What’s next for Afghanistan? Two experts make predictions

Kambaiz Rafi, UCL and Scott Lucas, University of Birmingham

In late August 2021, the US completed its withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan, ending a 20-year occupation. The Taliban retook the country with shocking speed. The Islamic fundamentalist political group was founded in 1994 and controlled most of Afghanistan until the US-led campaign ousted it in 2001. Now it faces the challenge of forming a new government.

Despite pledges to uphold human rights, Taliban forces are reported to have broken many promises. Women after a certain age are being excluded from school and public life and the United Nations has received allegations of reprisal killings. The safety of different ethnic and religious groups remains uncertain. The rise of the Taliban has taken a toll on Afghan media too, with more than 250 news services shut down. So what does the future hold for Afghanistan? Will the situation deteriorate further? And what can the international community do to help?

We asked US foreign policy professor Scott Lucas and political economy researcher Kambaiz Rafi.

Are the Taliban of today any different from the group ruling 20 years ago?

Kambaiz Rafi: The Taliban first emerged back in the 1990s. Afghanistan had recently come out of a ten-year Soviet occupation. This was followed by four to five years of internal conflict in rural areas and the big cities. The country was dismally diminished and subdued, and infrastructure that had been built before the 1970s more or less reduced to rubble. The population, which in the 1980s amounted to about 18 million people, had been reduced by about a third. Partly, this was the result of war-induced emigration to countries like Iran and Pakistan.

So when the Taliban first gained power in 1996, imposing draconian measures was much easier than today. Such measures in part reflect a culture rooted in the tribal dynamics of southern Afghanistan.

Things are different now – although not that different. Parts of the Taliban had to deal with the international community during the group’s 2002-2021 insurgency. This led to the formation of a political wing and, by 2013, an official office in Qatar. It became politically and media savvy and understood that it takes more than monitoring men’s beards and women’s presence on the streets to govern a country.

Parts of the Taliban are now attempting to project a modified version of the group, based on this new awareness of the realities of the world. On the other hand, extremist fringes within the Taliban want a return to policies similar to those implemented by the 1990s regime. It’s important to remember that the Taliban is not a homogeneous entity, but is divided into more or less extreme schools of thought.

Scott Lucas: As Kambaiz has illustrated, there is not a single picture here. The Taliban today are aware of 21st-century advances such as social media, which was non-existent in 2001. Plus, a number of members of the Taliban who had been outside the country pursuing political projects, notably through the Doha talks, have interacted with the international community. They are aware that one of their downfalls in 2001 was that they were isolated. Only three countries recognised the Taliban regime back then: Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

At the same time, Afghanistan is a large country. Kabul is very different from the rural areas, and indeed also from cities like Herat, Kandahar, Kunduz and Jalalabad. There may be local commanders and local fighters implementing their radical versions of Sharia law without direction from Kabul.

We really only see what’s happening in Kabul right now. We’ve had glimpses of public executions in Herat and bombings in Kunduz, probably by Islamic State - Khorasan Province (ISIS-KP) but, overall, a jumbled picture is the best we can hope for.

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What will become of women’s rights under the Taliban?

KR: Although the Taliban regime now has a caretaker cabinet, pronouncements about domestic policies should be taken with a pinch of salt.

At the beginning of the first regime, the Taliban said it would keep women at home until “conditions are right” for them to come out to work. But such conditions never came. During the five years the Taliban spent in power in Kabul, women were locked at home. If they left the house, they had to do so in the company of a male guardian – a brother, son or husband.

The same reasoning – unsuitable conditions – is currently being used to prevent girls from accessing education. But the premise is plain wrong. The Taliban considers segregated classes to be the main condition for letting girls back into schools. Based on my experience studying in Kabul, girls and boys study together until class six (around age 12). After that, however, they take separate classes. In short, the condition posed by the Taliban is satisfied by the rules that are already in place. Their decision to prevent girls from going to school simply stems from the group’s retrograde ideology. According to this ideology, women should be confined to domestic affairs.

Today’s group cannot let go too much of its archaic ideology. If it did so, it would risk eroding credibility in the eyes of their more extreme elements and losing them to the local branch of the Islamic state in Afghanistan – the Islamic State - Khorasan Province. The Taliban would be seen to have abandoned its core Islamist values.

SL: I think that’s a great reading of the situation from so many different dimensions. We do know that there are women, including teachers, who are in hiding. They are concerned that if they come out, they will be identified as being part of the previous secular approach to education, and be punished for it. We are in limbo regarding what actually happens inside the country regarding women’s participation in all spheres of life.

How women’s progressive withdrawal from public life manifests is, in a sense, through self-regulation or self-censorship – in the workplace, in public spaces, and even at home. Many women do this to ensure they don’t fall foul of the Taliban. There was some protesting going on, made possible in Kabul by the presence of the international media. But it is, again, very difficult to scrutinise the situation beyond Kabul.

A number of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) were involved in promoting education including for girls inside the country. The Taliban initially said that NGOs could continue to operate. But a lot of them had to pull back because of the uncertainty.

I predict that the international community will put some conditions on aid tied to advancing, or at least maintaining, the status-quo in areas like education, health and community activity. But they are months away from that because the Taliban aren’t organised yet. Plus, the international community is in disarray, given the speed at which everything fell apart.

Would it be wise for the international community to grant legitimacy to the Taliban?

SL: As the Taliban have yet to establish a functioning government, even their biggest backers – such as Pakistan – are being cautious about recognising the Taliban’s rule as legitimate. As for the US, they aren’t going to recognise the Taliban in the near future, but nor are they going to try to remove the Taliban from power as they did in 2001. And when they did so then, it wasn’t because of the internal Afghan situation, but because of their war on terror.

When the Americans went to meet the Taliban in Qatar in October this year, they likely sought an agreement on collaborating against the common threat of Islamic State – Khorasan Province, an affiliate of Islamic State. While the Taliban refused to commit to this publicly, behind the scenes there would probably have been nods and winks. Not for nothing, the Taliban made a public statement (and they did so very quickly) in which they welcomed a US commitment to limited humanitarian aid.

In short, if the Taliban deal with the terrorist threat, aren’t too aggressive in terms of their foreign policy, and don’t get too close to Russia and China, the Americans will deal with them as the group in power.

But the Afghan people seem to be expendable in this, as do women’s rights, the rights of LGBTQ communities, and inherent rights to education, healthcare and political participation. The Biden administration is, in part, to blame for this. It gives lip service to human rights, but has in fact relegated them. When Joe Biden decided that US forces had to withdraw from Afghanistan back in April 2021, the US commitment to the Afghan people ended.

KR: Your point begs the question: is there a way for the west to offer Afghans humanitarian support without officially recognising the Taliban? I believe there is – after all, between 2002 and 2021 much of the aid to Afghanistan did not go through Afghan state machinery.

Before the recent Taliban takeover, health and education, like many other state services, were highly subsidised by international assistance. This could be revived on a smaller scale. But I highly doubt that the same amount of funding will flow into Afghanistan.

There are certainly potential risks to recognising the Taliban. Doing so at this point, while the ideologically fanatical element is still very dominant in the group, could contribute to strengthening the Taliban’s conception of themselves as leaders of some messianic mission in the region.

To refer to their leader, Hibatullah Akhunzadah, they still use the title Amir-ul Momenin, which means “leader of the faithful” – a title that was also claimed by Islamic State leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. The implied meaning is that the “Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” is only one part of the totality of the Muslim population and the Taliban leader is, in effect, the leader of all Muslims.

Even though the Taliban do not overtly advocate global jihad – a term which can indicate an internal or an armed struggle, or the effort involved in building a good Muslim society – they nonetheless conduct their communications in a way that placates global jihadis. They also hold close ties with al-Qaeda and other global jihadi movements that do not recognise modern day boundaries and strive to establish a dominion for Muslim populations on earth called the caliphate.

The Taliban has so far not been entirely honest in their dealings with both the US and the former Afghan government – if you grant recognition to a group like this, what might it lead to? Given Pakistan – a nuclear power – is right next door, the security risks of an unbridled jihadi ambition could quickly spiral out of control.

SL: As for the question of whether granting financial aid is a good idea, I cannot but consider the matter at a personal level.

There are 14 million Afghans who are in food poverty, and too many of them are children. They have to deal with inadequate services, such as electricity and water, and with a country which has been damaged by years of conflict. If you cut off all essential support, how many of those people will be left with no level of subsistence? How many of them will die? I think that the best outcome would be to provide waivers on sanctions, especially those imposed by the US on the Taliban over “terrorism”. For example, there may be discussions around Afghanistan’s participation in the international coronavirus initiative, Covax.

The UN verified more than 6,470 grave violations against Afghan children during the past two years, with nearly half attributed to the Taliban. Sarah Brown/Wikimedia, CC BY

But the immediate question, of course, is whether it is wise to allow the Taliban access to tens of billions of dollars?

It is hard to even conceive of the Taliban and the IMF getting into the types of negotiations that many countries have. Such negotiations require transparency, competence and authority. If the Taliban manage to engage in negotiation, then I can tell you that we’re in a different situation than what we faced before 2001.

Is Afghanistan likely to become a breeding ground for terrorist groups once again?

SL: I don’t think seeing events through the prism of the war on terror, in place since 2001, has done anybody any good. And I think that’s as true of Afghanistan as anywhere else. The issues for Afghanistan after the US withdrawal are security, economics, politics, agriculture and manufacturing. When countering terrorism is your overall priority, you shove those to the side.

The label of terrorism is a dangerous thing. The US tried to obscure its disastrous withdrawal by committing to a continuation of the fight against terrorism. And the Taliban will go along with that. The Taliban will want to reassure the Chinese, who perceive a terrorist threat in China’s north-west and want to make sure that the Taliban don’t get involved in it.

The Kremlin, which suppressed terrorism in Chechnya and fears Islamic movements within Russia as destabilising to its authority, will also want the Taliban to say that they don’t support terrorism. So will the former Soviet republics, Pakistan, and so on. It’s in everybody’s interest for the Taliban to promise that they will deal with terrorism, but by no means does that fight against terrorism solve the fundamental issues for millions of Afghans in the near and foreseeable future.

Will Afghanistan once again become a safe haven for terrorist groups like al-Qaeda? Yuriy Seleznev/www.shutterstock.com

KR: In Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, Islamist groups like al-Qaeda are already seeing a revival. The competition among various Islamist groups will be judged domestically based on who is the more extreme, the more vicious and die-hard. I predict that this will push the Taliban towards more extreme positions.

As long as the more potent Salafist competitors – fundamentalist Muslims who seek to revive an original version of Islam purified from all western influences – are present on the scene, the Taliban’s current amorphous and tribal form of Islamist ideology will have to give formidable concessions, and undergo several setbacks. To retain their legitimacy both internally and externally, the group itself is likely to morph into a global menace and to maintain its commitment to host its jihadi brethren. Such a scenario will make it more and more difficult to disentangle the Taliban from al-Qaeda and from other Islamist groups, such as the Turkistan Islamist movement, or the Uzbekistan Islamic movement.

There are also social aspects to consider when trying to prevent people from slipping into extremism. International assistance with education and health services will be key. This will reduce the number of people who are pushed by poverty towards extremism and drawn to terrorist groups seeking purpose in life and monetary assistance.

What’s next for Afghanistan?

SL: If you’re an analyst of Afghanistan and the international context, caution is the watchword right now. There are countries that benefit from the Taliban being in authority.

I think Pakistan is a beneficiary, given the links it has had with the Taliban. And so is China in the long term – if Afghanistan were stable, it could become part of the Belt and Road Initiative, a major economic and political project for Beijing. Russia benefits at the very least because they think the US has been given a black eye. The same goes for Iran.

But everybody is playing a little bit of wait and see, especially while the economic crisis prevails.

Watchfulness should extend to the Afghan people. I think there will be other countries who will pay attention to Afghanistan. But at this point, nobody has the leverage to make life better for the Afghan people.

KR: There are essentially two scenarios for the Taliban from here.

One is what I call – for lack of a better term – the “Qatar-based inclusivity” approach, led by Afghanistan’s current deputy prime minister, Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar. This is a product of the diplomatically savvy Taliban wing that led negotiations with the US resulting in the February 2020 Doha Agreement. This wing appears to be less extremist and more amenable to political concessions. It has promised to form an inclusive government in return for international recognition and humanitarian assistance.

The other, more downbeat, scenario is a more extremist one, rooted in the group’s original spiritual capital, Kandahar. Having defeated the US, the biggest crusading force to the Taliban’s mind, the group’s more hardline participants might think they can secure total victory against the remaining domestic opponents to their rule.

But the latter approach confuses insurgency with governance. Now the Taliban are the police officers. They’re the ones responsible for the much more difficult task of establishing law enforcement. They are the target of groups who might wish to disrupt their rule.

I think that, mostly, the Taliban don’t fully understand the significant difference between being an insurgent group and being a government in Afghanistan – a country which is highly layered in terms of ethnicity, tribal allegiance and political geography. A country literally cut in two by a huge mountain range.

If the Taliban does pursue a more extremist line, it might not be able to cope with, for example, the gradual depletion of current resources, such as weapons degrading and vehicles deteriorating. Within a year or two, we might see other militant groups, including the National Resistance Front, a military alliance of former Northern Alliance members and other anti-Taliban fighters, and Islamic State Khorasan Province, taking advantage of the Taliban’s weaker position.

Meanwhile, it wouldn’t be too far-fetched to think that neighbouring countries and regional powers might at some point begin supporting anti-Taliban groups with money and weapons, if they deem it strategically important. For instance, Russia might consider helping the National Resistance Front, if worried about a spill-over of extremism from Afghanistan to Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and other countries on the other side of Amu River.

Regarding humanitarian support for ordinary Afghans, Scott is right to point out that public attention tends to shift. Nowadays, for instance, the millions of people threatened by starvation in Yemen are virtually ignored by the mainstream media. The sad reality is that Yemenis are viewed by many in power as not that significant in the big game of international relations. Similarly, the fate of ordinary Afghans may also slip out of the public eye – especially as media attention on the misery of Afghans would be a constant reminder to the US of its failure.

Kambaiz Rafi, Researcher in Political Economy, UCL and Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University of Birmingham

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Novavax COVID vaccine is nearing approval – but what impact will it have?

oasisamuel/Shutterstock

Michael Head, University of Southampton

The pandemic has been rumbling on for two years and is probably going to rumble on for years to come. And despite recent excitement about new drugs to treat COVID, it’s still vaccines that will underpin each country’s route out of the pandemic.

Immunisation has proven a highly effective way of stopping people from developing severe COVID. Vaccines can be given to large numbers of people to offer long-term protection in a way that other treatments, such as antiviral drugs, can’t. Vaccines also reduce the risk of getting infected and passing the virus on.

Many different vaccines are now available globally, with billions of doses administered. Yet because they’ve been unequally bought up, with richer countries capturing the lion’s share, only half the world has received at least one COVID vaccine dose.

So it’s good that there are additional vaccines showing promise that could soon be widely available to boost supplies – such as Novavax’s.

How this vaccine works

The Novavax jab is a protein subunit vaccine, and so is different from the mRNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer, the viral-vectored vaccines made by AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson, and the inactivated-virus vaccines made by Sinovac and Sinopharm.

Protein subunit vaccines contain a key part of whatever it is that they protect against. In this case, to protect against the coronavirus, they contain the spike proteins that cover the virus’s surface, which the immune system can easily recognise. When the real virus is encountered in the future, the immune system has defences that are trained to attack these outer parts of the virus and quickly destroy it.

Rather than present the body with the whole virus, the vaccine contains just copies of its spike proteins (pink). Design_Cells/Shutterstock

The spike proteins – by themselves harmless, being incapable of causing a COVID infection – are manufactured, intriguingly, within moth cells. The proteins are then purified and added to an adjuvant, an ingredient that enhances the immune response. The adjuvant here is made from an extract from the soapbark tree.

This subunit approach isn’t new. Vaccines for human papillomavirus and hepatitis B have used similar methods. Both are safe and effective.

The Novavax COVID vaccine also looks like it performs well. In phase 3 trials (the final phase of testing in humans) it was 90% protective against developing symptomatic COVID, with no severe cases reported among those receiving the vaccine (and thus, in essence, 100% protection against hospitalisation and death was observed). Its safety profile appears to be at the very least comparable, if not better than, the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines.

These published analyses pitted the vaccine against the alpha and beta variants, but not delta. However, a press release covering a trial investigating the use of Novavax as a booster suggests it’s highly effective at generating antibodies, including against delta.

What effect will it have?

Novavax’s vaccine looks like a very exciting product, but its future depends on it being authorised by some of the world’s key regulators.

It has received emergency use authorisation in Indonesia and the Philippines, and has completed submissions for regulatory approval to the UK, the EU regulator, Canada and also to the World Health Organization (WHO), which covers recommendations for low-income countries. Further submissions are expected to follow in other countries, including New Zealand and the US.

In the short term, most richer countries have significant stocks of existing vaccines, meaning their immediate rollouts and booster programmes are probably covered. The longer-term need for further doses in these countries is uncertain.

However, if the vaccine became available in rich countries, it could be a useful tool for reaching the vaccine hesitant. Some people who have avoided the newly developed mRNA and viral-vectored products due to safety concerns have said they would take a vaccine like Novavax’s that’s based on a more traditional method.

But the most appropriate use of Novavax over the next year or two would be to help reduce the extensive COVID vaccine inequity that exists. Only 6% of the population of sub-Saharan Africa has received two doses of any COVID vaccine. In low-income countries, less than 5% have received even one dose.

The Novavax vaccine also only needs to be refrigerated rather than frozen for storage, making it an attractive product for low-income countries. Yet to reach these countries it would probably need to be distributed through the global vaccine-sharing scheme, Covax, and getting the vaccine authorised by the WHO is a prerequisite for this.

Plus, there remain concerns that high-income countries will buy up most of the doses, regardless of their need for them. The UK, for example, has 60 million doses on order, and deals with the US and EU for 100 million and 200 million doses respectively. It’s unlikely these countries will have a genuine need for them. There simply has to be improved global sharing of available supplies.

The Serum Institute of India – the biggest vaccine manufacturer in the world – will be a producer of the Novavax vaccine. YashSD/Shutterstock

A further issue is that the company has reportedly struggled with the manufacturing process, with doubts raised about its ability to produce the vaccine in large quantities. It’s believed that this is the main reason its submissions for regulatory approval have been delayed. It had expected to file for authorisation in the first half of 2021.

India, though, may come to the rescue here. The Serum Institute of India will make the Novavax doses that will be supplied to Indonesia, and it has already ramped up production of other vaccines licensed to it for production – in particular the AstraZeneca vaccine. The institute is reportedly producing 240 million doses of COVID vaccines each month.

Having additional safe and effective vaccines will be vital to minimising the future impact of COVID. Novavax looks like a very helpful product, but from a global perspective, hopes rest on its approval by the WHO and on supplies being available. Other countries will be following the WHO’s decision making – and the vaccine’s performance in Indonesia and the Philippines – with great interest.

Michael Head, Senior Research Fellow in Global Health, University of Southampton

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

French outrage over US submarine deal will not sink a longstanding alliance

French President Emmanuel Macron talks to U.S. President Joe Biden at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters in Brussels on June 14, 2021. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

Hervé-Thomas Campangne, University of Maryland

France’s recent recall of its ambassador to the United States was an exceptional move in the long history of France-U.S. relations, which began with the 1778 treaties that created a military and commercial alliance between the two countries.

In France, President Joe Biden’s Sept. 15, 2021 announcement of a new trilateral security partnership between the U.S., Australia and Great Britain was met with disbelief and outrage.

The alliance, which enables Australia to acquire U.S. nuclear-powered submarine technology, voids a US$66 billion submarine deal Australia signed with France in 2016.

Beyond the financial implications his country will face after Australia’s change of mind, French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian accused the U.S. and its partners of “lying, duplicity, a major breach of trust and contempt.”

A Sept. 22 telephone conversation between Biden and French President Emmanuel Macron helped sketch a path toward reconciliation. The two leaders agreed on in-depth consultations on matters of strategic interest, to be followed by a meeting in Europe at the end of October. Yet Le Drian acknowledged that resolving the crisis “would take time and require actions.”

But despite French outrage over the deal, there is little chance of irreparable damage between the two countries. If anything, the current diplomatic crisis highlights a cycle of conflict and rapprochement that, as my research shows, has been characteristic of U.S.-France relations since the very beginning.

High expectations between the U.S. and a country that is often described as its “oldest ally” have often led to diplomatic misunderstandings and quarrels in the past.

‘Perfidy,’ privateers and protests

Less than 20 years after French and American soldiers fought side by side against the British on the battlefields of Brandywine and Yorktown, the two nations were at odds over the Jay Treaty of 1794, which restored economic relations between the U.S. and Great Britain.

France considered the treaty a betrayal by America. In a note that echoes minister Le Drian’s recent grievances, the governing five-member French Directorate complained that “The government of the United States has added the full measure of perfidy towards the French Republic, its most faithful ally.”

France consequently allowed its privateers to seize U.S. merchant ships, inflicting considerable injury to American commerce.

In the U.S., protests erupted in Philadelphia demanding war with France. And Congress soon passed legislation to fund a naval force, as well as the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798, which increased the residency requirement for American citizenship from five to 14 years, allowed the deportation of foreigners who were considered dangerous and restricted speech critical of the government.

The undeclared naval war that followed, later known as the “Quasi-War,” continued until the 1800 Treaty of Mortefontaine, which reestablished more friendly relations between the two countries. During the hostilities, France seized over 2,000 American ships along the Atlantic coast and in the West Indies.

US ill will

The two nations again barely avoided war during the 1852-1870 reign of Napoleon III.

In 1862, the French emperor attempted to establish a puppet regime in Mexico and installed Maximilian of Habsburg as emperor of Mexico.

For Napoleon III, this Catholic and Latin monarchy would counter the influence of the Protestant and republican U.S. in the New World.

The U.S. considered the move a violation of the Monroe Doctrine, the foreign policy established in 1823 by President James Monroe which stated that any European interference in the Western Hemisphere would be viewed as a hostile act against the U.S.

The cartoon depicts Uncle Sam as a large rooster, while other roosters, representing South American countries, walk free. European nations are represented by birds in a coop marked ‘Monroe doctrine.’ Fotosearch/Getty Images

Although the U.S. could not retaliate directly during the Civil War, fearing France would side with the Confederacy, Secretary of State William Henry Seward repeatedly warned the French that their interference in Mexico would lead to grave consequences.

By 1865, with the Civil War over, talk of a Franco-American war became widespread after President Andrew Johnson sent General John M. Schofield to Paris to warn the French that time was running out before the U.S. would resort to military intervention to expel Napoleon III’s forces from Mexico.

Although Napoleon III finally agreed to withdraw his troops, this Mexican intervention earned France much ill will in the U.S.

Its effects would be felt during the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, when despite the U.S. government’s neutral position, American public opinion clearly favored the Germans over the French.

20th-century tension

Diplomatic crises between the U.S. and France recurred throughout the 20th century.

According to U.S. diplomat George Vest, President Charles de Gaulle’s decision to withdraw France from NATO’s integrated military command in 1966 prompted former Secretary of State Dean Acheson and other foreign policy advisors to “figure every single way to throw the book back at France, put our relations to the minimum, retaliate in every punitive way we could.”

In the end, however, President Lyndon B. Johnson responded by telling de Gaulle that the U.S. was determined to join with other NATO members in preserving the deterrent system of the alliance.

In 1986, relations again soured after President François Mitterrand refused to let American bomber planes fly through French airspace on their way to strike military targets in Libya. Anti-French demonstrations followed in several U.S. cities. Crowds poured Bordeaux wine down the gutter and burned French products in bonfires.

Another crisis followed France’s refusal to support the U.S invasion of Iraq in 2003. American officials’ anger and desire to “punish France” was accompanied by a media campaign against the French “cheese-eating surrender monkeys.”

The diplomatic confrontation left very serious strains, which were not fully resolved until 2005, when bilateral relations resumed a more normal course.

In all these instances, as in today’s crisis, reactions on both sides went beyond the realm of politics: The language of passion replaced the more neutral discourse of diplomacy.

This passionate turn is the result of the mythology that surrounds France’s vision of itself as the “oldest ally” of the U.S. and of America’s idealistic vision of itself as France’s sole savior during World War I and World War II.

This mythology that whatever happens, France and the U.S. should always be on the same side – politically, economically and diplomatically – hinders more realistic relations between the two countries.

Going beyond the “oldest ally” rhetoric could allow both countries to take a more productive look at the true nature of their relations: those of two democratic nations whose interests sometimes coincide, sometimes diverge in the complex world of 21st-century international relations.

Hervé-Thomas Campangne, Professor of French Studies, University of Maryland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Lessons from the Virginia governor’s race: Pay attention to voters’ concerns instead of making it all about national politics

Exit political stage, heading to the right. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Mary Kate Cary, University of Virginia

I teach political speech writing. My students know that earlier this year I served on a committee that wrote the University of Virginia’s statement on free speech and free inquiry, which stated that “All views, beliefs, and perspectives deserve to be articulated and heard free from interference.”

I’m also a conservative who recently co-taught a 2020 elections class with a liberal colleague – and we both managed to survive. In my class, the mainly liberal students know they can speak freely about what’s important to them. Being open about your political views is important – but so too is listening generously to those of others.

They’ve written speeches about climate change, defunding the police, voting reforms, the Texas abortion law, misinformation on social media, electric cars, education policy, oil pipelines, critical race theory, China’s oppression of the Uyghurs, a universal basic income, and even the need for more napping during the day.

Across the board, they want to hear all sides of an argument and decide for themselves. They don’t want to be told what to believe. They’re taking speech writing because they want to learn how to make a good case in the face of a hostile audience.

And what I heard in the runup to the Nov. 2 elections was that students are increasingly worried about the job market and the economy they’ll be walking into upon graduation; they are concerned about rising crime rates in Charlottesville, where they attend college; and they wonder if they’ll be able to freely express their opinions – left or right – here at the university.

So it was no surprise to me that exit polls of Virginia voters this week showed that the economy and education were voters’ top concerns, just as they are for many of my 20-something students.

Former U.S. President Barack Obama campaigns with Democratic gubernatorial candidate amd former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe on Oct. 23, 2021, in Richmond, Virginia. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Old playbook, new circumstances

No matter what subject my students are writing speeches on – from critical race theory to electric cars – they want to take on all sides of an argument.

Similarly, many voters wanted to hear both candidates’ views on “kitchen table” issues – such as expanding job opportunities, ensuring public safety, and reforming education – in the closing weeks before the election. But that wasn’t always what voters got. Instead, they were often presented not with the issues, but with heavyweight political endorsements.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe brought in one Democratic star after another: President Joe Biden, first lady Jill Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Barack Obama, voting rights activist Stacey Abrams and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi all made appearances for the former governor.

On one hand, McAuliffe’s playbook has worked for others in the past. Research by Rob Mellen Jr. and Kathleen Searles into presidential campaign appearances during midterm elections between 1986 and 2006 showed that visits by the campaigner-in-chief can boost turnout and campaign donations for candidates – but only if the president is popular.

The problem in Virginia was that according to an NPR-PBS Newshour-Marist poll that came out the day before the election, a plurality of Democrats no longer want Joe Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024. Add to that Biden’s collapsing approval ratings, which sank lower every week in October, according to Reuters.

It seems McAuliffe didn’t realize the albatross effect Biden was having on his own candidacy. Or the disconnect right now between voters and those stars campaigning with him.

In contrast to McAuliffe, Republican candidate Glenn Youngkin talked early and often about his “day one game plan,” which focused on specific actions he’d take on the economy, public safety and education – the quality-of-life issues voters wanted to hear about. He hit the airwaves with TV ads comparing his policies with McAuliffe’s record and made his best case.

Winning candidate Glenn Youngkin made the concerns of parents a central part of his campaign. Win McNamee/Getty Images

Succession stymied

McAuliffe also faced an issue unique to Virginia that dampened his chances of success. Virginia is the only state in the nation that legally bars governors from a second successive term. Virginia law changed in 1851, after several governors – including Patrick Henry – had served two successive terms in office. So from 1851 onward, the state has had only one-term governors – with one exception, in 1974, when former Democratic governor Mills Godwin waited four years and came back as a Republican.

McAuliffe, who held the governor’s job from 2014 to 2018, was trying to be the second exception. There’s a reason former Virginia governors Chuck Robb, Mark Warner, George Allen and Tim Kaine all went on to become U.S. senators from the commonwealth instead of returning later as second-term governors. Virginians like a fresh face in the governor’s office, and this election was no exception.

The last time Virginia had a Republican governor was 2009, and a decade of one-party control of the governor’s mansion has led to a rising sense of frustration among voters – including suburban independents who swung away from Democrats this week – concerned with the stagnation of Virginia’s economy, the perceived lack of support for police and changes to parts of the educational curriculum in Virginia’s K-12 schools.

Instead of making a strong case for addressing these issues, the McAuliffe campaign preferred to bring Trump into everything. In fact, at one McAuliffe rally in late October, Joe Biden mentioned Donald Trump 24 times in a single speech.

That strategy didn’t, by and large, connect with the concerns of working-class voters – from truck drivers dealing with hikes in the gas tax to urban residents worried about the 20-year high in the murder rate to parents upset about what’s been going on in Loudoun County schools, where USA Today reports that school board meetings “have spiraled into violence, accusations of student sexual assault are dominating headlines, and some parents have sued the school board over the district’s equity initiatives.”

The turning point came when McAuliffe stunned a debate audience with his statement, “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what to teach,” not realizing that there are likely far more voters who consider themselves parents first – and members of a political party second. When he failed to disavow a Department of Justice memo labeling parents at school board meetings as “criminals,” there was no going back. His silence spoke volumes to everyone watching.

These days, it takes guts to speak up for what you believe in.

My sense is that there’s a growing number of Americans willing to stand up and courageously challenge the age in which we live. From what I’m seeing and hearing in just one college classroom, I have no doubt more brave young people – on both sides of the aisle – will make their case for positive change in the years to come.

Isn’t that what elections are all about?

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Mary Kate Cary, Adjunct Professor, Department of Politics and Senior Fellow, UVA's Miller Center, University of Virginia

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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