The Peninsula Foundation

Category: Opinion/Commentary

  • Guyana’s Energy Rise and the US-China Contest

    Guyana’s Energy Rise and the US-China Contest

    Introduction

    In just five years after oil production began, Guyana has become the world’s largest per-capita oil producer and South America’s second-largest supplier of crude. Daily output now stands at ~926,000 barrels, with recoverable reserves exceeding 11 billion barrels in the Stabroek Block alone. Guyana has recorded a GDP growth of 43.6 per cent in 2024, one of the fastest rates globally. The former British colony has very rapidly transitioned from being a peripheral Caribbean economy to a strategically significant energy producer. This has attracted growing attention from both the United States and China, both seeking to secure economic, political and strategic influence in the world’s newest petro state. The manner in which Georgetown navigates and hedges against great-power competition over its resources shall determine whether its oil wealth translates into prosperity or succumbs to the familiar resource curse.

    The Energy Architecture

    Guyana’s transition has been remarkably rapid, with commercial oil production commencing in December 2019, within five years after ExxonMobil’s discovery in 2015. The Stabroek consortium, comprising ExxonMobil (45 per cent), Chevron (30 per cent) and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC) (25 per cent), has invested billions in developing Guyana’s offshore resources. CNOOC alone has committed approximately $17.7 billion across six projects, making Guyana the company’s largest overseas investment. ExxonMobil projects production to reach 1.7 million barrels per day by 2030, placing Guyana among the world’s major non-OPEC producers.

     

    Guyana’s energy strategy also goes beyond crude extraction. The Guyanese government is pursuing downstream industrialisation through the $2 billion Gas-to-Energy project, which will transport offshore natural gas to a 300-megawatt power plant at Wales. Supported by a $526 million loan from the US Export-Import Bank, it aims to reduce electricity costs and support the development of a domestic manufacturing base. The participation of companies such as TotalEnergies, QatarEnergy and Petronas indicates efforts to broaden the investor base beyond the Stabroek consortium. At the same time, the continued political consensus around the original Stabroek production-sharing agreement between the Guyanese government and the Stabroek consortium has provided a degree of policy predictability through the 2030s.

    Washington’s Role

    The United States has moved quickly to leverage Guyana’s newfound energy boom into a broader strategic partnership. In March 2026, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright met President Irfaan Ali ahead of the inaugural Shield of the Americas Summit, describing Guyana as “a huge part of this strategy, a very well-governed country with great energy resources”. The summit established the Americas Counter-Cartel Coalition, including Georgetown among a select group of participating Caribbean states. While it has been officially framed as a counter-transnational crime initiative, the initiative reflects broader US efforts to strengthen its security presence in the Caribbean and refocus attention on the Western hemisphere.

    US engagement has also deepened militarily, with the USS Normandy and USS Mahan conducting exercises with the Guyana Defence Force (GDF) in 2025, while US Army Security Force Assistance Brigades have trained GDF units in jungle warfare and engineering since 2022. Washington has also supported the development of coast guard facilities and communications infrastructure, aiming to strengthen Guyana’s security amid continuing tensions over the Essequibo dispute with neighbouring Venezuela. The growing American footprint in Guyana is visible in the consolidation of Washington’s economic and strategic presence across Guyana’s energy, infrastructure and security sectors. Guyana’s strategic value to Washington also lies in its geography, where a sustained American presence in Georgetown helps shape the trajectory of a post-Maduro Venezuela, particularly as the question of whether Caracas drifts back into Beijing’s or Moscow’s orbit remains unresolved through the medium term.

    Beijing’s Parallel Track

    China’s presence in Guyana differs in scope and character. CNOOC is a passive financial partner in the Stabroek block, earning returns from a basin operated primarily by US energy companies. However, CNOOC has leveraged this expertise, earning secure production-sharing contracts for two offshore blocks in Trinidad and Tobago, citing its experience in Guyana.

    For Georgetown, Beijing has emerged as a significant infrastructure and development partner. Guyana signed a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) memorandum in 2018 and is negotiating a Joint Action Plan. Chinese state entities have financed or constructed major projects, including the expansion of the Cheddi Jagan International Airport, the $260 million Demerara River Bridge, East Coast road upgrades, and the $184 million East Coast rail-highway project. Beyond existing ones, Chinese developmental financing has been associated with prospective projects, including a deep-water harbour and the Amaila Falls hydropower project. Beijing has also provided approximately $36.6 million in debt relief, helping it earn political goodwill without generating the levels of debt distress seen elsewhere in the Caribbean. At the same time, Guyana’s trade asymmetry is visible, with its non-oil exports to China at $17 million in 2022, while imports from China are multiple times higher at $372 million. The Chinese telecom giant Huawei has emerged as a major player in Guyana’s telecommunications sector, drawing scrutiny from Washington on data governance and cybersecurity, amplified by cybersecurity researchers and Guyanese civil society.

    Venezuela’s Shadow

    For Guyana’s rise, the unresolved Essequibo dispute continues to cast a long shadow, with Caracas having escalated its rhetoric under former Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro. With Maduro’s removal, the risk of military escalation over the Essequibo has diminished, and the transition government in Caracas is likely to prioritise political stabilisation and economic recovery. However, the medium to long-term challenge for Georgetown remains economic, as Venezuela, which is gradually integrating into global energy markets, will compete with Guyana for the same Gulf Coast refining demand. Guyana’s growth opportunity remains intact, provided that the Caribbean remains within the US security umbrella and the Venezuelan energy sector’s recovery remains gradual.

    Guyana’s Balancing

    Amid intensifying great power competition, Guyana has sought to pursue multi-alignment. President Irfaan Ali’s re-election in September 2025 has ensured continuity in economic and foreign policy at a critical moment in the country’s growth story. Alongside the expansion of hydrocarbon production, Georgetown has pursued a dual-track approach to balance its oil-led growth by advancing its Low Carbon Development Strategy 2030 using its extensive forest cover to generate revenue through carbon credit mechanisms, including a $750 million agreement with Hess Corporation. At the same time, Georgetown has maintained close security and economic cooperation with the United States, retaining Chinese participation in the energy and infrastructure sectors, and continuing its adherence to Beijing’s One China policy. These policies reflect Guyana’s attempt to advance its economic and strategic objectives pragmatically, while seemingly preserving strategic autonomy by leveraging external partnerships.

    The Outlook

    By 2030, Guyana’s oil production could reach 1.7 million barrels per day. As the country’s energy sector grows, competition between the United States and China is likely to intensify in areas such as infrastructure and digital connectivity. While souring relations between Guyana and Venezuela increases Georgetown’s security dependence on Washington, a stable regional environment would allow Guyana to pursue a balanced foreign policy and more diversified external partnerships. Ultimately, Guyana is better positioned than other petrostates to convert its hydrocarbon wealth into prosperity, with the Natural Resource Fund Act of 2019 and the Stabroek production-sharing structure indicating a stable economic and institutional architecture that was absent in Venezuela. Georgetown’s deliberate policy of balancing American security cooperation with Chinese infrastructure financing is indicative of a conscious strategy of multi-alignment, rather than succumbing to great power competition that has polarised other petrostates.

     

    Feature Image Credit: panamericanworld.com

    Guyana map Credit: cfr.org

  • Clausewitz’s War Within the Chains of Reason versus Girard, the Apocalypse, and the Far-Right Christian Movement in the U.S.

    Clausewitz’s War Within the Chains of Reason versus Girard, the Apocalypse, and the Far-Right Christian Movement in the U.S.

    To lend greater legitimacy to his controversial position, Girard explicitly cites the foremost theorist of warfare, Carl von Clausewitz. In his three treatises on the escalation of war, Clausewitz had indeed argued that mimetic rivalry would degenerate into violence that would destroy lives and even human civilisation were it not for the scapegoat mechanism.

    Girard’s tendency toward absolute peacefulness is unrealistic, whereas the religiously legitimised far right seeks to wage the final battle internally and externally. Yet, both refer to the assumption of an impending apocalypse. This is the core of the problem, which leads, on one side, to absolute pacifism and, on the other, to a similarly absolute “battling to the end”.

    The media’s focus on the current U.S. president’s personality can easily lead us to overlook deeper, underlying changes. It is well known that French sociologist René Girard plays a significant role in shaping the self-image of Silicon Valley tech billionaires. In particular, his disciple Peter Thiel, founder of Palantir, is advancing this agenda and strongly influencing U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance, whom Thiel financially supported during his campaign. This connection leads to a billionaire-backed far-right movement that sees its legitimacy in a fundamentalistic interpretation of Christianity. This has already been amply documented in numerous U.S. discussions. The rather helpless counterreaction attempts to prove that Girard is merely being exploited and misunderstood. He certainly is—but the central problem is that in his book Battling to the End, Girard describes the approaching apocalypse. To escape it, Girard recommends absolute nonviolence, which he sees as realised in Christianity. Peter Thiel and the other tech billionaires, however, believe that in this approaching apocalypse, one must fight to the bitter end to survive. It is no coincidence that the latest book by the U.S. “Minister of War,” Pete Hegseth, is titled American Crusade. Hegseth compared the rescue of the American pilot at Easter to the resurrection of Christ. Girard is indeed being instrumentalised by Thiel and others. However, the problem is that Girard adopts an apocalyptic approach and appears to justify it scientifically by referring to a reductionist interpretation of Clausewitz, arguably the most significant theorist of war. Only through reference to Clausewitz does Girard’s theory of imitation (mimesis) gain the political explosiveness that would otherwise remain confined to academia.

    René Girard’s theories on mimesis, mimetic rivalry, scapegoating, and the role of myth and religion in the emergence of culture provide profound insights into human history and behaviour. So, what is mimetic desire?

     Mimetic desire begins with human needs and desires. While needs are biologically rooted, desires are strongly influenced by others. Girard’s identification of the basis of the human problem is simple: most of the things we desire—be they a person, a relationship, an object, an experience, or a feeling—are based on imitation. We develop a desire for these things through our observation of others who desire or possess them, whether consciously or not. This explains the power of advertising—when we see enough people using something, we want it too—as well as the power of celebrity. We want the kind of house, car, clothes, or wife that the rich, famous, and powerful man has.

    Children learn through imitation, acquiring language and other skills necessary for social success. By learning the ethos of their culture, they become part of the community and eventually pass it on to the next generation. In this respect, mimesis is unproblematic. However, for Girard, mimesis is also the primary cause of social unrest and violence because mimesis leads to rivalry when people compete for scarce resources. Sometimes, class differences separate the object of rival desire, such as when one harbours a mimetic desire for what the rich possess. In this situation, which Girard calls “external mediation,” violent conflict arising from mimetic rivalry is unlikely. However, in situations of internal mediation, where individuals or groups desire the same thing and are close to one another, the possibility of violence is real.

    Girard asserts that this mimetic rivalry is the primary cause of human violence: tribes fight over resources, men for power and wealth, and the contest for power escalates into violence. Examples include tribes fighting over resources, two men desiring the same woman, and envy of another’s wealth, fame, honour, or power escalating into violence.

    Girard argues that mimetic rivalry would degenerate into violence that would destroy lives and even human civilisation, were it not for the scapegoat mechanism. By creating a scapegoat, one can blame all of one’s problems on that person and cast them out or sacrifice them, thereby stabilising one’s identity and community. Determining who belongs to a community and who does not reunites it. A famous example is Kaiser Wilhelm II before World War I, who declared, “I no longer know of any parties; I know only Germans.” Anti-Semitism, too, was based on this combination of exclusion and the sacrifice of others; in essence, it is elevated to what appears to be a sacred act.

    Girard argues that Jesus’s voluntary sacrificial death broke this scapegoat mechanism once and for all because he took on the sins of the world. However, regardless of any theological assessment, this interpretation clearly does not apply to the Crusades, religious wars of the Middle Ages, colonisation, the two world wars, or the Holocaust. In fact, one could view these events as repetitions of the scapegoat mechanism, where unity is created through the “sacrifice” of others. This raises the fundamental question of whether Christianity is characterised by a particular form of nonviolence, as devout Christians would argue, or by a particular escalation of violence aimed at establishing “eternal peace” on earth, as its universal claim suggests. Historically speaking, societies that saw themselves as Christian have a distinct history of violence (as does Islam, which likewise views itself as fundamentally peaceful). Of course, Christians will say that their religion is fundamentally peaceful and has merely been misunderstood. The victims of colonisation and the Holocaust would disagree. To lend greater legitimacy to his controversial position, Girard explicitly cites the foremost theorist of warfare, Carl von Clausewitz. In his three treatises on the escalation of war, Clausewitz had indeed argued that mimetic rivalry would degenerate into violence that would destroy lives and even human civilisation were it not for the scapegoat mechanism. By constructing a scapegoat, one is made responsible for all one’s own problems and cast out or sacrificed, thereby stabilising one’s own identity and community.

    Clausewitz had, in fact, advocated a nearly mimetic position in his three principles regarding the escalation of war. He accompanies the mutual escalation to the extreme at the beginning of his book with the words “the enemy does the same.” He justifies this, on the one hand, by arguing that whoever escalates the spiral of violence gains the upper hand and wins the war. Furthermore, he argues that as long as I have not subdued the enemy, I must fear that he will subdue and defeat me—thus, it is the fear and dread of defeat that compels both adversaries to escalate further and further. Ultimately, it is the mutual striving for power on both sides that leads to this escalation. Furthermore, in parts of his book, Clausewitz regards the absolute and the extreme as the ideal of warfare. To this extent, one could certainly understand Girard.

    However, Girard overlooks significant differences. For example, Clausewitz’s three dynamics leading to escalation are followed by three dynamics aimed at moderating war. These dynamics occur on both sides. The crucial point is that the desired post-war political state—and thus peace—already exerts a retroactive influence on the conduct of war.

    However, Girard overlooks significant differences. For example, Clausewitz’s three dynamics leading to escalation are followed by three dynamics aimed at moderating war. These dynamics occur on both sides. The crucial point is that the desired post-war political state—and thus peace—already exerts a retroactive influence on the conduct of war. At the end of the first chapter, Clausewitz emphasises that war consists of inherent violence, the interplay of probabilities and chance, and the subordinate nature of war as a political tool. He attributes war to pure reason. Thus, the tendency toward extremes, as interpreted by Girard, is indeed present in Clausewitz; however, it is limited and contained by “pure reason,” with which Clausewitz associates politics. Whether monotheistic religions, which see themselves as peace-loving, harbour a core of violence is a matter of debate. This could be the case when they became state religions, because at that point, they had to legitimise war as an exception. However, religiously motivated war has always brought with it a particular escalation, whether internally or externally. Girard’s tendency toward absolute peacefulness is unrealistic, whereas the religiously legitimised far right seeks to wage the final battle internally and externally. Yet, both refer to the assumption of an impending apocalypse. This is the core of the problem, which leads, on one side, to absolute pacifism and, on the other, to a similarly absolute “battling to the end”.

    Rene Girard Image Credit: From the article ” Peter Thiel, René Girard, and Vance’s Moral Conundrum by Jesse Callahan Bryant

    Vice President Vance misinterpreted a social scientist and, as a result, converted to Catholicism. If you read JD Vance’s 2020 essay (“How I Joined the Resistance”) about his conversion to Catholicism, you’ll learn that his real moment of spiritual transition from atheist to Catholic oddly came during a 2011 talk that Peter Thiel gave at Yale Law School.

    Crucifixion Panel Credit: The Crucifixion, centre panel of the Isenheim Altarpiece (closed view), by Matthias Grünewald, c. 1512–15; in the Musée Unterlinden, Colmar, France. www.britannica.com

  • The Cockroach and the Firewall

    The Cockroach and the Firewall

    India banned a joke on national security grounds. The joke went to court, found a cause, and began to splinter — all in a single week. None of it is a revolution yet. All of it is worth watching.

    When the Chief Justice of India reportedly likened unemployed young people to cockroaches and parasites, he was not making policy. He was making a mistake. The clarification came within a day — he meant only holders of fake degrees; the youth are “the pillars of a developed India.” But the insult had escaped. Within a week, a satirical “Cockroach Janta Party,” its name a mocking echo of the ruling party, had drawn more than twenty-two million Instagram followers — more than double the BJP’s, well past the Congress’s — along with a million sign-ups and a petition. Then the government did the most revealing thing it could have done. It treated the joke as a threat to India’s sovereignty.

    On the twenty-first of May, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology ordered the party’s account to be blocked under Section 69A of the IT Act, acting on Intelligence Bureau inputs alleging it endangered national security. No public order was published; the directive remains secret under the blocking rules. The website went dark, the founder’s personal pages were hacked, and — by his account — the death threats arrived, one reportedly promising he could be “murdered even in America.” Sit with the official rationale, because it collapses under its own weight. A state cannot, in one breath, tell its citizens that something is a frivolous meme and that it imperils the nation. By reaching for the sovereignty of India against an Instagram page, the government made a public confession about which of the two it believes. A confident order ignores satire. It does not invoke the Intelligence Bureau against it.

    That is the first thing worth noticing, and it is not the follower count. It is the asymmetry. A throwaway courtroom remark, instantly retracted, produced a movement; a movement of memes produced a national-security order. When effects keep dwarfing their causes like this, the cause is never really the cause. The Chief Justice did not create the anger he released, and the censor did not create the defiance he provoked. Both struck matches beside a fuse that has lain there, dry, for more than a decade.

    The fuse is not mysterious. India’s inequality is the highest in its recorded history — the top one per cent holds about forty per cent of the nation’s wealth, a concentration the economists who measured it called hard to sustain “without major social and political upheaval.” The country graduates more than eight million young people a year into a graduate unemployment rate near thirty per cent. A quarter of Indians belong to a generation promised development and handed a culture war. For ten years, the noise of majoritarian politics kept that fuse damp. The cockroach remark landed because it told an entire generation, in one word, what the system thought of them. The ban landed because it proved the system was afraid of what they might do about it.

    And yet — to say this plainly, because the temptation to romance the moment is strong — this is not a revolution, and a ban will not make it one. Not because Indians are docile; that old slander is simply false. This is the country of the JP Movement, of the 2011 anti-corruption surge, of the farmers who made a government blink. It is because the things that actually topple regimes are absent here, and the thing that is present is the thing that stops them.

    Revolutions do not run on anger. If they did, half the world would be in flames. They run on state collapse. France in 1789 was bankrupt; Russia in 1917 was losing a war; the regimes that fell in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Nepal these past three years were small, centralised, and hollow, where seizing one square in the capital was the same as seizing the country. None of that describes India. Its treasury is solvent, its army intact, its agencies obedient. There is also an exit the burning countries lacked: a ballot that still works — in 2024 the ruling party lost its majority and now governs on sufferance, its worst losses where the jobs ran out. And there is the deepest barrier of all: India is too many things at once. The countries that fell had a single national crowd. India has a hundred separate angers that flare in the same season without ever becoming the same fire. A movement can own the internet in Delhi and remain a rumour in Chennai. India’s diversity, so often praised as its glory, is also its great circuit-breaker. It does not extinguish anger. It prevents anger from adding up.

    Watch, then, what the past week has actually done to the joke — because the most interesting news is not the ban but everything that has happened since, and almost all of it cuts both ways. The movement went to the Delhi High Court, challenging the block as unconstitutional. That is the system working as designed: anger flowing into an institutional channel rather than onto the street, the very pressure valve a revolution requires to be sealed shut. At the same moment, the energy found something a meme had lacked — a concrete cause. The party has fused itself to the NEET examination scandal, the leaked medical entrance test that was cancelled in May, that upended the futures of twenty-two lakh students, and that has been linked to at least fourteen student suicides. Its demand is now specific and nameable: the resignation of the education minister. A grievance with a face and a number is a different creature from a grievance with only a punchline.

    And then, almost on cue, the splintering began. A lawyer in Haryana, declaring himself the movement’s “national convener,” filed to register the party with the Election Commission in his own name — with a softened, sanded-down list of aims — against the wishes of its founder. Opposition figures rushed to amplify the memes; Congress and Left accounts adopted the cockroach as their own. This is the oldest story in Indian protest, and it is happening in fast-forward: the instant a movement matters, the formal players move to capture, fork or absorb it. India did this to the 2011 anti-corruption wave, which it turned into a party and then ground down — and the cockroach’s own founder comes from precisely that lineage. The system’s reflex is not to crush such energy. It is to digest it. A week in, the digestion has already started.

    So why does a confident state still swat so frantically at a cartoon insect? Because it has read the same history I have, and read it badly. It remembers that Nepal’s collapse last year was triggered not by hunger but by a clumsy social-media ban — and it has just repeated the act it should most have feared. Suppression does not delete a grievance; it dramatises it. The party was back within hours under a new handle, Cockroach is Back — “You thought you can get rid of us? Lol” — and a resurrection travels further than a meme. Every citizen who watches the government panic over a joke quietly revises upward the number of people who must, like them, be unhappy. That is the real engine here: not the followers, but what the followers learn about one another when the state overreacts. Denying a permit for a human chain in Bengaluru, or floating a criminal probe, only widens the audience for the next post.

    Here is the part the censors have not thought through. The one grievance that could cross India’s linguistic borders — the borders that have always kept its angers apart — is an attack on the internet itself, because the net is the country’s only truly national commons. A Tamil student and a graduate in the Hindi belt do not share a language, a politics, or a hero. They share a feed, and now they share a banned one, and a ruined exam that was sat in five hundred cities at once. In choosing to censor the single medium that ignores the firewalls — over a scandal that respects no region — the government may have picked the rare battlefield where India’s diversity does not protect it. That is why this is a blunder, not merely a heavy hand.

    India now carries nearly every structural precondition for upheaval — the inequality, the idle graduates, the curdled consent, a dead exam with a body count, and a state frightened enough to show its hand — and is held back by exactly one thing. Its anger has not yet become a single anger.

    Even so, resist both the fantasy and the complacency. The fantasy is that twenty-two million followers, a viral ban, or a court date are a barricade. They are not; the Indian state has blocked 1,400 accounts in a single protest before and absorbed the consequences, and a movement already fighting over its own name before the Election Commission is not yet a threat to anyone’s power. The complacency is the old lie that Indians never revolt. The truth is more demanding than either: India now carries nearly every structural precondition for upheaval — the inequality, the idle graduates, the curdled consent, a dead exam with a body count, and a state frightened enough to show its hand — and is held back by exactly one thing. Its anger has not yet become a single anger.

    Watch for the day it does. Not the follower counts, not the unemployment graphs — those are already maxed out. Watch whether the High Court lets the block stand or strikes it down; watch whether the NEET families in one state find the banned feed in another and recognise their grief in it; watch whether the movement survives its own capture. The government has handed that convergence its best possible candidate — not a judge’s insult, not joblessness in the abstract, but a censored network and a wrecked examination, two things that look identical in every language. The cockroach did not break the firewall. The question this week left open is whether the people swinging at it have just found the one crack that runs all the way through.

    Feature Image Credit: dw.com

    Text Image Credit: pratidintime.com

    This article has used AI assistance.

  • Was Colonialism a Crime? Algerian Parliament Criminalizes 130 Years of French Rule

    Was Colonialism a Crime? Algerian Parliament Criminalizes 130 Years of French Rule

    The history of the modern period, particularly for the Global South, is still a version written by the dominant powers – the West or colonial powers. Colonial history is now being researched more thoroughly and reveals the horrendous impact of colonialism. The Algerian parliament takes the lead in calling out colonialism for what it truly was – crimes against humanity, racism, religious intolerance, and war crimes. More countries are sure to follow the Algerian example.

     

    The Algerian newspaper al-Masa’ reports that on December 24, the Algerian parliament passed a law recognising French colonialism in that country, 1830-1962, as having been a crime that involved mass killing, rape, displacement of populations, usurpation of land, and marginalisation of people. The law also makes claims on France for reparations.

    The great Algerian historian Mahfoud Bennoune had made the case for the economic benefits to France of the exploitation of Algerian natural resources (metals, oil), the expansion of French vineyards on expropriated Algerian land, trade monopolies, and the creation of Algeria as a captive market for French goods.

    He wrote not only of countless massacres by French commanders of local populations but also of a vast transfer of landed wealth: “Using innumerable arbitrary measures — sequestration, confiscation, expropriation, cantonment . . . an increasing number of hectares were accumulated for the purposes of colonisation. . . The subsequent booty was distributed among the colonists [French colonisers]. By 1954, these 3,028,000 expropriated hectares [~116,000 sq. mi.] comprised 2,828,000 hectares of ploughland and 210,000 hectares of forest, all privately owned by the French colonials. The colonial state still possessed 7,200,000 hectares, including forest, unproductive land, and pastureland.” As for the land the Algerians were crowded onto, ” two-thirds of the land assigned to the peasants was minimal pasture and unproductive plots.”

    Ibrahim Boughali, the speaker of the Algerian parliament, underlined that the objective of this law is not to deploy history for the purposes of revenge, but to restate historical truth and preserve national memory from all efforts to erase or falsify it. At the same time, the law emphasised the necessity for the Occupying state to accept responsibility for the “systematic crimes committed against persons, land and Algerian identity.

    The Algerian and French governments have had increasingly strained relations in recent years. Algeria is furious that France recognised Morocco’s claim to the Spanish Sahara; Algeria supports the Polisario Liberation Front and its claim that Western Sahara should be independent. It was a territory ruled by medieval Moroccan governments that had been detached and made a colony by Spain, which relinquished it in the 1970s. Morocco immediately claimed it, insisting it was only reclaiming it.

    France recognised Morocco’s claim, as did the US, as a quid pro quo under the Biden administration for Morocco’s recognition of Israel and signing on to the so-called “Abraham Accords.”

    Algeria is also not happy about the increase in French racism toward the large expatriate Algerian community in France. Further, Algerians have been annoyed by the rise online of French atrocity-denialism, in which commentators dispute that France committed massacres in that country or at least excuse them. In the early 21st century, some French parliamentarians strove to outlaw any depreciation of what they termed the glories of the French empire, but then President Jacques Chirac refused to go along.

    European colonialism, a historically distinct amalgam of barracuda capitalism, racism, settler expansionism, and economic exploitation, killed millions of people in the global south and directed profits to the metropole, even from desperately poor countries in places like Africa. That it was a set of crimes is hard to dispute.

    One of the things I was surprised to discover during the Iraq War was that when I called it a colonial war, some people in Washington couldn’t get that it was a bad thing. The critique of colonialism had not reached the halls of Congress! Or, indeed, many people in middle America. Historians in the past 50 years have excavated masses of documents proving the massacres and exploitation engaged in by colonial authorities. There was actually a cover-up in the archives of the British atrocities committed in Kenya in the 1950s, which only hard historical digging managed ultimately to thwart. I’m told by colleagues who work on Libya in the Italian archives that documents on massacres committed by Italian troops in that country appear sometimes to be hidden by the staff.

    That is, there is a lot of denialism out there.

    But even though it is easy to demonstrate colonialism’s evils, few post-colonial countries have done what Algeria just did. In part, this is because they often still have vital economic or security relationships with the former coloniser and so cannot afford to alienate them.

    While, in the twentieth century, the Algerian elite depended on France (and sometimes even seemed to think they were French), in 2025, things have changed. In the past two decades, Algeria has greatly diversified its import and export markets. It imports more goods from China than from France. It mainly imports wheat from Russia, not France. It is doing more trade with Turkey and Qatar. Few Algerian firms operate in France, and the number of French firms in Algeria has fallen dramatically.

    Having thrown off economic neo-imperialism, Algerian politicians are free to say what they think.

    They are even introducing English in Algerian schools this year, with an eye toward gradually making it the country’s second language, after Arabic, rather than French, which educated Algerians have mainly used since the mid-nineteenth century.

    Photo of Algiers by Sid Ahmed SAOUD on Unsplash

    Le Monde notes that Algerian President Abdelmadjid Tebboune has never actually presented a formal, specific request to France for reparations. It reports that the French Foreign Ministry — “the Quay d’Orsay” — denounced the new law as “manifestly hostile” and as an impediment to the ongoing dialogue between the two countries.

    Algeria, a country of some 47 million, is about as populous as Spain. It has an annual nominal GDP of roughly $190 billion, placing it in the company of Greece, New Zealand, and Iraq; it is the world’s 52nd-largest economy.

    The United States could be presented with a similar bill by the Philippines, where US troops killed or unleashed the conditions that killed some 400,000 people in the early 20th century. But that is unlikely at the moment, since the Philippines remains deeply intertwined with the US and increasingly needs the US Navy as China seeks hegemony in the region and makes claims on maritime territory that the Philippines also claims. The US is the country’s largest trading partner with $12 billion in bilateral trade, though Japan, China, Hong Kong and South Korea are also major trading partners.

    The kind of trade diversification undertaken by Algeria with regard to France is unusual among post-colonial countries, which may help explain why its criminalisation of colonialism is so unprecedented. But as China rises as a major trading partner for postcolonial countries, and as South-South global trade more generally burgeons, we could see more such claims.

    The Congo, where Belgium is estimated to have killed 8 million of 16 million residents, is a likely plaintiff. These disputes will likely go to the International Court of Justice at the UN, the judges of which, however, have traditionally been drawn more from the Colonial North than the colonised South.

    This article was published earlier in ‘Informed Comment‘  and in Scheerpost.com

     

  • Flattery’s Limits: How Pandering to Trump Undermines Pakistan’s Mediation

    Flattery’s Limits: How Pandering to Trump Undermines Pakistan’s Mediation

    Flattery may open doors, but it cannot sustain trust in high-stakes diplomacy. Pakistan’s Trump-centric approach reveals the limits of personality-driven foreign policy.

    Pakistan’s recent foreign policy under a hybrid regime led by its Field Marshal Asif Munir and Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif is heavily influenced by a personality-driven dynamic, particularly in its engagement with Donald Trump. As pointed out by Mehdi Hasan, a British-American journalist and political commentator, in an interview with NDTV, Pakistanis have “done a good job of sucking up to Trump,” underscoring a growing reliance on flattery and ego-boosting tactics to remain in Trump’s good books.

    When Flattery Becomes a Diplomatic Constraint

    From the early phase of Donald Trump’s second term, especially after developments like Operation Sindoor, Pakistan openly credited Trump for ceasefire efforts—something India refrained from doing. Islamabad went further by nominating Trump multiple times for the Nobel Peace Prize. At many international platforms, particularly during the Gaza Board of Peace meeting in Washington and earlier at the Gaza peace summit at Sharm el-Sheikh, Pakistan’s leadership left no stone unturned in praising Trump, with Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif describing him as a “man of peace” and even a “saviour of South Asia.” Even during recent ceasefire extensions by Trump, Pakistan continued this pattern of excessive praise.

    This reflected a calculated strategy: to appeal to Trump’s personality, which is widely perceived as ego-driven and narcissistic. By consistently affirming his self-image and constantly putting messages into his psychological zone of acceptance. Pakistan managed to secure his attention and, to some extent, his favour. Of course, the United States has its own strategic calculations—particularly regarding Iran—but the personal dimension of Trump’s leadership style makes such flattery tactically useful in the short term.

    However, this approach is now showing clear limitations, especially in the context of reaching any peace deal with Iran. The very strategy that helped Pakistan gain proximity is now constraining its ability to act as a credible intermediary. Because Islamabad has focused primarily on sending positive, non-confrontational messages to Trump, it appears reluctant—or unable—to convey messages that might irritate or challenge him.

    This concern has been explicitly raised by Iranian voices. Iranian analysts and officials have questioned whether Pakistan is genuinely transmitting Tehran’s positions to Washington. One such voice, Iranian lawmaker Ebrahim Rezaei, pointed out that Pakistan is no longer seen as a neutral mediator. According to him, Islamabad selectively communicates, prioritising Trump’s preferences over balanced diplomacy. He stated that Pakistan “lacks the necessary credibility” and “always takes Trump’s ego into account and does not say a word against his wishes,” underscoring a growing perception that its role as an intermediary is increasingly compromised.

    Importantly, the United States now appears to be echoing similar concerns. A CNN report published on May 12, 2026, titled “Trump increasingly considers resuming large-scale military action against Iran,” stated that many Trump administration officials believed Pakistan had been sharing “a more positive version of the Iranian position with the US than what reflects reality,” while also questioning whether Islamabad was “aggressively conveying Trump’s displeasure” to Tehran. Significantly, an earlier CNN report published on May 6, 2026, titled “US and Iran closing in on memorandum aimed at ending war, source says,” had already hinted at scepticism inside the White House, noting that Pakistani mediators were presenting an optimistic assessment of Iranian flexibility that some US officials did not fully share.

    This is the core psychological flaw in a personality-centric foreign policy. When diplomacy is personalised to accommodate one man’s ego, it is bound to hinder strategic flexibility. Mediators must be in a position to deliver awkward truths and dissenting opinions. But when a state is afraid to upset a leader like Trump, it starts filtering messages, putting them into what can be called the ‘zone of psychological acceptance.’ Anything outside that zone is open to suppression.

    Erosion of Trust and Mediation Credibility

    As a result, trust erodes. Iran’s scepticism about Pakistan’s neutrality is not incidental—it is a direct consequence of this ego-management strategy. Even technical issues, such as disagreements over the scope of ceasefire agreements—for example, whether regions like Lebanon were included when the initial ceasefire between the United States and Iran was reached—became points of contention because communication was filtered, biased, and incomplete. This then became a major point of contention, with Iran maintaining that Lebanon formed part of the ceasefire framework, while the United States rejected this interpretation, deepening mistrust and reinforcing perceptions of inconsistency in how the agreement was conveyed. As Ebrahim Rezaei further said, “They are unwilling to tell the world that America first accepted Pakistan’s proposal but then went back on its word. They do not say that the Americans had commitments regarding Lebanon or the blocked assets, but that they failed to fulfil them. A mediator must be impartial, not always leaning to one side.”

    In the long run, such a policy is unsustainable. Personality-driven diplomacy may yield short-term visibility and tactical gains, but it weakens institutional credibility. Relationships built around individuals rather than enduring interests and institutions tend to fade with political transitions. When leadership changes in Washington, Pakistan may once again find itself marginalised, having invested too heavily in a single personality rather than in a broader strategic framework.

    As Pakistani security analyst and president of the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, Muhammad Amir Rana, warned in his February 1, 2026, article “Pakistan’s Trump Test” published in Dawn, “The post-Trump phase will test Pakistan’s diplomacy and political leadership,” while also questioning “how far the country can maintain its relevance” once Trump exits the political stage. Rana further argued that Pakistan’s current diplomatic positioning is too closely tied to a “Trump-endorsed defence equation” and cautioned that, without developing “alternative strategic options,” Islamabad could face increasing diplomatic marginalisation in the future. These concerns reinforce the broader perception that Pakistan’s recent diplomatic gains are heavily dependent on Trump-era political dynamics rather than on durable institutional and bipartisan foundations in Washington.

    Playing to a leader’s ego can open doors, but it also shrinks the space for honest diplomacy. Pakistan’s experience suggests that an over-reliance on psychological appeasement in foreign policy can compromise both credibility and effectiveness in complex negotiations. As also noted by American psychologist Michael Maccoby in his book, “The Productive Narcissist: The Promise and Peril of Visionary Leadership,” leaders with strong narcissistic traits may initially respond positively to admiration and validation. However, their effectiveness tends to decline over time as underlying behavioural patterns become more visible. In such contexts, strategies based on flattery and ego management may generate short-term gains but ultimately constrain credibility and weaken long-term influence.

  • Part 2 – Air India 171’s Final Transmissions point to FADEC cutting Fuel, Leading to Crash

    Part 2 – Air India 171’s Final Transmissions point to FADEC cutting Fuel, Leading to Crash

    This article (part 2 and final) and part 1, published earlier, are part of the investigative analysis by journalist Rachel Chitra on the Air India-171 crash in Ahmedabad last June.  The analysis is tentative, based on information the journalist accessed. The tentative analysis and likely conclusions are entirely those of the author and do not reflect in any way the position or views of the TPF  –  TPF Editorial Team.

     

    In the previous part 1, we discussed how core network degradation likely caused the failure of multiple components. Like “the one ring to rule them all” in The Lord of the Rings, the core network is the one system that connects some 22 flight-critical and 28 flight-non-critical systems, and yet it was flagged only “medium risk” thanks to Boeing certification for the 787.

    Now we piece together the final pieces of the jigsaw puzzle — the ACARS fault codes, core network failure, and the FADEC misinterpretation that likely triggered TCMA fuel cutoff mid-air. The moment the airplane’s digital system killed itself.

    By Rachel Chitra

    The morning, everything went dark

    On June 12, when Air India flight AI-171 started rolling at 1:37:37 PM IST and lifted off from Ahmedabad, no one had any reason to suspect anything was wrong. Mothers were settling children into their seats, flight attendants Lamnunthem Singson and Nganthoi Kongbrailatpam had secured the galley latches, and two experienced pilots, Captain Sumeet Sabharwal and First Officer Clive Kunders, guided the Boeing 787 to the runway for what should have been a routine afternoon flight to London.

    But disaster struck shortly after liftoff at 1:38:39 PM IST.

    Three seconds into takeoff at 1:38:42 IST, AI 171’s systems were screaming… “247450002 597…252490002 597…252390002 597…,” as per data from two independent sources.

    Strings of fault codes. Indicating that major systems, including flight control computers, were going down, taking dozens of subsystems and a bunch of sensors in their wake.

    Systems failing faster than pilots could run a checklist

    Three seconds into takeoff, when the pilots were trying to make sense of what was happening, the “Master caution” light would’ve flashed in their faces; directly in front of them on the glareshield panel.

    On the flight, warning display or EICAS (engine indicating and crew alerting system) amber messages should’ve started queuing faster than any human eye could read.

    Messages like “ELEC SYS,” “BUS ISLN,” “GEN OFF BUS”, “RAT DEPLOYED”, “SPOILERS”, “STAB TRIM,”…and then the loss of flight critical data….“AIR DATA SYS”  “ALT DISAGREE,” “MACH DISAGREE,” “CAS DISAGREE,” “CABIN ALT AUTO,” “PACK,” “ZONE TEMP” “DATA COM” “BAT DISCH.”

    But they likely didn’t. Because the plane’s fault reporting system itself had faulted.

    A stroke mid-sky: the cockpit blackout

    Then whole sections of the cockpit display would have frozen on their last readings as the computing and power backbone feeding EICAS collapsed — a sudden, system-wide blackout, like a stroke cutting off blood flow in the brain.

    Cockpit lights would’ve flickered.

    And EICAS’s prophecy would’ve turned true in two seconds when the pilots heard a sickening sound…. the sound of the left engine spooling down; and before the plane could yaw with the asymmetric thrust…the right engine winding down as well. And in the eerie silence filling the cockpit, they wouldn’t have been able to hear the loud, rackety sound of the Ram Air Turbine (RAM) spinning in the air.

    Computers Rebooted, Went to Ground Mode in the Sky

    But the RAM, the only working generator at that point on the plane, housed roughly 23 metres away from the cockpit in the 56.7 metre long body of the 787-8, would need a few more seconds to start generating hydraulic power and even more time to supply electrical power to feed critical flight instruments.

    Capt Sumeet and First Officer Clive wouldn’t have known, but the Flight Control Computers (FCC) likely had gone into reboot.

    And while rebooting, the logic deep inside the computers would have silently flipped to its fail-safe “ground mode,” before it started up, analysed and flipped back to “air mode.”

    Yet in the face of the most bizarre and unprecedented of circumstances.

    Two men still did their duty.

    Captain Sumeet. The man who took over the aircraft. Started APU. Attempted relight.

    And First Officer Clive, who ably assisted him, who ran checklists. Called ATC, who declared “Mayday.”

    Engines Dead at 625 Feet — Pilots Still Fought to Bring the Jet Back

    At that point, dual engine failure at a height of only 625 feet above sea level (minus Ahmedabad airport elevation of 190 feet) leaves a very narrow margin for relit attempts to have worked, even if they could have.

    But both pilots did try, even as the brutal reality of their situation must have hit them like a speeding truck.

    The AAIB report says the auxiliary power unit (APU) inlet door had started opening 17 seconds (1:38:54 IST) before the crash. And if it was opening, it could’ve only been the action of the pilots; only they would’ve switched on the auxiliary power, said flight engineers across airlines. Reason being the plane’s auto start logic would’ve been inhibited given the electric arc and the nature of some of the faults underway, which we discussed in part 1 of the investigation.

    If the hand on APU start was pilot’s — Suicide theory falls flat on its face

    And it’s not just flight engineers, even pilots say the same. “If they were faced with blank screens….at that point more than a memory item from a checklist, the immediate concern of the pilots would’ve been to get the plane’s power back on, and they’d have certainly turned on the APU,” says Sam Thomas, president, Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA).

    Even though AAIB in its preliminary report seems to hint it was the system that triggered the APU with this line: “The APU Inlet Door began opening at about 1:38:54 IST, consistent with the APU Auto Start logic.”

    “But then if it turns out it was manual action; that the pilots were doing their best to save the plane, it doesn’t fit the whole pilot suicide theory, does it?” asks an Air India pilot.

    And here lies the crux of AI 171, where billions are at stake. If you could blame the pilots and not the plane; then more than 1,100 Dreamliners could continue to fly across the globe.

    When AI 171 spent more time on the runway than in air

    At 1:19:12 PM IST, AAIB reports that Air Traffic Control (ATC) queried if AI 171 required the full length of the runway. Pilot monitoring Captain Sumeet likely told ATC they needed the full length of Runway 23. Standard for a heavy, long-haul Dreamliner on a hot day.

    Sometime in that crucial minute between runway roll, takeoff and flight, at 1.38 PM IST, an ACARS code (163600003) shows that there seems to have been a problem with the left and right thrust reversers and their locking sensors, which are the devices that tell the jet’s engine computer FADEC whether the engine’s rear doors are properly sealed for forward thrust.

    AI 171’s 62-second roll: when the engine chose safety over speed

    If the thrust reverser doors aren’t fully sealed, hot exhaust air could leak forward into the engine’s intake, disrupting smooth airflow and causing the engine to lose power or stall. So, to ward against that, FADEC will limit thrust.

    Possibly a reason why AI 171 spent more time on the runway than in air. “It took 62 seconds on the runway. A clean takeoff roll should take only 40-42 seconds,” says Capt Amit Singh, the petitioner in the Air India case in the Supreme Court, and a commercial airline pilot.

    The difference isn’t trivial: it points to an airplane struggling to reach take-off speed.

    Acceleration on ground vs in air

    And this becomes clearer when one looks at the acceleration data. Aviation Herald editor and electronics engineer Simon Hradecky said, “The AAIB report states that between 08:08:35-42 UTC (1:38:35-42 PM IST) the aircraft accelerated from 155 to 180 knots IAS. That’s an acceleration of almost 4 knots a second in air versus acceleration of 2.6 knots a second on the ground.”

    Normally, as the plane’s nose begins rising at about 3° per second, lift increases, drag rises sharply, and the aircraft naturally stops accelerating the way it did on the runway. But AI 171 did the opposite. It shot up. Hradecky adds, “the aircraft will still accelerate at takeoff…however, at a much slower pace…in about the range of acceleration on the ground. Certainly not at nearly 4 knots a second.”

    Explaining further, he says, once the aircraft begins rotating at about 3° per second, induced drag should rise quickly, even while the aircraft is still on the ground. As the nose comes up and the lift vector tilts further backwards, that induced drag begins to grow and can exceed the drag the tyres were producing. At the same time, as the wings generate more lift, weight is progressively removed from the tyres, so tyre drag falls away until it becomes zero at unstick. But this reduction in tyre drag is replaced by increasing induced drag as lift builds.

    He adds that there is another reason acceleration should slow after liftoff. As the aircraft accelerates vertically into the climb, it needs more lift than just enough to balance its weight. A G-load of +1G would merely hold vertical speed constant; to increase climb rate, the aircraft needs more than that. But as lift increases, induced drag rises too, further limiting acceleration until the aircraft settles into a stable climb.

    So while an aircraft does continue to accelerate after becoming airborne, Hradecky says that under normal conditions, this is usually only at around one knot per second, so long as the pitch remains reasonably below the climb angle and the aircraft is still rotating at about 3 degrees per second. Only once the aircraft reaches that climb angle does airspeed stop increasing, with thrust and drag coming into balance.

    That is why, Hradecky says, an acceleration of 4 knots per second once airborne, especially sustained over seven seconds from 155 to 180 knots IAS, is unrealistic in normal operations. In his view, it indicates that almost immediately after liftoff, the crew were already dealing with an abnormal situation, and the pitch did not increase as per SOP; instead, the pitch angle was unusually low. This, he says, is also supported by the CCTV video, which appears to show a small pitch-down within a second after becoming airborne, after which the pitch does not increase again. Without being able to measure the pitch angle precisely from the CCTV footage, and with no such data published in the preliminary report, Hradecky estimates the aircraft may have been at around 9 degrees of pitch rather than the roughly 15 degrees that would be more normal.

    The aircraft accelerating faster after getting airborne than it did across the length of the runway is a telltale fingerprint of something holding the jet back; something like maybe the reversers (ACARS code 163600003), say, pilots and engineers. The AAIB report mentions the physical position of the reverser levers, “that they were bent but in the stowed position.” But AAIB doesn’t mention its digital position recorded in the black box or enhanced airborne flight recorders (EAFR).

    Seconds after liftoff, AI 171’s power grid collapse

    The aircraft lifted off at 1:38:39 PM IST, as per AAIB. With multiple electrical faults already unfolding, power transients were almost inevitable.

    Reverse-engineering the fault sequence, engineers say it’s likely the trigger for RAT deployment happened one second after liftoff at 1:38:40 PM IST. And RAT deployed two seconds later at 1:38:42 PM IST.

    In part 1, we discussed how a high-voltage inverter could’ve arced and struck the forward and aft avionics bays (ACARS codes 247450002, 252490002, 252390002, 247460002). Now, this would likely have resulted in a power loss and a reboot of all three flight control computers (FCCs) by 1:38:43 PM IST, four seconds into takeoff. And the possibility of all three flight control computers rebooting mid-air, the FAA warned about as early as 2016, as per a Seattle Times report. To ward off against the eventuality, the FAA recommends a 21-day power cycle. Air India did not respond to whether such a 21-day power cycle was performed by the airline’s maintenance staff or the maintenance arm, Air India Engineering Services Ltd (AIESL).

    A jet in the sky — with systems flipped to “on ground”

    So that second 1:38:43 PM IST, when all three flight control computers rebooted, nearly every flight parameter on the plane — Weight-on-Wheels, thrust reversers, flaps, spoilers, landing gear, stabiliser trim — would’ve gone to their fail-safe mode, which would be “on ground.” And a second or two later, the rebooted flight computers would’ve analysed data, realised the true position and gone back to “in air” mode.

    “Air-ground logic is based on several parameters, so not only WoW.  For example, thrust reversers and ground spoilers may only work when WoW is TRUE “on ground”, radio altitude is below a certain altitude, and wheel speed is not zero,” says Joe Jacobsen, a former aerospace engineer with Boeing and deputy director with Foundation for Aviation Safety. He adds, “The details differ for different aircraft models.”

    And now let’s see how that power loss and subsequent flight computer reboot would’ve affected each component on board. Let’s start with the landing gears.

    FO Cliver raised gear, power cut likely stopped it halfway

    If First Officer Clive had commanded gear “UP” at 1:38:42 PM IST, the gear would’ve started retracting, and then milliseconds into the command, it would’ve stopped had the plane faced a major power disruption. Given that the plane was already reporting operational errors in the hydraulic right pump (HYDIF Right) 15 minutes before takeoff at 1:23 IST. And the left hydraulic pump’s primary electrical path was R2, which would put it directly in the line of fire when the high-voltage inverter of the CMSC R2 line arced, as we discussed in part 1.

    Possible sequence of events:

    • The AAIB report notes that the landing gear lever was found in the “DOWN” position, but this refers to its physical state post-crash and post-fire. Not the blackbox or EAFR recording.
    • If three seconds into takeoff, First Officer Clive commanded the gear “UP,” EAFR will record the command.
    • And if three seconds into takeoff, there was a power disruption, EAFR will also record its after-effects. And the gear retraction stopping halfway.

    With logic flipped to ground: spoilers can deploy, reversers can arm

     At the fourth second into takeoff at 1:38:43 PM IST, if the flight control computers had rebooted its logic would’ve flipped to fail-safe mode, which is “on ground.”

    Now, if the systems think the plane is landing (“on ground”), the flat panels on the top surface of an aircraft’s wings, called the spoilers, will auto deploy. The intention is to create drag and disrupt the airflow so that the aircraft slows down safely and stays on the runway.

    In the air, spoilers are inhibited from deploying, as doing so would break the smooth airflow around the wings and cause the plane to stall. But on AI 171, spoilers likely auto-deployed because the flight computers rebooted and, for a second, went into “ground” mode.

    The Reverser–Spoiler Double Blow

    Remember the thrust reverser faults (1636000030) we discussed earlier that could have resulted in FADEC limiting thrust on the runway? Well, if the flight computers go from “in air” to “on ground,” then thrust reversers would go from “stowed” to “idle reverse.” At takeoff, engines direct airflow backwards to propel the aircraft forward. But if the thrust reversers were in “idle reverse”, they would redirect airflow in the opposite direction, providing a gentle braking effect, like when the plane needs to land and slow down on the runway.

    If both the spoilers and thrust reversers were deployed mid-air, even briefly, the aircraft would have faced an immediate loss of lift and forward thrust — a double blow that could stall the jet within seconds of take-off.

    The AAIB report says, “The reverser levers were bent but were in the ‘stowed’ position.” Engineers say this must be taken as proof of pilot integrity as their intentions, at least — going by AAIB’s photographs and words — were clearly for the reversers to stay “stowed.” They also note that the AAIB reports refer to the physical position of the reverser levers, not their digital position, as captured by the black box or EAFR.

     AAIB quotes EAFR—just not for the “on ground”-logic-systems

    Engineers say it must be noted that when the data supports a neutral interpretation, like with flap angle, airspeed, AAIB quotes the black box or EAFR. When the data would clarify whether the aircraft entered ground-mode before impact—nose pitch, landing gear, reverser levers, TO/GA, autothrottle—the report relies on describing their physical positions post-crash. “The digital capture for the very systems that determine ‘air’ versus ‘ground,’ for whether there was a stall, for whether the fly-by-wire automated jet went into manual mode — are all conspicuously absent,” says an engineer.

    The AAIB report also omits many crucial timestamps, such as when the first fuel cut-off occurred, when the relight attempts began, and when the engine fan speed reached idle. Timings that crucially can shed light on the behaviour of the engine computers or FADECs, more than AAIB’s words, which are vague.

    AAIB report on FADEC behaviour on AI 171

    “When fuel control switches are moved from CUTOFF to RUN while the aircraft is in flight, each engine’s full authority dual engine control (FADEC) automatically manages a relight and thrust recovery sequence of ignition and fuel introduction,” says the AAIB.

    FADEC is the plane’s full authority digital engine control. But AAIB refers to it as “full authority dual engine control” on page 15 of its report. Lawyers say this mistake — saying “dual” for “digital” and other wordings — in a sentence talking about how FADEC managed a “relight and thrust recovery sequence” could give AAIB “plausible deniability” if tomorrow it came to light that FADEC’s behaviour was different on AI 171.

    In that paragraph, the report describes events such as fuel switches moving back to “RUN” and the APU inlet door opening, with precise timestamps from EAFR. And then…” it does sound as if the AAIB report is referencing how the FADEC procedure should work rather than explaining exactly what did happen on 171…underscoring the need for an independent evaluation of the actual FDR and any ACARS data to understand what was actually occurring with the automated systems,” says US attorney Michael Andrews, who is representing the families of the victims from the AI 171 crash.

    When automation can pull the plug

    So what did the engine computer FADEC really do on that plane? According to Boeing training manuals, if the plane switches to “on ground” logic in the air, the engine computers’ FADEC can initiate a fuel cutoff. If the conditions for something obtuse, called TCMA or thrust control malfunction accommodation, were met.

    What is this TCMA? And why did Boeing design it?

    Few phases of flight are as critical as takeoff, when both engines are at full power, and the aircraft is still on the ground. In this phase, there’s almost no time or room to correct an error before the plane hits the aircraft perimeter wall, nearby buildings, or other planes.

    TCMA: FADEC’s Watchdog

    To prevent accidents on the ground, Boeing and its subcontractors GE Aerospace and Safran designed TCMA — a protection circuit and software logic — for FADEC to prevent dangerous thrust.

    When it comes to the question of how much engine power to command, passengers would be surprised to learn it isn’t the pilots but FADEC that calls the shots. Engine computer FADEC continuously compares the pilot’s commanded thrust with the engine’s actual output and calculates whether the thrust is accelerating or decelerating as expected. If the system detects that the thrust is inconsistent with the commands, the FADEC interprets this as a thrust control malfunction. In that case, it automatically shuts off fuel to the engine.

    1:38:44 PM IST: Second AI 171 Likely Entered TCMA Kill Zone

    As per TCMA patent documents and Boeing literature, for a TCMA event, all of the following conditions must be true:

    • Airplane is on the ground
    • Airspeed is less than 200 knots
    • Altitude is less than 17,500 feet
    • Selected N1 (engine fan speed) is more than the TCMA threshold

    And in AI 171’s case, at 1:38:44 PM IST, four of these conditions were likely met.

    • Airplane is on the ground = Flight computers rebooted, logic went to “on ground”
    • Airspeed is less than 200 knots
    • Altitude is less than 17,500 feet = maximum altitude reached was around 435 feet, going by ADS-B transponder data minus Ahmedabad airport elevation
    • Selected engine fan speed (N1) is more than the threshold = possible given the takeoff thrust

    So how did FADEC see TCMA engine’s actual fan speed (N1) as incompatible with the commanded takeoff thrust? Why did it sense danger?

    On data recorded in the black box, AAIB says, “EAFR data revealed that the thrust levers remained forward (takeoff thrust) until the impact.”

    AAIB’s statement is actually proof of pilots’ integrity, say engineers, “as it shows pilots’ intention – that they kept the thrust in forward from takeoff to crash.” Engineers also say AAIB’s statement that throttles were in “forward”, along with GE documents, can point to a different story.

    Inside the Boolean Gating Trap: FADEC’s Blind Spot

    Older GE engines had a logic condition (Boolean gating) of “AND.” Meaning throttles “AND” thrust reversers have to be in “idle” for TCMA activation. But pilots found that inconvenient, as for certain ground manoeuvres during taxiing and initial rollouts, they keep the thrust levers in forward and the reverser levers in idle.

    So, for newer GEnx engines developed by GE Aerospace in partnership with Safran, the logic condition was changed from “AND” to “OR,” according to sources at GE and Air India. Meaning either throttle “OR” thrust reversers can be in “idle” for TCMA to activate if FADEC feels thrust is not proportional to airspeed.

    And on AI 171, we do know that there was both a thrust reverser fault (163600003) and flight control computers likely rebooted; and thrust reverser status could’ve gone to fail-safe mode of “idle reverse.”

    So then AI 171 had throttles in forward and thrust reversers, likely in “idle reverse”, so some TCMA conditions were met. But TCMA would also require engine speed (N1) to be disproportionate to airspeed data. So what was happening on AI 171 that caused FADEC to believe the engine thrust was dangerously high?

    Airspeed data failure on AI 171

    The whole series of ACARS codes accessed and sent to Boeing was topped off with “EM12R0.” EM12R0 indicates a disagreement in airspeed data. Now, on an average day with 1,100 Dreamliners in the sky, nearly 80-100 Dreamliners can fly with this code with no harm, as it just indicates one of the channels for air speed calculation disagreed with another. But on AI 171, it could’ve proved disastrous given some of the other failures underway.

    EM12R0 indicates engine monitoring (EM) on channel 12; i.e., the total air temperature (TAT) probe fell to zero (R=0), meaning its inputs were no longer considered valid. This brings us then to the question of whether FADEC got calibrated airspeed (CAS) on AI 171? Was a failure to get CAS the reason for the whole series of failures, topped off by “EM12R0”?

    True airspeed: Lion Air 610 crash investigation vs AAIB report

    In crash investigations such as Air France 447 and Lion Air 610, authorities published the IAS (indicated airspeed), CAS (calibrated airspeed), and TAS (true airspeed). In contrast, the AAIB report in every reference to airspeed only mentions IAS: “take-off decision speed V1 153 kts IAS…maximum recorded airspeed of 180 Knots IAS.”

    Now, one mystery in AAIB’s discussion of indicated airspeed (IAS) is: what was the engine computer FADEC getting? Because FADEC does not accept a raw value like IAS. It only accepts calculated values like CAS and Mach, which represent the aircraft’s speed relative to sound. While IAS requires only pitot tubes to be operational, calculated values like CAS and Mach require additional components, such as the total air temperature probe (TAT), to be operational as well.

    Now, before roll, the engine computer FADEC needs valid feeds, including calibrated airspeed (CAS), to set thrust. So at 1:37:35 PM IST — two seconds before roll — FADEC has to have a valid CAS from the flight computers via the core network for it to set thrust.

    At this point, the system is not dependent on the TAT probes, but on an inlet cabin temperature probe. This is because the external TAT probe is an aspirated probe, meaning it needs airflow – the plane doesn’t start using it till it crosses 50 knots.

    Frozen Airspeed: FADEC voting logic, the pathway to TCMA Activation

    At about 1:37:56 UTC, the aircraft crossed 50 knots. And that’s when AI 171 must have switched to using its external TAT probe.

    FADEC in normal mode will not accept a single feed for airspeed data, in case it’s false or invalid. FADEC will use voting logic for airspeed data. It will vote on multiple feeds and accept only if two or more readings are consistent.

    FADEC takes calibrated airspeed (CAS) data from multiple feeds (internal T12 TAT probe + FCM L + FCM R + FCM C). Only if two or more feeds are consistent will it accept their value. If not, then FADEC will latch onto “last known good value.”

    So, for calibrated airspeed (CAS), FADEC might have latched on to “last known good value” of around 176 knots at 1:38:41 PM IST, or 50 knots at 1:37:56 PM IST. With the first timestamp being, if we assume flight computers lost TAT readings only after a power disruption caused by an electric arc. And the second timestamp, if we assume flight computers lost TAT readings at the handover point on roll, when the system stopped using the cabin probe and switched to external TAT once the plane crossed 50 knots.

    Triple Redundancy on Paper—TAT A Single-Point Failure in Reality

    Now the normal assumption would be that each flight computer has its own TAT probe, so that each of the three flight computers has its own data source, i.e., three TAT probes. The 787 has three pitot tubes and two angle-of-attack sensors.

    But in reality, the 787 has mapped all its three flight computers to the same single external TAT probe. So even though the 787 looks like it has triple redundancy for airspeed data on paper. In reality, each FADEC obtains its airspeed data from its own internal TAT and the three flight computers (FCM L, FCM R, and FCM C).

    But if all three flight computers reboot at the same time or the TAT probe failed earlier, FADEC will latch onto the last known good calibrated airspeed (CAS) value, which could have been 176 knots or 50 knots. When FADEC’s own internal TAT probe (T12) showed the correct reading of the plane as it accelerated to 187–191 knots IAS at 1:38:43 PM IST, four seconds after liftoff, FADEC will assume its own probe is wrong, generating the ACARS error code “EM12R0.”

    A likely catastrophic logic error by FADEC, leading to the death of 260 people.

    The last few seconds on AI 171

    No altitude. No thrust. No starter power. Capt Sumeet would’ve sensed this reality as early as the 15-16th second into liftoff.

    As he was toggling the fuel switches back to RUN for a relight attempt, he’d have known the truth. The plane couldn’t be saved.

    But he and First Officer Kunders still did their best.

    Capt Sumeet attempted a relight. Started the APU.

    First Officer Clive communicated with ATC. Called out “MAYDAY MAYDAY MAYDAY” at 1:39:05 PM IST.

    The pilots likely never even received the “Pull up, Pull up” terrain warnings.

    Against the deafening silence of blacked-out systems, the only sounds Capt Sumeet and First Officer Clive would’ve heard were passenger screams and ATC’s responses — as the ground closed in on them.

    (Disclaimer: The AAIB has not yet released its final report on the AI-171 crash. All the technical scenarios presented here are based on preliminary information and evidence submitted to India’s Parliament and Supreme Court, and remain hypotheses. Also, the ACARS codes mentioned in the story are not a direct map to maintenance faults listed in Boeing’s Fault Isolation Manual, since maintenance faults are 7-8-digit strings. The 9-digit ACARS string is only partially recognisable to engineers as it is Boeing’s proprietary code. For this story on conditions of anonymity, we have spoken to pilots plus flight and design engineers for airlines and Boeing in India, Europe and the US; and for details on actuators, sensors, structural engineering, logic paths to IT, mechanical, electrical and electronics engineers from India who are Boeing subcontractors)

     

    Feature Image: www.livelaw.in

     

  • Jeffrey D. Sachs: Briefing of the UN Security Council on Venezuela

    Jeffrey D. Sachs: Briefing of the UN Security Council on Venezuela

    Jeffrey D. Sachs: Briefing of the UN Security Council on Venezuela
    January 5, 2026

     

    Mr. President,
    Distinguished Members of the Security Council,

    The issue before the Council today is not the character of the government of Venezuela.

    The issue is whether any Member State—by force, coercion, or economic strangulation—has the right to determine Venezuela’s political future or to exercise control over its affairs.

    This question goes directly to Article 2(4) of the United Nations Charter, which prohibits the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state.

    The Council must decide whether that prohibition is to be upheld or abandoned.

    Abandoning it would carry consequences of the gravest kind.

    Background and context

    Since 1947,United States foreign policy has repeatedly employed force, covert action, and political manipulation to bring about regime change in other countries. This is a matter of carefully documented historical record. In her book Covert Regime Change (2018), political scientist Lindsey O’Rourke documents 70 attempted US regime-change operations between 1947 and 1989 alone.

    These practices did not end with the Cold War. Since 1989, major United States regime-change operations undertaken without authorization by the Security Council have included, among the most consequential: Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), Syria (from 2011), Honduras (2009), Ukraine (2014), and Venezuela (from 2002 onward).

    The methods employed are well established and well documented. They include open warfare; covert intelligence operations; instigation of unrest; support for armed groups; manipulation of mass and social media; bribery of military and civilian officials; targeted assassinations; false-flag operations; and economic warfare aimed at collapsing civilian life.

    These measures are illegal under the UN Charter, and they typically result is ongoing violence, lethal conflict, political instability, and deep suffering of the civilian population.

    The case of Venezuela

    The recent United States record with respect to Venezuela is clear.

    In April 2002, the United States knew of and approved an attempted coup against the Venezuelan government.

    In the 2010s, the United States funded civil society groups actively engaged in anti-government protests, notably in 2014. When the government cracked down on the protests, the US followed with a series of sanctions. In 2015, President Barrack Obama declared Venezuela to be “an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States.”

    In 2017, at a dinner with Latin American leaders on the margins of the UN General Assembly, President Trump openly discussed the option of the US invading Venezuela to overthrow the government.

    During 2017 to 2020, the US imposed sweeping sanctions on the state oil company. Oil production fell by 75 percent from 2016 to 2020, and real GDP per capita (PPP) declined by 62 percent.

    The UN General Assembly has repeatedly voted overwhelmingly against such unilateral coercive measures. Under international law, only the Security Council has the authority to impose such sanctions.

    On 23 January 2019, the United States unilaterally recognized Juan Guaidó as “interim president” of Venezuela and on 28 January 2019 froze approximately $7 billion of Venezuelan sovereign assets held abroad and gave Guaidó authority over certain assets.

    These actions form part of a continuous United States regime-change effort spanning more than two decades.

    Recent United States global escalation

    In the past year, the United States has carried out bombing operations in seven countries, none of which were authorized by the Security Council and none of which were undertaken in lawful self-defense under the Charter. The targeted countries include Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Syria, Yemen, and now Venezuela.

    In the past month, President Trump has issued direct threats against at least six UN member states, including Colombia, Denmark, Iran, Mexico, Nigeria and of course Venezuela. These threats are summarized in Annex I to this statement.

    What is at stake today

    Members of the Council are not called upon to judge Nicolás Maduro.

    They are not called upon to assess whether the recent United States attack and ongoing naval quarantine of Venezuela result in freedom or in subjugation.

    Members of the Council are called upon to defend international law, and specifically the United Nations Charter.

    The realist school of international relations, articulated most brilliantly by John Mearsheimer, accurately describes the condition of international anarchy as “the tragedy of great power politics.” Realism is therefore a description of geopolitics, not a solution for peace. Its own conclusion is that international anarchy leads to tragedy.

    In the aftermath of World War I, the League of Nations was created to end the tragedy through the application of international law. Yet the world’s leading nations failed to defend international law in the 1930s, leading to renewed global war.

    The United Nations emerged from that catastrophe as humanity’s second great effort to place international law above anarchy. In the words of the Charter, the UN was created “to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind.”

    Given that we are in the nuclear age, failure cannot be repeated. Humanity would perish. There would be no third chance.

    Measures required of the Security Council

    To fulfill its responsibilities under the Charter, the Security Council should immediately affirm the following actions:

    1. The United States shall immediately cease and desist from all explicit and implicit threats or use of force against Venezuela.
    2. The United States shall terminate its naval quarantine and all related coercive military measures undertaken in the absence of authorization by the Security Council.
    3. The United States shall immediately withdraw its military forces from within and along the perimeter of Venezuela, including intelligence, naval, air, and other forward-deployed assets positioned for coercive purposes.
    4. Venezuela shall adhere to the UN Charter and to the human rights protected in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
    5. The Secretary-General shall immediately appoint a Special Envoy, mandated to engage relevant Venezuelan and international stakeholders and to report back to the Security Council within fourteen days with recommendations consistent with the Charter of the United Nations, and the Security Council shall remain urgently seized of this matter.
    6. All Member States shall refrain from unilateral threats, coercive measures, or armed actions undertaken outside the authority of the Security Council, in strict conformity with the Charter.

    In Closing

    Mr. President, Distinguished Members,

    Peace and the survival of humanity depend on whether the United Nations Charter remains a living instrument of international law or is allowed to wither into irrelevance.

    That is the choice before this Council today.

    Thank you.

     

    Courtesy: commondreams.org

  • India’s Shadow Wars: Challenges of Chronic Disputes and Insurgencies

    India’s Shadow Wars: Challenges of Chronic Disputes and Insurgencies

    Abstract

    This article contends that insurgencies in India tend to be protracted and are often hard to resolve definitively. They are characterised as “shadow wars” involving asymmetrical tactics, blurred distinctions between combatants and civilians, and an ongoing struggle for legitimacy and control. In this article, the adaptability of insurgent organisations, deep-rooted socio-political and economic disputes, and the limitations of traditional counterinsurgency methods in the Indian context are identified as key factors contributing to the persistence of these conflicts. To effectively address these issues and foster sustainable conflict resolution, it is essential to tackle their root causes and long-term impacts on India’s internal security, governance, and development.

    It is crucial to analyse the nature of India’s ongoing and persistent insurgencies, paying attention to the interplay between asymmetric warfare, socioeconomic grievances, and the effectiveness of counterinsurgency strategies.

    Key words:

    Shadow war, chronic, strategic, insurgency,

    India’s Shadow Wars: The Chronic Challenge of Internal Disputes

    Many highlight a fundamental and complex issue. India’s internal security landscape is marked by ongoing “shadow wars,” driven by several interconnected factors. In these asymmetric conflicts, the distinction between civilians and combatants blurs, creating a challenge that non-state actors often exploit by blending into local populations. At the same time, long-standing economic inequality, social injustice, and political marginalisation serve as breeding grounds for unrest, providing a continuous influx of recruits and supporters for insurgent groups. Developing effective counterinsurgency tactics demands a deep understanding of the complex interactions among these factors.

     The Connection between the Blurring of Civilian-Combatant Lines and Asymmetric Warfare

    Ongoing domestic insurgencies are characterised by the interaction of asymmetric warfare and the blurring of civilian-combatant boundaries. When confronted with the Indian state’s overwhelming conventional military strength, insurgent organisations deliberately adopt asymmetric tactics. These include targeted killings to instil terror and undermine the state’s authority, the deployment of improvised explosive devices (IEDs) to attack security personnel, and guerrilla ambushes in challenging terrain, such as the mountains of Kashmir and the Northeast or the forests of Chhattisgarh. These strategies aim to minimise direct engagement where they would be at a disadvantage while maximising their impact. An important aspect of this asymmetric approach is the extensive infiltration of rebels into civilian communities, which is often driven by various factors. It arises from genuine local support rooted in a sense of marginalisation and historical grievances. Strong tribal ties, for example, sometimes provide rebels with local sympathy and logistical assistance in the Northeast. In other cases, where villages are compelled to provide food, shelter, or intelligence, coercion and intimidation become essential.

     

    Furthermore, security forces find it challenging to conduct successful operations without risking civilian casualties, as operating within residential areas provides strategic cover. By operating in plain clothes and reintegrating into society following operations, insurgents often intentionally blur boundaries. This ambiguity hampers counterinsurgency efforts (Winter, 2011). The main challenge lies in accurately distinguishing between fighters and non-combatants. Indirect damage poses a significant threat to security operations, making intelligence gathering extremely difficult. Even unforeseen civilian casualties can deepen local discontent and alienation, potentially prompting more people to support the rebels. This leads to an endless cycle where harsh security measures aimed at ending the insurgency unintentionally exacerbate the problem by eroding trust and increasing local grievances. Traditional military tactics, emphasising direct conflict and large-scale operations, may fall short against foes that are deeply rooted and adaptable. A more sophisticated approach is needed—one that goes beyond military strength—requiring accurate intelligence, efforts to secure local cooperation, and tactics designed to minimise civilian harm. The persistent nature of India’s internal insurgencies mainly stems from the inability to effectively manage this complex interaction, which hampers long-term peace and stability by perpetuating cycles of violence and mistrust.

    Enduring economic, social, and political grievances as catalysts

    Long-standing sociopolitical and economic grievances significantly fuel internal insurgencies. A sense of isolation and alienation has been brought about by historical marginalisation, primarily affecting ethnic and tribal groups. Mining for resources and development projects have forced many tribal communities to flee their homelands, sometimes without appropriate compensation. This has led to hostility and the loss of traditional livelihoods. Insurgent groups exploit the narrative of the oppressed, driven by this historical injustice, to recruit new members. The inadequate political representation of certain communities further deepens these grievances. When groups believe their voices are not heard within the democratic system and that the state ignores their specific demands and concerns, feelings of helplessness may grow, and they may resort to more extreme methods for redress. For instance, a perceived lack of political agency and responsiveness by the central government often sparks calls for increased autonomy or even independence in various regions. Inequalities in development and economic status across India’s many regions are also significant. Areas affected by insurgency tend to have poor development outcomes and lag in employment, healthcare, education, and infrastructure. This uneven development fosters a sense of injustice, giving people a tangible reason to complain about ineffective or poor governance. Disadvantaged young people seeking purpose or financial stability may find insurgent groups appealing due to limited viable economic options. Security measures alone cannot resolve these complex, longstanding issues. Despite continuous counterinsurgency efforts, insurgencies may endure for decades because of the deeply rooted nature of these grievances. Addressing these underlying causes requires equitable development policies targeting underserved regions, inclusive governance that guarantees representation and participation for all communities, and a commitment to social justice that redresses historical wrongs and counters ongoing bias. Since the core causes of conflict persist, enduring peace cannot be achieved without these comprehensive, multifaceted strategies (Staniland, 2013).

    The Efficacy and Obstacles of Counterinsurgency Strategies:

    India has effectively contained violence in certain areas through its counterinsurgency methods, which often depend heavily on military and paramilitary forces. However, a solely kinetic approach has struggled to achieve lasting peace. Traditional military superiority is often insufficient due to the challenges of operating in complex terrains and among civilian populations, as well as the rebels’ asymmetric tactics. The “hearts and minds’ strategy, aimed at gaining local support through good governance and development initiatives, has yielded mixed results. These programmes are often impeded by corruption, flawed implementation, and a disconnect between policy and reality on the ground.

    Furthermore, any benefits of development efforts may be undermined by strict security measures that alienate the population. Given its importance, political discourse is often irregular and uneven. Meaningful discussions are impeded by internal divisions within insurgent organisations and by a lack of trust between the state and rebel factions. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), a legal and administrative framework designed to grant security forces operational freedom, has also faced criticism for suspected human rights abuses, further alienating local people and possibly escalating hostility. India’s ongoing insurgencies highlight the drawbacks of relying solely on fragmented or military-focused counterinsurgency tactics. A comprehensive strategy that combines security measures with genuine political participation, equitable and long-term development, and a commitment to addressing the underlying socio-political and economic grievances that sustain these conflicts is essential to achieve lasting peace (Rajagopalan, 2007).

    Conclusion:

    Addressing India’s ongoing internal conflicts requires an integrated approach that goes beyond mere security interventions. While managing existing conflicts involves effective counterinsurgency strategies, long-term stability relies on proactively addressing the root causes of unrest. This includes ensuring fair political participation, promoting social justice, and fostering inclusive economic growth. To truly heal divisions and achieve lasting peace, ending these “shadow wars” ultimately demands a comprehensive strategy that combines security efforts with broad socioeconomic and political reforms.

    References:

    Rajagopalan, R. (2007). Force and Compromise: India’s Counterinsurgency Grand Strategy. South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 75-91. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/00856400701264035

    Staniland, P. (2013). Insurgencies In India. In Routledge Handbook of Indian Politics (p. 11). Routledge.

    Winter, Y. (2011, September). The asymmetric war discourse and its moral economies: a critique. International Theory, 3(3). doi:https://doi.org/10.1017/S1752971911000145

     

    Feature Image Credit: thekootneeti.in

  • Navigating Geopolitical Turbulence in a Fragmented International System

    Navigating Geopolitical Turbulence in a Fragmented International System

    The old world order is not returning; the international system is structurally transforming into a fragmented multipolar reality. In this age of disorder, flexible institutions and reformist leadership—exemplified by India—are essential to sustain global governance.

    The 56th World Economic Forum Annual Meeting took place in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland, from January 19 to 23, 2026, under the theme “A Spirit of Dialogue.” The forum brought together global political, business, and intellectual leaders at a moment when the international order is not merely under strain but undergoing a deeper structural transformation. Discussions at Davos underscored a shared recognition that dialogue in today’s fractured global environment is not a sentimental ideal but a strategic necessity—particularly amid intensifying geopolitical competition, accelerating technological disruption, economic fragmentation, and the growing limitations of established institutional frameworks. Significantly, the conversations reflected a broader shift in global thinking, moving away from nostalgia for a stable post–Cold War order toward an urgent search for more flexible and adaptive forms of global governance capable of managing uncertainty, fragmentation, and persistent conflict.

    The contemporary international system is undergoing an unprecedented degree of geopolitical turbulence. Institutions such as the United Nations and other global governance mechanisms—established in the aftermath of the Second World War—were designed to manage conflict and promote cooperation within the structural realities of that era. Today, however, the assumptions underpinning these institutions no longer align with prevailing geopolitical conditions, rendering many of them increasingly ineffective and disconnected from contemporary realities. This growing institutional disconnect is inseparable from deeper structural changes in the global system itself. As Zack Cooper, a Senior Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, notes in his Stimson Center essay “An American Strategy for a Multipolar World”, “a multipolar world is now unavoidable, with legacy powers increasingly accompanied by a number of rising powers… this is a much more complex system than the multipolar dynamic that existed in Europe after the Congress of Vienna… today’s multipolar system is highly fragmented along regional and functional lines.” This observation captures the core challenge of the present international system: it is not merely shifting in power distribution, but fundamentally transforming in structure and complexity.

    From Bipolarity to Fragmentation

    The post–Second World War order was shaped initially by Cold War bipolarity and later by a brief unipolar moment following the end of the Cold War. In contrast, the current system is marked by fragmentation, instability, and a gradual transition toward multipolarity. Historically, periods of power transition—particularly multipolar configurations—have been associated with heightened uncertainty, miscalculation, and conflict. The present environment reflects this pattern, as competing power centres and overlapping crises push the international system toward persistent volatility.

    In this volatile context, states are increasingly adopting hedging strategies to manage risks and vulnerabilities. From Europe to Asia and beyond, countries are diversifying partnerships, avoiding rigid alignments, and seeking strategic flexibility. This behaviour is neither anomalous nor irrational; rather, it is a structural response to systemic uncertainty. Such adaptive behaviour, however, is itself a symptom of deeper structural instability in the international system.

    As many scholars, most notably Kenneth Waltz, have long argued, an emerging multipolar order tends to be among the most unstable configurations in international politics, marked by heightened risks of conflict, miscalculation, and escalation. With multiple powers competing simultaneously and no clear hegemon capable of stabilising the system, the international order becomes increasingly fragile and prone to error. The contemporary system appears to be operating on this edge, shaped by overlapping crises and rival power centres.

    Compounding this instability is the rapid emergence of critical and disruptive technologies, advanced weapons platforms, cyber capabilities, and artificial intelligence. These developments further intensify volatility by lowering barriers to conflict, accelerating escalation dynamics, and complicating traditional deterrence frameworks. International experts at a 2025 conference warned that such technologies are “eroding present deterrence frameworks” and could destabilise the global security order without a global regulatory consensus. Similarly, the World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2025 notes that “cybersecurity is entering an era of unprecedented complexity,” as the rapid adoption of AI without adequate safeguards creates far-reaching security risks requiring multilateral cooperation.

    While some observers attribute current turbulence primarily to political leaders such as Donald Trump, this interpretation is overly simplistic. Trump’s policies may have accelerated existing trends, but they are not the root cause. The deeper drivers lie in structural shifts within the international system and in long-term transformations within American domestic politics that have altered the foundations of US global engagement.

    Davos and the Recognition of a New World Order

    These concerns have been openly acknowledged by global leaders at the World Economic Forum. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, speaking at Davos, argued that “the old world order is not coming back,” cautioning against nostalgia-driven policymaking and warning that the global system is undergoing a rupture rather than a smooth transition. He further observed that economic interdependence has increasingly been weaponised and warned middle powers that “if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.” Such remarks reflect a growing recognition that disorder, competition, and power asymmetries are now embedded features of the international system.

    Similarly, World Economic Forum President Børge Brende highlighted the depth of uncertainty confronting the global order, noting that “the political, geopolitical, and macroeconomic landscape is shifting under our feet.” Emphasising the limits of unilateralism and rigid frameworks, Brende stressed that “dialogue is a necessity, not a luxury,” reinforcing the idea that cooperation must persist even in an era of fragmentation. These statements underline a critical point: the challenge today is not the absence of institutions, but their inability to adapt to changing geopolitical realities.

    French President Emmanuel Macron further reinforced this diagnosis at Davos by warning of a “shift towards a world without rules, where international law is trampled underfoot and where the law of the strongest prevails.” His remarks underscore the erosion of the post–Second World War multilateral framework under the pressure of returning imperial ambitions, coercive diplomacy, and unilateral action. Macron’s warning reflects a broader concern that global politics is increasingly shaped by power rather than norms. At the same time, he rejected intimidation as an organising principle of international relations, stating that “we prefer respect to bullies,” and called for effective multilateralism—one that is reformed and updated rather than dismantled.

    Reforming Global Governance for an Age of Disorder

    Against this backdrop, the central question is how states can navigate such geopolitical turbulence. A rigid, blueprint-based institutional approach—reminiscent of Cold War–era frameworks—is no longer viable. What is required instead are flexible, adaptive institutions capable of absorbing shocks, accommodating diverse interests, and operating under conditions of persistent uncertainty. Since traditional multilateralism is increasingly strained, it is essential to recognise that disorder itself is likely to remain a defining feature of the contemporary international system.

    Any effort to design or reform institutions must therefore begin with this recognition. Fragmentation and regionalisation—particularly through minilateral and issue-based coalitions—are inevitable outcomes of a multipolar environment. However, this does not eliminate the need for global cooperation. Rather, it demands cooperation frameworks that are flexible, inclusive, and responsive to evolving geopolitical realities. Institutions must be capable of adapting to shifting power balances rather than attempting to impose outdated structures on a transformed system. In these tough times, the world requires greater cooperation and coordinated action, because the challenges we face—such as climate change, cyber threats, economic instability, and regional conflicts—are global in nature and cannot be solved through isolated national approaches.

    Another limitation in current thinking is the tendency to interpret global politics solely through the lens of US–China rivalry. While great power competition undeniably shapes the international environment, such a narrow focus underestimates the agency of middle and regional powers. Many states actively shape outcomes, norms, and institutions rather than merely reacting to great power pressures. Effective institutional design must therefore reflect this distributed agency and avoid reducing global politics to a binary rivalry.

    Equally important is the need to move beyond linear and deterministic thinking. The contemporary world is characterised by non-linear dynamics, uncertainty, and complex interactions. Predicting the future exclusively through the lens of past patterns—particularly those rooted in liberal or Cold War assumptions—is increasingly misleading. Institutional responses must be grounded in realism, flexibility, and adaptability rather than static or idealised models of order.

    Recent initiatives such as Donald Trump’s proposal for a “Board of Peace,” driven largely by personal leadership and transactional logic, illustrate the limitations of personality-centric approaches to global governance. Given their temporary nature and the likelihood of reversal under future administrations, such initiatives lack durability. Moreover, such proposals are often unrepresentative and do not reflect the realities of the international system; they are based on authoritarian-style solutions rather than broad-based legitimacy, consensus, and institutional resilience. In contrast, reforming existing institutions—particularly the United Nations—offers a more sustainable path forward. Reforms that reflect contemporary geopolitical realities would enhance the UN’s relevance without undermining its foundational principles.

    India’s Reformist Approach to Global Governance

    India’s approach to global governance is particularly instructive in this context. When India criticises the United Nations or other global institutions, its objective is not to dismantle them but to reform them. This distinguishes India from countries such as China and Russia, which often seek to replace existing structures with alternative, and frequently anti-Western, institutional arrangements. India positions itself not as an anti-Western power, but as a non-Western one—committed to liberal democracy, pluralism, and engagement with existing global frameworks. As India’s Ministry of External Affairs has emphasised, “the architecture of global governance in 2025 for the future cannot be written in ink from 1945,” highlighting the need to update institutions rather than replace them.

    This distinction is crucial. India has significantly benefited from the existing international order, and its economic transformation since the post-1991 reforms has been largely enabled by the stability, access to global markets, and investment flows that the post-World War II system provided. Consequently, India has little incentive to support a China-centric alternative. Reforming the current system, rather than replacing it, aligns with India’s long-term strategic interests. Moreover, India’s leadership and participation in forums such as the SCO and BRICS have played a stabilising role. Without India’s presence, these platforms could easily evolve into explicitly anti-Western blocs. India’s foreign policy is best understood as reformist rather than revisionist, acting as a bridge between the West and the Global South; as Chatham House notes, India seeks to “change the international order from within rather than overthrow it.” Yet many Western policymakers fail to understand India’s global vision and often categorise it alongside other revisionist powers, viewing India narrowly through a bilateral prism or primarily as a counterweight to China. This misreading overlooks India’s broader role as an independent norm-shaping power.

    In light of these dynamics, the most effective strategy for navigating contemporary geopolitical turbulence lies in reforming and revitalising existing institutions rather than constructing entirely new ones based on rigid, blueprint-style thinking. A blueprint approach assumes that we can predict the future and design institutions accordingly—an assumption that is inherently flawed because the future is always uncertain and unknowable. Institutions must therefore be designed to capture the reality of moving from the known to the unknown and to adapt continuously as new challenges emerge. They must be made flexible, resilient, and responsive to disorder rather than designed to eliminate it. Accepting instability as a structural condition—and designing mechanisms of cooperation accordingly—offers the best chance of sustaining global governance in an increasingly fragmented world.

     

    Feature Image Credit: www.byarcadia.org

  • Did Colonisation ever End?

    Did Colonisation ever End?

    Let us all unite and toil together

    To give the best we have to Africa

    The cradle of mankind and fount of culture

    Our pride and hope at break of dawn

    From the African Union anthem

    Consider this scenario, courtesy of Supreme Africa Breaking News: Since 2022, representatives of the African Union have been meeting at the organisation’s headquarters in Addis Ababa to draw up a living constitution for the continent and establish a single African government. The constitution itself will be promulgated in 2026, whereupon national lawmaking bodies will begin aligning domestic laws within the continental framework and African governments will sign that one African sovereign agreement. Between then and 2028, citizens will receive dual IDs, a unified army will be created, and countries will begin using a common digital currency—Afrigold—alongside their local ones. The third stage, harmonization, will culminate in 2035, when the newly formed African parliament will gain real powers.

    After that, Africans will be free to move around the continent to live and work where they please. They will be able to appeal to AU courts if their government violates their rights, and they will be able to vote in the elections of whichever country they happen to find themselves. Democracy will be the default system of government for all member states, even though monarchies will participate in an advisory capacity in a council of sovereigns, alongside chiefs and spiritual leaders. In the words of Mama Pan Africa, an invented muse of sorts, “This constitution respects the soil it walks on. We’re not killing traditions; we’re aligning them with the dream.”

    Alas, a dream it is indeed. Supreme Africa Breaking News is a YouTube channel of true believers. And the reality of the AU could hardly be harsher.

    The first and most obvious problem is the historical legacy of colonialism, which, by the end of the nineteenth century had divided the continent into several dozen territories under the control and administration of mostly the UK and France, but also Belgium, Portugal, Spain, and, for a time, Germany. Following World War II—which had been fought in the name of saving the world from tyranny—these states all gained what they were pleased to call independence, with their own flags, anthems, and UN seats. But what did that amount to in practice?

    In July 1960, Michel Debré, then the prime minister of France, stated to the leader of Gabon: “Independence is granted on the condition that the State, once independent, undertakes to respect the cooperation agreements signed previously. There are two systems which come into force at the same time: independence and cooperation agreements. One does not go without the other.”

    In short, as the historian Tony Chafer has put it, “decolonisation did not mark an end, but rather a restructuring of the imperial relationship.”

    The French didn’t fudge the answer. In July 1960, Michel Debré, then the prime minister of France, stated to the leader of Gabon: “Independence is granted on the condition that the State, once independent, undertakes to respect the cooperation agreements signed previously. There are two systems which come into force at the same time: independence and cooperation agreements. One does not go without the other.” In short, as the historian Tony Chafer has put it, “decolonisation did not mark an end, but rather a restructuring of the imperial relationship.” The cooperation agreements had a number of components. One was the issue of what was known as the colonial debt—which, however counterintuitive this may seem today, obliged the newly independent countries to pay for the infrastructure supposedly built by France during colonisation. There was also the obligation for them to continue using French as the national language. And there were the security pacts under which they would have to support the mother country in any future wars.

    Even more telling was the right of first refusal on the purchase of all natural resources (including those yet to be discovered) in ex-colonial territories that France reserved for itself, irrespective of whether the new countries’ governments could secure better deals elsewhere. And there was the imposition of the CFA franc on fourteen West and Central African states (including Guinea-Bissau, a former Portuguese colony) at a fixed exchange rate with the French franc (and subsequently, the euro). This setup enabled France to pay for imports in its own currency and thereby save on any currency exchanges in a world otherwise dominated by the US dollar. The French economy benefitted greatly from the ensuing trade surplus, which fed reserves to pay for the country’s debts. Some African leaders profited as well: they could more easily loot their respective treasuries, with the active encouragement of their French masters, who also guaranteed their grip on power by keeping French troops stationed near the capital cities. Those who attempted to skirt any of the requirements were quickly disposed of.

    Such was the case with Togo. In 1963, barely two years into his tenure as the country’s first president, Sylvanus Olympio was assassinated by a squad of soldiers led by Gnassingbé Eyadéma, an army sergeant and former French Foreign Legionnaire. Olympio’s crime, in the eyes of the French authorities, was to have insisted that Togo should have its own currency. Eyadéma soon handed power over to a new president, only to overthrow him four years later, in 1967. Subsequently, he morphed into a civilian president, and following growing unrest after a decade in power in that capacity, he agreed to a democratic constitution—and then easily won multiparty elections in 1993 and again in 1998, both times amid widespread allegations of electoral fraud. Term limits should have forced him to finally step down in 2002, but he had the constitution amended to abolish them, and he won elections again in 2003, and again was accused of fraud. He died in office two years later. In all of this, he was fully supported by successive French governments—much like his son Faure Gnassingbé has been since.

    Gnassingbé, who had served as a minister under his father, in 2005 promptly took over the mantle in what was effectively a military coup. Like his father, he served two terms, the new constitution’s stipulated maximum, and then, also like his father, he rewrote the constitution—this time converting the presidential system to a parliamentary one. As the new prime minister, Gnassingbé was named president of the council of ministers, with most of the previous powers of the president devolving to him. He could stay in this post until at least 2030.

    As it happens, a similar path is currently being trod by Alassane Ouattara, since 2010 the president of Côte d’Ivoire, the jewel in the Françafrique crown. Ouattara is now proposing to stand for re-election for a fourth term, arguing that term limits were reset to zero with a new constitution in 2016. As I write, protestors are being shot on the streets in both countries. President Emmanuel Macron of France recently denied that he had asked Gnassingbé to resign, despite reports to the contrary; where Ouattara is concerned, Macron had said, in 2020, “France does not have to give lessons.” France is anxious to maintain a neocolonial relationship, but Macron understands very well that it cannot be sustained, and so he hedges.

    By contrast, the best that can be said for the British during decolonisation is that they were more circumspect than the French. The new native rulers weren’t required to sign a piece of paper: They had already been co-opted into service, most glaringly in the case of Nigeria. According to the historian Olakunle Lawal, in the runup to independence in 1960, a draft paper from the British Foreign Office sought to investigate how “we can sustain our position as a world power, particularly in the economic and strategic fields, against the dangers inherent in the present upsurge of nationalism,” in order that the UK might “maintain specific British interests on which our existence as a trading country depends.” It concluded that the challenge “was to forestall nationalist demands which threaten our vital interests” by creating “a class with a vested interest in co-operation.” But then the British authorities knew with whom they were dealing.

    Following independence, this class proceeded to loot the Nigerian treasury to the tune of $20 trillion between 1960 and 2005, storing many of the proceeds in safe havens abroad. Nigeria still ranks among the most corrupt countries in the world, according to Transparency International. Such behaviour is a sign of these people’s contempt for the masses they lord it over—and sometimes, indeed, are allowed to lord it over by those masses themselves.

    Consider the case of Ike Ekweremadu, a former long-time senator and former deputy president of the Senate, who is serving a prison sentence in the U.K. after being convicted of an organ-trafficking plot, the first such case to be tried under the 2015 Modern Slavery Act. It turns out that he had arranged for a 21-year-old street hawker in Lagos to travel to the UK so that one of the vendor’s kidneys could be harvested to save the life of Ekweremadu’s ailing daughter. The operation would have cost Ekweremadu £80,000—small change for someone with two homes in London, three in Florida, and seven in Dubai. The intended victim, who was to receive just £7,000 for his organ, only realised what was about to be done to him when doctors informed him of the medical risks he faced and the subsequent lifelong care he would require. Ekweremadu clearly didn’t think much of the fellow’s life; after all, the man had only been selling phone accessories out of a wheelbarrow in Lagos.

    That young man has now improved his lot, having inadvertently been gifted a one-way ticket to the so-called developed world, which mercifully granted him asylum for his travails. Tellingly, however, Ekweremadu’s wife, who was convicted alongside her husband but has since been released, was enthusiastically received when she returned home to Nigeria early this year. In the words of a local community leader: “Our prayers are with the Ekweremadu family, and we hope Senator Ike will also be reunited with us soon.” No mention of their target.

    So here we are, all these decades after so-called independence, and what is the role of the African Union in all of this? Originally known as the Organization of African Unity, the body was launched in 1963 with five objectives: to promote unity and solidarity among African states; to defend their sovereignty, territorial integrity, and independence; to coordinate and intensify their efforts to achieve a better life for the peoples of Africa; to eradicate all forms of colonialism; and to promote international cooperation, with due regard to the Charter of the United Nations and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Of these goals, the first was by far the most important. Kwame Nkrumah, Ghana’s first head of state, spelt this out in an impassioned speech to the OAU in 1963: “Unite we must. Without necessarily sacrificing our sovereignties, big or small, we can here and now forge a political union based on defence, foreign affairs and diplomacy, and a common citizenship, an African currency, an African monetary zone, and an African central bank. We must unite in order to achieve the full liberation of our continent.”

    Yet little or no progress was made on this front. In time, the OAU became known as an old men’s club, because of elderly African leaders who were more concerned with oppressing their subjects in the artificial fiefs they had inherited than with uplifting their lot. And many of those fiefs, though many are also actual countries, are still too insignificant in the larger scheme of things: six contain fewer than one million people, four fewer than two million, and another five fewer than three million. Which is one reason the heads of state or government of the OAU issued the Sirte Declaration in 1999 calling for the establishment of the AU: they wanted to accelerate the integration of Africa so that, according to one commentator on the site of the Nasser Youth Movement, the continent could “play its rightful role in the global economy while addressing multifaceted social, economic and political problems compounded as they were by certain negative aspects of globalization.” All well and good.

    And this wish was reiterated by Dr. Arikana Chihombori-Quao, the AU’s ambassador to the U.S. in 2016–19: “Until Africa comes together as a continent to speak with one voice as a people, nothing will change for the good of her people.” Failing that, she pointed out—obviously enough—that a plethora of small, unviable countries with “the same sovereignty as China, as India,” were deliberately designed “to see to it that they will never make it on their own—and in the event those countries do make it, they are easy to destabilise.”

    “The dismissal of Arikana Chihombori-Quao, AU ambassador to the United States, raises serious questions about the independence of the AU. For someone who spoke her mind about the detrimental effects of colonisation and the huge cost of French control in several parts of Africa, this is an act that can best be described as coming from French-controlled colonised minds.”   – Jerry John Rawlings, former President of Ghana

    Shortly after, her term was abruptly cut short without explanation. The chair of the AU at the time, Moussa Faki Mahamat, a former foreign minister of Chad, wrote her a letter that read, in part: “I have the honor to inform you that, in line with the terms and conditions of the service governing your appointment as Permanent Representative of the African Union Mission to the United States in Washington, DC, I have decided to terminate your contract in that capacity with effect from Nov. 1, 2019.” To many, this was proof of the AU’s spinelessness in the face of the West. Jerry John Rawlings, the former (and now late) president of Ghana, tweeted at the time: “The dismissal of Arikana Chihombori-Quao, AU ambassador to the United States, raises serious questions about the independence of the AU. For someone who spoke her mind about the detrimental effects of colonisation and the huge cost of French control in several parts of Africa, this is an act that can best be described as coming from French-controlled colonised minds.”

    The colonised mind was also clearly on display in the case of Ouattara’s election for an illegal third term in late 2020, when he was 78. According to a report by Human Rights Watch, the security forces perpetrated the widespread violence in opposition strongholds, in league with local thugs. Here is the account of one eyewitness in the Yopougon Kouté area of Abidjan:

    I saw a group coming into the neighbourhood in two Gbakas (minivans), blue taxis, and scooters. … They were armed with machetes, knives, and guns. I went out with what I could to defend my village. The neighbourhood youth started throwing stones, and there were so many of us that they fled. One of the government supporters couldn’t escape in time, and he was beaten to death by our young people.

    Even as the European Union—the West—expressed “deep concerns about the tensions, provocations and incitement to hatred that have prevailed and continue to persist in the country around this election,” the AU claimed that the vote had “proceeded in a generally satisfactory manner.” But that was no surprise. As one human rights activist from Mozambique said: “the African Union is an organisation that primarily represents the interests of the powerful. It is toothless and ineffective, and it repeatedly proves itself incapable of ensuring prosperity, security, and peace for all Africans.”

    In fact, the AU is not different enough from the OAU: it, too, is an old men’s club. Africa counts both some of the world’s oldest male presidents (their female counterparts are few and far between). It also counts some of the youngest demographics of any continent, and these older men jealously guard their privileges. Watch the 92-year-old Paul Biya currently planning to run in the forthcoming elections in Cameroon; he has been in power in one form or another since 1982. He isn’t even the longest-standing leader on the continent. That honour goes to the 83-year-old Teodoro Obiang Nguema Mbasogo of Equatorial Guinea, in power since 1979. Two decades ago, the state-operated radio station declared him “the country’s god” with “all power over men and things,” adding that he was “in permanent contact with the almighty” and “can decide to kill anyone without calling him to account and without going to hell.”

    It is hardly surprising that such men would be wary of an AU that, as they see matters, is seeking to usurp their power; they are tardy in funding it. Many member states don’t bother to pay their annual contributions, which is why external sources funded two-thirds of its 2023 budget (and China built the new headquarters in Addis Ababa at its own expense). An attempt was made to rectify this anomaly in a decision adopted by the various governments at a Retreat on Financing of the Union during the 27th African Union Summit in Kigali, Rwanda, in July 2016. It directed all AU members to apply a 0.2% levy on eligible imports to finance the organisation. We are all allowed our dreams; nothing ever came of this one.

    The pity of it all is that a united Africa, whose population is expected to hit 2.5 billion by 2050—and account for one in four people in the world—stands to become the most populous continent by the end of the century: it should automatically command at least one permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and with full veto power. Addressing the annual session of the UN General Assembly in 2023, Joe Biden, then the US president, seemed to make an indirect case for Africa’s inclusion at the top: “We need to be able to break the gridlock that too often stymies progress and blocks consensus on the Council. We need more voices and more perspectives at the table.” His call was repeated in 2024 by Linda Thomas-Greenfield, his Black ambassador to the UN, who waxed lyrical about being Uncle Sam’s emissary in her mother continent. Having “travelled extensively across Africa,” she said, she knew “firsthand the diversity and the talent, the depth and breadth of experience.” And so the US government would support granting the continent two permanent seats on the Security Council—but without veto power, otherwise the council would become “dysfunctional.” Chihombori-Quao rightly said that the proposal “is an insult, not only to the African leaders, but it is an insult to 1.4 billion people.” What else is new?

    This article was published earlier on www.theideasletter.org and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-Non-commercial-No Derivatives license.

    Feature Image Credit: The Berlin Conference of 1884-5. Source: Illustrierte Zeitung via Wikimedia Commons and  thecollector.com