acknowledge. “We have a constitution,” he observed. That didn’t stop Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem from visiting the CECOT in person and using the social media platform X to threaten “criminal illegal aliens” in the United States with being sent there:

    “I toured the CECOT, El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center,” she posted. “President Trump and I have a clear message to criminal illegal aliens: LEAVE NOW. If you do not leave, we will hunt you down, arrest you, and you could end up in this El Salvadoran prison.”

    A visit to the White House

    Bukele got to make a coveted visit to the White House in April. Trump praised Bukele’s mass imprisonment program, suggesting it could hold U.S. citizens next. Trump was captured telling Bukele on a live feed this: “Home-growns are next. The home-growns. You gotta build about five more places. It’s not big enough.” 

    The question is, how much of that was just grandstanding?

    Like Bukele, Trump has made clear his disdain for constitutional limitations on his power, used government resources to go after his enemies, derided the freedom of the press and talked up domestic security threats to justify heavy-handed, authoritarian policing. The United States has a stronger tradition of democracy than El Salvador, to be sure.

    Checks and balances exist. But the strongman playbook does not have too many variations. Ask Viktor Orbán in Hungary or Vladimir Putin in Russia or Nicolás Maduro in Venezuela. 

    It is not the first time El Salvador has darkly mirrored the fears and internal conflicts of the United States, be they about communism, immigrant crime or democracy. As I wrote in 2023, a straight line can be drawn from the Salvadoran military’s anticommunist violence against impoverished peasants in 1932 to the country’s bloody civil war, in which the United States backed a still atrocity-prone Salvadoran army against leftist rebels.

    The line continues from that conflict to the emergence of MS-13, whose presence in the United States drives so much of the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric today.

    The birth of a global gang

    MS-13 members are far from being innocent victims here, though Trump and his supporters have used their crimes to smear immigrants of all kinds. But it’s important to remember that the MS-13 gang, or mara, was formed by young Salvadoran immigrants in Los Angeles. As their home country spiraled toward civil war in the late 1970s, Salvadorans who fled to the United States found themselves threatened by Mexican and other gangs.

    What started out as a weed-smoking, heavy-metal listening self-defense clique morphed in time into hardened criminals. 

    Their power grew when the U.S. government, making a highly visible statement about immigrant crime, deported members of MS-13 and other gangs to El Salvador in the mid 1990s, after the end of the civil war. Within a few years, the gangs ruled the Salvadoran streets. Violence soared in turf wars and government crackdowns. By 2015, gang-related violence made El Salvador the murder capital of the world.

    From leading the world’s murder stats, it has now gone to leading the world’s incarceration stats under Bukele. El Salvador’s proportion of the population in prison is now three times that of the United States, which is no slouch when it comes to incarcerating its people (it ranks fifth).

    Of course, Salvadorans are entitled to freely elect whomever they want as president, as are U.S. citizens. Both Bukele and Trump won their elections and are doing in office exactly what they said they would do. Yet populist authoritarians have a way of clinging to power and confusing their own needs and egos with the state. 

    They brook less contradiction and dissent over time. I, for one, hope the increasingly dystopian utopia Bukele is building in his homeland remains just a cautionary tale in El Salvador’s fraught and symbiotic relationship with the United States.

    It should not be an inspiration.

    Questions to consider:

    1. Why might some a majority of people in a country accept rule by a dictator?

    2. What is one example of the close relationship between El Salvador and the United States?

    3. Do you think that eliminating basic judicial rights can be justified in fighting crime?

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  • Where are our young leaders?

    Where are our young leaders?

    Why is it that young leaders are in such short supply? 

    Former Irish President Mary Robinson recently gave one of the most forceful condemnations of Israel’s war on Gaza. Now the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Robinson visited Egypt and the Rafah border and called on states to implement “decisive measures” to halt the genocide and famine in Gaza. 

    “Governments that are not using all the tools at their disposal to halt the unfolding genocide in Gaza are increasingly complicit,” she said.  

    Robinson is a member of an organization that calls itself “The Elders.” Founded in 2007 by Nelson Mandela, the South African political prisoner turned president, the group advocates peace, human rights and environmental sustainability. 

    In her comments, Robinson chided today’s leaders for not fulfilling their legal obligations. “Political leaders have the power and the legal obligation to apply measures to pressure this Israeli government to end its atrocity crimes,” she said. 

    Robinson is 81 years old. Where are the young leaders making such statements? Where are they organizing groups like The Elders? 

    Youth power

    The media’s attention to Robinson was impressive. Her August press conference was followed by several lengthy interviews on major networks. An independent group like The Elders — whose members include former presidents, UN officials and civil society activists — deserves recognition. It also invites reflection on the role of age in today’s accelerated time. 

    Being elderly and having once held an important position was not always politically positive. “Don’t trust anyone over 30,” was a popular expression in the 1960s. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was just 26 when he led the 1955 Montgomery bus boycott and 34 when he delivered his  “I Have a Dream” speech during the 1963 Washington rally in front of the Lincoln Memorial. John F. Kennedy was 30 when he was elected to the U.S. Congress and 43 when he was elected president. Student leaders made their marks on U.S. politics in the 1960s. 

    Mario Savio was 21 when he led the Berkeley Free Speech Movement in California, which demonstrated the political power of student protests. 

    Mark Rudd was a 20-year-old junior when he led strikes and student sit-ins at Columbia University to push for student involvement in university decision making.  

    Tom Hayden was 20 when he cofounded Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), a national student movement that opposed the Vietnam War and pushed for a complete reform of the political system. At age 22, he wrote the Port Huron Statement, a political manifesto that called for non-violent student activism and widespread civil disobedience achieve the international peace and economic equality that government leaders had failed to achieve. 

    Savio, Rudd and Hayden were more than just campus activists; they were front page national news. 

    Age politics

    Where are the student leaders opposing Trump’s attack on universities and freedom of expression now? College presidents, professors and boards of trustees are shouldering the burden. There is a generational vacuum. 

    Youth and youthful dynamism are no longer viewed as political positives. Today, no one could imagine the 79-year-old Donald Trump playing touch football on a beach in Florida as John F. Kennedy and family did at Hyannis Port on Cape Cod when he was president.

    In reality, Kennedy suffered from many serious medical conditions but they were largely hidden from the public; it was crucial that he maintain his youthful image. Trump swinging a golf club and riding in a golf cart is not a youthful image; even his awkward swing shows his age. 

    Nor are the pictures of the members of his Mar-a-Lago crowd youthful; they look like a meeting of grandparents. As slogans reflecting their times, Make America Great Again is far from the New Frontier which called for an end to poverty and investing in technology and science to send humans to the moon.

    Robinson visited the Rafah crossing with another member of The Elders, Helen Clark. Clark is 75 years old, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand and United Nations Development Program administrator. 

    Generational change

    Of her visit Clark said that she was horrified to learn from United Nations Sexual and Reproductive Health Agency that the birth rate in Gaza had dropped by over 40% in the first half of 2025, compared to the same period three years ago. “Many new mothers are unable to feed themselves or their newborn babies adequately, and the health system is collapsing,” Clark said. “All of this threatens the very survival of an entire generation.”

    Based on her years of experience, Clark wisely talked of generational change.

    Age benefits people who, like Robinson and Clark, have held important positions. Because of that experience, members of The Elders take no political risks by speaking out. 

    The 83-year-old U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders is a notable exception of an elder speaking out in the United States while still in office. For whatever reasons, the elderly members of the Senate — there are currently seven senators who are in their 80s and 17 are in their 70s — have been particularly silent on issues like Gaza. 

    In fact, they have been particularly silent on most issues. 

    Where are the Savio/Rudd/Haydens today? A comparable young leader is Greta Thunberg. Greta was only 15 when she initiated the climate strike movement Fridays for Future. But while Greta initiated the movement, she did not organize it as Tom Hayden did with the formation of the SDS. Thunberg is an important symbol and example of courage — the drone attack on her Gaza-bound “Freedom Flotilla” is beyond reprehensible and consistent with Israel’s total war — but she is not a movement organizer on a national or global level. 

    What makes statements by people like Robinson and Clark so impressive is that they stand out in a realm of stunning silence. 

    The New Frontier

    The Democratic Party in the United States, for example, has no serious leadership. (The same might be said for Socialists in Europe and the Labour Party in Great Britain.) The Democrats inability to rally around 33-year-old Zohran Mamdani who is running for mayor of New York City is an example of the Party’s cowardice and/or lack of vision. 

    While the older, established Democrats are quick to criticize Trump, they offer no new strategies or actions.

    We are desperately waiting for something new. JFK’s motto The New Frontier touched a foundational American embrace of the frontier, the space between the known and new. Back in 1893, historian Frederick Jackson Turner came up with a theory that the continual expansion of the American frontier westward allowed for continual reinvention and rebirth, and that shaped the character of the American people. This frontier theory is essential to an America’s identity built on always moving forward. In contrast, Trump’s return to the past is anti-frontier. MAGA is nostalgia and passé. 

    Where are today’s young progressives presenting new political possibilities as Hayden and his cohorts did with Port Huron and SDS? Or does asking that question show that I am being too nostalgic about the past as well?   

    A version of this article was published previously in the magazine Counterpunch.

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. Who are “The Elders” and what are they trying to achieve?

    2. What was “The New Frontier” and what did it say about the American character?

    3. Do you think you would be more likely to vote for some very old over someone very young for political office? Why?

     

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  • Should a society pay for sins of the past?

    Should a society pay for sins of the past?

    The Church of England announced in January that it would pledge £100 million to address the past wrongs of its historic links with the colonial-era slave trade.

    The acknowledgment by Justin Welby, the Archbishop of Canterbury, that it was “time to take action to address our shameful past” was a sign of a growing focus on reparations for the sufferings of slavery some two centuries after it began to be outlawed.

    At issue is the question of whether states, institutions and even individuals, whose predecessors and ancestors profited from trans-Atlantic slavery, owe a debt to the descendants of those who were forced to endure it.

    Up to 12 million enslaved Africans are estimated to have been forcibly shipped across the Atlantic from the 16th and 19th centuries by European colonisers.

    The now independent countries of the Caribbean and Africa that emerged from the colonial era have long pressed for an apology and restitution from those societies that were enriched by the trade.

    Slavery and civil rights

    In the United States, those pressuring for reparations to be paid to the descendants of slaves have highlighted the continuing economic and social pressures on many Black Americans, a century and a half after the institution of slavery was formally abolished.

    The U.S. debate has led to political controversy over who should receive reparations, with some campaigners in California pressing for potentially life-changing pay-outs to individual descendants of those exploited well into the post-slavery era. In January, Los Angeles County agreed to pay $20 million for a beach that was seized from a Black family in the 1920s and returned to their heirs this summer.

    Wider attention to the issue was spurred in part by the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, an African-American man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis in 2020.

    His death galvanised the Black Lives Matter movement and prompted widespread demonstrations that spread from the U.S. to more than 60 countries.

    Within weeks of Floyd’s murder, anti-racism protestors in the UK had toppled the statue of Edward Colston, a 17th-century Bristol merchant and slave trader who, until then, was barely known outside his home city. Other monuments to those said to have profited from the trade were also targeted.

    One factor in the wider public’s previous ignorance of Colston and others might be that the history of the slave era had traditionally been taught in Britain and elsewhere from the perspective of the positive legacy of white abolitionists such as William Wilberforce, rather than on the perpetrators of slavery.

    Restitution now for sins of the past

    The issue of reparations — should they be paid and, if so, to whom? — raises important moral and philosophical questions.

    Should modern generations pay for the crimes of their ancestors, while others are compensated for wrongs they did not personally suffer? Even the Christian Bible is ambivalent about whether the sins of the father should be visited on the son.

    In the midst of the wider theoretical debate, however, some people have already made up their own minds.

    This month [Eds: February], the family of BBC correspondent Laura Trevelyan announced they would pay £100,000 in reparations for their ancestors’ ownership of more than 1,000 enslaved Africans on the Caribbean island of Grenada.

    They also planned to visit the now independent state of Grenada to issue a public apology.

    Trevelyan and her relatives had been unaware of the slavery connection until her cousin, John Dower, uncovered it in 2016 while working on the family’s history.

    Can equity be achieved without reparations?

    Dower acknowledges the role of George Floyd’s death and the Black Lives Matter campaign in raising the profile of the reparations debate. But he says it was the publication of a database of slaveowners by University College London that led to the revelation of his own family’s connection.

    He told News Decoder the world continued to live with the legacy of slavery. Dower is a resident of Brixton, a London neighbourhood that attracted Caribbean immigrants from the 1950s.

    “I see the effects of slavery every day of the week in terms of people’s lives and job prospects,” Dower said.

    Laura Trevelyan meanwhile acknowledges she is a beneficiary of the activities of her ancestors of which she had previously been unaware. “If anyone had ‘white privilege’, it was surely me, a descendant of Caribbean slave owners,” the London Observer quoted her as saying.

    “My own social and professional standing nearly 200 years after the abolition of slavery had to be related to my slave-owning ancestors, who used the profits to accumulate wealth and climb up the social ladder.”

    From individual action to a societal response

    Dower said he hoped the family’s contribution would act as an example. “We are giving according to our means. And it will be going to educational funding. We are talking about mentorship and knowledge exchange.”

    The actions of individuals may indeed put pressure on others linked to the slave trade.

    The government of Barbados is reported to have been in touch with the multimillionaire British Conservative MP Richard Drax, whose ancestors were among the prime movers behind the slave-based sugar economy on the Caribbean island.

    He still owns a plantation in Barbados as well as the 17th-century Drax Hall that local politicians want to turn into an Afro-centric museum.

    Barbados and other states in the Caribbean Community (Caricom) have long been campaigning for the payment of reparations from former colonial powers and the institutions that profited from slavery.

    It now seems that individuals might set a trend that politicians and institutions would be obliged to follow.

    The reparations debate remains a live one. It raises potentially divisive issues of Black and white identity that already feed the so-called culture wars. In the light of economic turmoil, it can also spur the rhetoric of those who oppose reparations on the grounds that ‘charity begins at home’.

    Those arguing for reparations perhaps have one trump card in their hand. One community was indeed compensated when the era of trans-Atlantic slavery ended. It was the slaveowners themselves.

    Money that should perhaps have gone to the victims of the slave trade went, instead, to those who had profited from their labours.

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. Should modern generations pay for the crimes of ancestors who owned slaves?

    2. Should people be compensated for wrongs done to their families long before they were born?

    3. If reparations are paid, should they go to individuals; governments; or to institutions that might foster greater inter-community understanding?

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  • Is international strife the norm?

    Is international strife the norm?

    A war that couldn’t be stopped

    When Russia invaded Ukraine, hopes for action by “the international community” were dashed within days when the UN General Assembly failed to pass a resolution demanding the immediate withdrawal of invasion forces: five countries voted against it and 35 others abstained.

    They included two of the five countries that have permanent seats on the UN Security Council. Any of those five countries can veto any joint measure even if the entire rest of the world is in favour.

    But even as the UN failed to intervene in the Ukraine conflict in the role of “the international community” as it was perceived by many during the Cold War, a group of countries — led by the United States but including NATO and the European Union — have since supported Ukraine with billions worth of weapons and economic aid.

    On an anniversary of the civil war in Syria, meanwhile, the advocacy group Amnesty International blamed “the international community’s catastrophic failure to act” for the war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in that conflict. It was Russian air power that turned the tide of war in favour of President Bashar al-Assad’s government.

    Assad might be a pariah in the West. But he was embraced by the Arab League in May. That’s a 22-member organization of nations in North Africa, West Asia and parts of East Africa. It had expelled Syria in 2011 for cracking down on anti-government protestors with a brutality so savage it was shocking even to an organisation with a poor record of concern for human rights.

    If the United Nations is powerless because it can’t reach unanimity of its members and if Russia and its allies have different world views than the member nations of NATO and these views differ from the concerns of the members of the Arab League, what “international community” is there?

    Democracy battles tyranny.

    As for the shared vision for a better world visualized by Annan: is it becoming dimmer or brighter?

    There is reason for pessimism. Around the world, democracy is in decline and authoritarian leaders, such as Syria’s Assad and Russia’s Putin, are literally getting away with murder.

    Freedom House, a Washington-based non-governmental organisation that keeps track of global freedom and peace, says in its latest report that global freedom has declined for 17 consecutive years.

    The United States was once considered a model for others to follow. But Donald Trump, in his four years as president, has encouraged authoritarian leaders. After he lost the presidential election in 2020, he attempted to halt the peaceful transfer of power.

    Trump loathed international agreements and pulled the United States out of the International Criminal Court, the UN Human Rights Council, the global compact on migration and the Paris Climate Accords.

    Every country in the world has signed the Paris agreement, making it one of the few actions that can be ascribed to the entire international community. Trump’s successor, Joe Biden, signed the paperwork to bring the United States back into the Paris agreement on his first day in office.

    Can regional organisations come together?

    As far as the more routine use of the phrase is concerned, Richard Haas, long-time president of the New York-based think tank Council on Foreign Relations until he retired in June, once described the dilemma in unusually blunt terms:

    “The problem is that no international community exists,” he said. “It would require that there be widespread agreement on what needs to be done and a readiness to do it. Banning the term would mean that people and governments assume a greater responsibility for what takes place in the world.”

    In some ways governments are assuming greater responsibility, if not as one giant international bloc than by an alphabet soup of sub-groups. There is the G-7, an informal bloc of wealthy democracies (the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Canada, Italy and Japan). There is the G-20 of 19 countries and the European Union. There is ASEAN, the Association of 10 South East Asian Nations. There is the OAS, the Organization of American States. Finally, there is the African Union which brings together 55 countries across that continent.

    In theory, they could work towards agreement on what needs to be done to make the world a safe, secure and prosperous place.

    Much of their emphasis tends to be on economic matters, none more than BRICS, an acronym coined by Goldman Sachs banker Jim O’Neill for a grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. Moves are underway to widen that group and turn it into a counterweight to the industrialized West.

    Could all those groups, working on parallel tracks, result in a true international community? Perhaps the next generation of politicians and citizen activists will succeed where their elders failed.

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. Can you think of a way to replace the phrase “the international community”?

    2. Do you consider your own country part of it?

    3. Can you think of cases where engaged citizens changed their governments’ policies?

     

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  • When nations go too far

    When nations go too far

    When one nation invades another as Russia did with Ukraine, or when one country attacks civilians and then in retaliation for attacks on its citizenry the other country launches disproportional violence, where does international law come in?

    What good is international law if countries continue to violate its basic premises?

    Even though going to war violates most international law, international humanitarian law (IHL) is designed to establish parameters for how wars can be fought.

    So, paradoxically, while war itself is illegal except for under unusual circumstances such as when a country’s very existence is at stake, international humanitarian law establishes the dos and don’ts of what can be done during violent conflicts. (IHL deals with jus in bello, how wars are fought, not jus in bellum, why countries go to war.)

    The basics of international humanitarian law have evolved over time.

    The development of proportional response

    One of the earliest sets of laws came out of ancient Babylon — which is now Iraq — around 1750 BC. The Hammurabi Code, named after Babylonian King Hammurabi, declared “an eye for an eye,” which was a precursor of the concept of proportional response.

    Proportionality means if someone pokes out your eye, you cannot cut off his legs, hands and head and kill all his family and neighbors.

    Most modern laws of war date from the U.S. Civil War and the Napoleonic wars in Europe. During the American Civil War, President Abraham Lincoln asked Columbia University legal scholar Franz Lieber to establish a code for conduct for soldiers during war.

    At about the same time, after observing a particularly horrendous battle of armies fighting Napoleon, the Swiss Henry Dunant and colleagues founded the International Committee of the Red Cross which lay the groundwork for the Geneva Conventions, which govern how civilians and prisoners of war should be treated.

    The basics of modern international humanitarian law can be found in the four Geneva Conventions of 1949 and their Additional Protocol of 1977. The purpose of the Conventions and Protocol is the protection of civilians by distinguishing between combatants and non-combatants and the overall aim of “humanizing” war by assuring the distinction between fighters and civilians.

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  • Are treaties worth the paper they are signed on?

    Are treaties worth the paper they are signed on?

    If you agree to something and put it in writing, shouldn’t you abide by that agreement? Until now, that seemed to be a pretty basic idea. 

    Agreements at the international level come in the form of treaties. When countries sign treaties they voluntarily agree to follow a given set of rules. The agreements tend to be broad and carefully negotiated. Once signed and ratified, treaties commit countries to obligations. 

    In June, the countries of Finland, Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania announced that they will withdraw from the 1997 Anti-Personnel Mine Treaty. Signed by 165 international states, the treaty forbids the use, production, stockpiling and transfer of anti-personnel landmines, which are devices buried in the ground that explode when someone steps on them. 

    This month, Ukraine announced it would also withdraw. 

    Russia’s 2002 invasion of Ukraine radically changed the geopolitical context that existed when the Mine Ban Treaty was signed. But since landmines are only used in times of war, it seems like the potential circumstance of war would have been considered when the countries agreed to ban them. 

    But Russia, which invaded Ukraine in 2022, never signed the treaty. So has the war in Ukraine really changed everything?

    Disarming the power of treaties

    All five countries that announced their withdrawal from the treaty border either Russia or Russia-friendly Belarus. The use of anti-personnel landmines can be easily seen as a defensive military action against Russia. Norway, however, which has a 121 mile land border with Russia, remains committed to its anti-mine obligations. 

    The withdrawals represent a serious weakening of disarmament treaties that have humanitarian objectives as well as respect for international law. The five-country withdrawals could be setting a precedent that could see countries withdraw from other treaties such as those banning biological, chemical and nuclear weapons as well as withdrawals from international institutions.

    The withdrawals are a considerable reversal for the International Campaign to Ban Landmines (ICBL), a loose coalition of non-governmental organizations that was awarded the 1997 Nobel Peace Prize along with its founding coordinator Jody Williams. 

    The campaign was an unusual movement that garnered the support of many high profile people, including Princess Diana, Paul McCartney and James Bond actor Daniel Craig.

    While treaties are formally signed by states, it is unique that the initiative behind the ICBL came from non-state organizations. 

    Banning a conventional weapon

    Back in 1999, Williams wrote that widespread support for a landmine ban came as a surprise. “Few imagined that the grassroots movement would capture the public imagination and build political pressure to such a degree that, within five years, the international community would come together to negotiate a treaty banning anti-personnel landmines,” she wrote. She noted that it was the first time in history that a conventional weapon in widespread use had been comprehensively prohibited.

    That this is no longer the case has shocked land mine opponents.

    “We are furious with these countries,” said Thomas Gabelnick, the current director of the ICBL. “They know full well that this will do nothing to help them against Russia.”

    The signing of the 1997 Ottawa Convention and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize were hailed as crucial steps in disarmament – getting governments to reduce their stockpiles of destructive weapons. 

    The treaty was the first disarmament agreement where governments and civil society worked closely together, representing a new form of international diplomacy. Unlike previous disarmament treaties, it banned weapons actually in use instead of striving to prevent or ban weapons designed as deterrents, such as nuclear weapons – weapons so destructive that the mere fear of their use would stop one country from attacking another.

    The treaty ratification process

    Historically, the treaty was signed during the euphoric period after the fall of the Berlin Wall and before the 11 September attacks that took down the World Trade Center in 2001. During this period global tensions seemed to be easing. Following the end of the Cold War many believed that more disarmament treaties would follow.

    The landmines treaty came into force in 1999 when it was ratified by a sufficient number of states. But some of the most largest and most powerful countries declined to sign. Besides Russia, other countries that stayed out include China, India, Iran, Pakistan, Israel and the United States.

    The treaty has successfully led to the destruction of tens of millions of stockpiled landmines. Hundreds of thousands of square miles have been de-mined (13,000 in Ukraine alone) and well the number of civilians maimed or killed by mines has been drastically reduced.

    The withdrawal by the five countries could be an unfortunate example for withdrawals from other disarmament treaties or multilateral organizations. 

    Mary Wareham, the deputy director of the crisis, conflict and arms division at Human Rights Watch, told The New York Times that the withdrawals set a terrible precedent. “Once an idea gets going it picks up steam,” she said. “Where does it stop?” 

    A treaty set to expire

    The last arms control agreement between the United States and Russia, for example, is scheduled to expire in January 2026. Will that treaty — the New Start Treaty — which eliminated important nuclear and conventional missiles, be renewed?

    The legitimate reason for leaving a treaty is force majeure, an unforeseen circumstance. As a Finnish Parliamentarian said justifying her country’s leaving the Treaty, the war in Ukraine “changed everything.” 

    Norway doesn’t agree.

    Writing for the European Leadership Network, Wareham and Laura Lodenius, the executive director at Peace Union of Finland, warned that the humanitarian impact will far outweigh any marginal military advantages. “The deterrent factor of re-embracing anti-personnel mines isn’t worth the civilian risk, humanitarian liabilities and reputational damage, all of which extend far beyond their borders,” they wrote.

    As for the United States, it has recently withdrawn from bilateral treaties — those between two nations — and several multilateral accords in which multiple parties sign on.

    A treaty that ended the Cold War

    In a historic ceremony in Iceland back in 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev signed the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF Treaty), which was largely seen as an end to the Cold War that had lasted since the end of World War II.

    Under the first Trump Administration in 2019, the U.S. withdrew from that treaty. 

    Trump has twice withdrawn the United States from the Paris Climate Accord and, in addition, withdrew from the Open Skies Treaty, which allows for the use of surveillance planes or drones for intelligence capturing purposes. 

    The United States has also withdrawn from institutions like the World Health Organization and is threatening to withdraw from the World Trade Organization. It has already left the U.N. Human Rights Council. 

    In an ominous move for multilateralism, Trump has set in motion a review of U.S. participation in intergovernmental organizations, including those that are part of the United Nations, with the intention of withdrawing from or seeking to reform them. 

    Breaking a treaty by executive order

    Trump’s executive order of 4 February 2025, started by saying: “The United States helped found the United Nations (UN) after World War II to prevent future global conflicts and promote international peace and security. But some of the UN’s agencies and bodies have drifted from this mission and instead act contrary to the interests of the United States while attacking our allies and propagating anti-Semitism.” 

    That’s his subjective interpretation of recent events. There is no justification in the mandate for the review for any change based on force majeure, certainly not that the United Nations and some of its agencies “drifted from this mission and instead act contrary to the interests of the United States.”

    Withdrawing from treaties or organizations has consequences for global stability. The announcement by the five countries that they are withdrawing from the Mine Ban Treaty is a worrisome addition to Trump’s general assault on multilateralism. Pacta sunt servanda, the underlying principle of contracts and law, translates to “agreements must be kept.” It is the foundation of international law and cooperation. 

    The withdrawals are a bad omen. They lessen the value of conventions and treaties. States should not respect their obligations only when they are in their favor. 

    Confidence that states will respect their obligations is the primary support for an international system. 

    The Ukraine war has not changed that. Without that confidence, the system collapses. 

    Can we agree on that?

    A version of this story has been published previously in the publication Counterpunch. 

     

    Questions to consider:

    1. What is a treaty?

    2. Why would a country decide to not ratify a treaty that bans landmines?

    3. When was the last time you agreed to do something. Was it difficult to keep that agreement?

     

     

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  • Is peace in the Middle East even possible?

    Is peace in the Middle East even possible?

    The State of Israel was created in 1948. The key word is created. While countries come into being in many different ways, such as violence, revolutions and treaties, the creation of the state of Israel was unique and has proven highly controversial.

    To understand the chaos that is now taking place in Israel and the Palestinian territories, one needs to return to that original creation.

    The British government ruled the territory known as Palestine under the League of Nations from 1922 until 1948. Already in 1917, the British government issued what is known as the Balfour Declaration which envisioned a Jewish state in what had been claimed a historic Jewish homeland.

    Jewish organisations had argued that the land called Israel has been the religious and spiritual center for Jews for thousands of years. While many countries recognized the new State of Israel in 1948, its creation did not effectively redress the dislocation of those who had been living on the territory that Israelis would inhabit.

    Following the end of World War II, European Jews who had been displaced during the Holocaust flocked to Israel. The United Nations divided the land into two states, one Jewish, one Arab, which further divided the Arab territory into three sections — the Golan Heights at the Syrian border, the West Bank at the Jordanian border and the Gaza Strip at the Egyptian border.

    The creation of deep divisions

    The division gave more than 50% of the land to Israel, leaving the Arabs with 42% even though they made up two-thirds of the population.

    This resulted in massive Arab displacement and is why the Jewish Independence Day of May 14 is followed by the marking of Nakba Day by Arabs, translated as “The Catastrophe”.

    Since Israel’s founding in 1948, there have been several outbreaks of violence between Israel and its neighbors. Among them were the 1948–49 War of Israeli Independence; 1956 Suez Canal Crisis; 1967 Six-Day War; 1973 Yom Kippur War; 1982 Lebanon War and various large-scale Palestinian uprisings known as Intifadas.

    None of these conflicts resulted in reparations for the hundreds of thousands of Arabs displaced by Israel’s creation, many of whom ended up in crowded refugee camps in Gaza, the West Bank and neighboring countries.

    Further inflaming tensions, Israeli settlers have continued establishing communities in the West Bank, which was conquered by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. The international community considers these colonies illegal, and some of the settlers have been found guilty of violence against the Arabs who live there.

    Working towards peace

    There have been several attempts to have peace agreements between Israel and its neighbors.

    The most important are the Camp David Accords of 1978 which was finally reduced to simple diplomatic relations between Egypt and Israel, and the 1993 Oslo accords which established formal relations between Israel and the Palestinian leadership, giving the latter self-governance over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank. Recently, there were talks about a larger regional agreement including Saudi Arabia.

    Then came 7 October 2023, when Hamas, an Islamist militant group, attacked Israeli settlers killing more than a thousand people, many of them women and children, and taking over 200 Israeli hostages.

    Israel’s response to the Hamas attack, which it justified as legitimate self-defense, has seen more than 32,000 Gazans killed with over 70,000 wounded, mostly civilians with many elderly and children. Much of Gaza’s infrastructure has been destroyed, including hospitals and humanitarian aid has been blocked. Fighting has continued for more than six months as Israel seeks to destroy Hamas and at the same time free the hostages.

    The emotions behind the conflict are extreme. The Israelis condemn Hamas as a terrorist organisation whom they argue are out to kill all Jews and destroy the State of Israel. Hamas, which was the official ruling organisation in the Gaza Strip, maintains that Palestinians have been reduced to living in an open-air prison since it took control of Gaza in 2005 when Israel disengaged.

    Israel and the international community

    The fighting in Gaza has raised many questions relevant to international humanitarian law. South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice in The Hague accusing Israel of genocide. The Court ruled that there was “plausible” genocide and ordered several provisional measures Israel must follow, among them increasing access to humanitarian aid.

    Beyond Israel, Hamas and the International Court of Justice, various resolutions have been proposed before the United Nations Security Council concerning a ceasefire. Although the latest resolution did pass, with the United States abstaining and not using its veto power, no ceasefire has taken place, although increased humanitarian aid is now entering Gaza.

    But the situation of the Palestinians remaining in Gaza remains precarious at best.

    The Israel/Hamas conflict has spread to other countries in the region, including Iran, which has long been a supporter of Hamas. On 1 April 2024, Israeli warplanes destroyed a building in Damascus, Syria, part of an Iranian Embassy complex, killing several Iranian officers involved in covert actions in the Middle East.

    Shortly after, Iran sent hundreds of drones and cruise missiles towards Israel, which were largely intercepted by Israeli and U.S. air defenses. Subsequently, several drones were downed by Iran’s air defense system near Isfahan, but it is not clear whether they came from Israel or other sources.

    What is clear is that there has been enormous international pressure to de-escalate the current situation in order to stop the Israel/Hamas conflict from growing into a regional conflict involving Iran and other countries, or even a more global escalation of violence.

    Questions to consider:

    1. How did the United Nations divide Palestine to create the state of Israel?

    2. What happened to the people displaced in 1948 when Isreal was created?

    3. What kind of compromises do you think might have to take place for there to be peace between Israelis and Palestinians? 

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  • Project POTUS 2025 Middle School Winners Announced

    Project POTUS 2025 Middle School Winners Announced

    Indianapolis, IN — Project POTUS, a national middle school history initiative from the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site, has named winners for this year’s competition. 

    Since the founding of our nation, there have been nearly half a billion American citizens. Of those, over 12,000 of us have served in Congress. Just 115 have become Supreme Court Justices. Only 45 citizens have become President of the United States. There’s something exceptional about each POTUS — good, bad, or otherwise. Project POTUS? challenges students in middle school to research an American president and create a video, 60 seconds or less, representing the POTUS chosen in a way that is creative, supported by good history research, and fun. A Citizen Jury made up of nearly 100 people reviewed all qualifying submissions and selected this year’s winners.

    Grand Jury’s Grand Prize and Spotlight Award Selections  

    Grand Prize Winner ($500 award) 

    • 6th grader Peter Gestwicki from Muncie, Indiana won grand prize for his video about Theodore Roosevelt. Watch his winning video  here.

    Spotlight Award  Winners ($400 award winners) 

    • 8th grader Grace Whitworth from St. Richard’s Episcopal School in Indianapolis, Indiana won for her video about President Thomas Jefferson. Watch her winning video  here.
    • 8th grader Izzy Abraham from Sycamore School in Indianapolis, Indiana for her video about President Calvin Coolidge. Watch his winning video  here.
    • 8th grader Clara Haley from St. Richards Episcopal School in Indianapolis, Indiana for her video about President George W. Bush. Watch his winning video  here. 
    • 8th graders Delaney Guy and Nora Steinhauser from Cooperative Middle School in Stratham, New Hampshire for their video about President James Polk. Watch their winning video  here.

    37 students throughout the country each won their Presidential Category and received $100 awards. Check out all of their videos  here.

    The 2026 Project POTUS competition begins Election Day, November 4, 2025 and all submissions must be entered by Presidents Day, February 16, 2026. Learn more  here.

    Project POTUS is made possible by the generous support from Russell & Penny Fortune. 

    About the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site

    The Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site is the former home of the 23rd U.S. President. Now celebrating its 150th anniversary, it is a stunningly restored National Historic Landmark that shares the legacy of Indiana’s only President and First Lady with tens of thousands of people annually through guided tours, educational programs, special events and cultural programs. Rated “Top 5 Stately Presidential Homes You Can Visit” by Architectural Digest, the Harrison’s 10,000 square foot Italianate residence in downtown Indianapolis houses nearly 11,000 curated artifacts spanning more than two centuries of American and presidential history. Recently expanded and restored through a $6 million campaign, the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site is also consistently ranked a Top 5 Thing To Do in Indianapolis by TripAdvisor. Signature programs and initiatives include: Future Presidents of America; Project POTUS, Candlelight Theatre; Juneteenth Foodways Festival; Wicket World of Croquet; and Off the Record. Founded in 1966 as a private 501c(3) that receives no direct federal support, the Benjamin Harrison Presidential Site is dedicated to increasing public participation in the American system of self-government through the life stories, arts and culture of an American President. Find out more at PresidentBenjaminHarrison.org. 

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  • Decoder Replay: Let’s celebrate Mandela Day

    Decoder Replay: Let’s celebrate Mandela Day

    February 11, 1990 was truly a turning point in the history of South Africa.

    For decades the nation at the southern tip of the continent had been pilloried by much of the rest of the world. This was because of its apartheid racial segregation laws that hugely favoured the white population over the far larger and mostly black majority.

    Apartheid means “separateness” in Afrikaans, the language rooted in Dutch that evolved when the country was a colony.

    By 1989 — itself a remarkable year for the wave of revolutions in communist East Europe — South Africa had made significant steps in its effort to end its pariah status. International sanctions were costing it dearly economically, culturally and in sporting terms.

    As a taste of events to come, the government freed senior figures in the African National Congress (ANC), the exiled organisation waging a low-level guerrilla campaign against apartheid.

    The fight against apartheid

    A favourite weapon of the ANC was small mines. One of them exploded in a shopping mall in the commercial capital Johannesburg just as I had finished shopping there and was safely in the mall’s car park.

    But there was no word when ANC leader Nelson Mandela — who ultimately spent 27 years incarcerated, much of it in an island prison — would be freed.

    Lawyer Mandela entered the world stage with a famous speech at his 1963 trial for sabotage acts against the state in which he stated that freedom and equality were “an ideal for which I am prepared to die.”

    Releasing Mandela from prison was a key card that South Africa could play to regain respectability, and the government would play it “soon,” Anton Lubowski, an anti-apartheid activist and human rights advocate, told me.

    Lubowski did not live to see his forecast fulfilled. In September 1989, gunmen pumped AK-47 rifle rounds into him, with the coup de grace a pistol bullet. He was the latest in a long list of opposition figures in southern Africa to fall victim to unnamed assassins.

    Freedom as news

    Knowing that Mandela was expected to be released — his freedom would be a huge news story — but not knowing how or when it would happen was particularly frustrating for a news agency reporter like me.

    Reuters and its rivals compete tooth and nail to get stories first, and to get them right. Being just one minute behind another news agency on a major story rates as a failure.

    What I dreaded most was that Mandela would be released from prison unannounced, just as his ANC colleagues had been. This possibility made it necessary for me and my colleagues to be constantly alert, straining to catch the first authentic information.

    The problem was that, then as now, the pressure to get hard information was compounded by a fog of fake news and hoaxes, saying that the release of Mandela was imminent or indeed had actually happened.

    These claims were typically relayed on pagers, the messaging devices of the pre-smartphone age. Such messages, no matter how bogus-sounding, had to be checked. This took time and energy and shredded nerves.

    Recognizing a hero

    It was one such scare that prompted reporters to flock to an exclusive clinic outside Cape Town where Mandela was known to be undergoing treatment.

    It was then that another problem surfaced: Nobody among us knew what Mandela looked like after his marathon spell in prison. There had been no pictures of him. Would we even recognise him if he walked out of the clinic?

    The hilarious result was that every black man leaving the clinic — whether porter, delivery man, cleaner or whatever — came under intense scrutiny from the ranks of the world’s press assembled outside.

    But on the timing of the release, I had a lucky break. A local journalist friend introduced me to a senior member of a secretive police unit who was willing to share with me whatever information he had on when Mandela would be a free man.

    The police official’s name was Vic — I did not then know his full name. But he was no fake policeman. He introduced me to his staff in his offices, which were in a shopping arcade concealed behind what looked like a plain mirror but was in fact also a door.

    Verifying fake claims.

    All cloak-and-dagger stuff. With enormous lack of originality, my Reuters colleagues and I referred to Vic as our “Deep Throat,” the pseudonym of the informant who provided Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with information about the 1972 Watergate scandal.

    Some time in the latter half of 1989, Vic told me in the less than cloak-and-dagger setting of a Holiday Inn coffee shop that Mandela was likely to be released in January or February of 1990.

    This was not precise information, but at least it was better than anything that I had, or apparently anybody else in the news business.

    In later meetings, Vic refined the information without disclosing the exact day of the release, which apparently was known to just four people in the South African government.

    One of the ways Vic was valuable to us was that whenever a fake claim about Mandela’s whereabouts surfaced, I could call him, day or night, to check. And it was Vic who told me on February 10 that “it looked like” Mandela would be a free man the next day.

    And so it proved.

    Mandela instantly became universally recognisable, South Africa disbanded apartheid, elections were held in which all races voted, the ANC won, and Mandela became South Africa’s first fully democratically elected president.

    February 11, 1990 is indeed a day to remember.

     

    Three Questions to Consider

    1. Why did apartheid last so long?

    2. What was the reaction of South African whites to Mandela’s release?

    3. Can you think of someone today who is trying to fight against an system of oppression?

     

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  • How important could one court be?

    How important could one court be?

     

    A polarized electorate

    The first Italo-American to serve on the Supreme Court, Scalia had been appointed by Ronald Reagan, a Republican president. Of the eight remaining justices, four were appointed by Republican presidents and four by Democrats.

    Both parties recognize that Scalia’s successor could tip the scales in close votes. Cases currently before the Court involve climate change, affirmative action, abortion, unions, immigrants and contraception — issues where the electorate is deeply divided.

    Although the Constitution stipulates that the president nominates Supreme Court justices, Republican candidates for the presidency have said the choice of Scalia’s successor should be left to whoever succeeds Barack Obama in the White House next January. Obama, a Democrat, has said he will send a nomination to the Senate in due course.

    That partisan split can be explained by the weight of the Court’s decisions and the polarization of the U.S. electorate.

    Whereas historically the two major parties have been able to agree, sometimes begrudgingly, on the choice of justices, the process has become far more partisan and divisive in recent decades.

    Unfavorable opinions

     The gaping ideological split in the current Congress and an increasingly vitriolic presidential campaign ensure a bitter fight in coming months.

    The political acrimony was reflected in a nationwide poll conducted last year by the Pew Research Center.

    Following recent Supreme Court rulings on Obamacare and same-sex marriage, unfavorable opinions of Court have reached a 30-year high, the survey found. And opinions about the court and its ideology have never been more politically divided.

    “Republicans’ views of the Supreme Court are now more negative than at any point in the past three decades,” it said. Little wonder that Republican presidential candidates are keen to put a conservative in the vacant seat.

    While the Supreme Court is an independent branch of government, its composition is not — and has never been — immune from politics. The nomination of justices is part of the system of checks and balances.

    But at the end of the day, the system requires the willingness of voters and their representatives to adhere to laws, executive orders and court rulings, however deep the political divide. If that faith ever crumbled, the U.S. experiment in democracy would be under threat.

     

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