By Jeremi Suri
AUSTIN, Texas, May 15 2024 – The campus protests that have spread to universities in every part of the United States are not about the war between Israel and Hamas, despite the heated rhetoric around this topic. Most of the students who are protesting know little about the conflict, its history and its ramifications for international politics.

Few of them cared deeply about the issue before the horrifying Hamas attack on Israelis on 7 October 2023 and the militaristic response of Israel’s government. What motivates the protests are two historical dynamics that long pre-date the current moment: alienation and radicalisation.

College students in the United States and other countries are more alienated from older generations than their recent predecessors. Crucial years in their social and emotional development were distorted by Covid-19, when they were forced to connect digitally rather than in-person.

They formed bonds with other young people in similar circumstances, but they did not build relationships with teachers, coaches, employers or other adult mentors. Many feel on their own, abandoned.

And the collective desire in so many societies to forget about Covid-19 means that they cannot talk about how it affected them. The denial of their reality by most adults makes students cynical. I see it in my own students who are talented, but somewhat hopeless.

Under attack

Cynicism and hopelessness have seeded anger (and sometimes violence) because struggling students feel that they are frequently under attack from politicians in the US. As I have written elsewhere, the Republican Party has waged a war on universities for at least a decade.

Elected officials like House Speaker Mike Johnson, Representative Elise Stefanik, Senator Ted Cruz, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and Texas Governor Greg Abbott have attacked faculty and students for pursuing racial and gender justice, for demanding forgiveness of exorbitant tuition loans and for seeking access to safe abortions. Republican policy positions run against the views of the vast majority of college students.

For this reason, Republicans across the United States have created barriers to political participation for young people. Republicans simply do not want them to vote, and when they vote, Republicans often allege ‘fraud’. Some obvious examples of voter suppression stand out.

States like Florida and Texas require voters to register a month in advance with a proof of permanent address, which is often difficult for students to document. These and other states also place voting locations close to older voters, farther from universities and downtown residential areas.

Gerrymandering means that rural areas with older voters are overrepresented; dense urban areas with younger voters are underrepresented. And Republicans across the United States are seeking to limit early and absentee voting — flexible voting options that young people who work and study full time value.

Alienation from Republican politicians has contributed to widespread student distrust of university leaders who frequently succumb to the pressures of Republicans (as happened with the firing of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania) or the demands of donors aligned with Republicans. Students almost universally blame university leaders for giving in to the interests that have disrespected and disenfranchised young, educated citizens.

Unfortunately, the Democratic Party has failed to draw the support of young people either. For the Democrats, the problem is not offensive positions, but a party structure that is dominated by older, mainstream politicians. They are boring for young people, they lack any connection to their world, and they seem too compromised and unprincipled.

In the case of President Biden, students see a decent but old man who is more of a political operator than a moral leader on issues that matter to them — including climate change, social justice and humanitarianism.

A feeling of homelessness

That is where the Israel-Hamas war influences the protests so urgently. Despite the extreme violence and suffering in the Middle East, many college students see a consistency in US support for Israel, with few conditions, that frustrates them. Why isn’t a Democratic president able to exert more influence to change the behaviour of the Israeli government in Gaza, where civilians are currently starving?

Why isn’t a Democratic president able to press Arab allies, especially Egypt and Saudi Arabia, to help civilians? For students who do not appreciate the complexities of foreign policy, the White House appears to be playing an old game in a world with urgent new problems.

Between Republicans and Democrats – the only two choices in the US political system – young people feel homeless. They have become radicalised because they believe that they must find new ways to get around the parties and express their demands. Campus protests today, as in the 1960s, are a form of extra-political opposition.

The students want to side-line Republicans and force Democrats to move far left. The arguments for ‘divestment’ are efforts to reduce the power of banks and financial interests in the Democratic Party and restore influence to ordinary citizens.

The demands for abandoning support to Israel are part of an agenda to shift US foreign policy away from traditional allies and Realpolitik.

Tragically, the radical impulse frequently manifests itself as anti-Semitism, which is reprehensible. In their naivete, many of the campus protesters see American Jews as a central element of the mainstream Democratic Party and, therefore, a source of the party’s resistance to their more progressive impulses.

Biden’s long ties to Israel appear to corroborate this mistaken point of view. Jews appear to be the powerful people in Washington and Jerusalem, and, therefore, they are to blame, according to protesters, for blockage on change that young people so desperately want. Students often articulate this judgement with language that is personal, offensive and threatening to all Jews.

Liberal and conservative Jews are revolted by what they see from campus anti-Semitism. Republicans take advantage of protester anti-Semitism to condemn, yet again, students and universities as a whole.

They pressure campus leaders to deploy force against the protesters, and they extol the bravery of police officers who break-up student encampments. The crackdowns lead to further student alienation and radicalisation, and the cycle of protest and reaction continues to spiral toward more anger, anti-Semitism and violence.

For historians, this is all very familiar. The cycles of protest and reaction are common in moments, like our own, when the basic conditions for the rising and educated members of society do not match established institutions of power and influence. Young people feel locked out, unrepresented and trapped.

They feel they can only make change by challenging institutions. And that is what they are doing. The older, established figures in society might sympathise at times, but they still hold tight to existing institutions, they resist major reforms, and they ultimately call in the police.

The cycle only breaks when a new generation gains power and pursues real reforms, as happened in numerous societies after the 1960s — with the end of the Vietnam War and the rise of détente and Ostpolitik. We need comparable reforms in policy and power today. We cannot turn back the clock to before Covid-19 or October 7.

Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas in Austin. He is a professor in the University’s Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Professor Suri is the author and editor of several books, most recently: Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy.

Source: International Politics and Society (IPS)-Journal published by the International Political Analysis Unit of the Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung, Hiroshimastrasse 28, D-10785 Berlin

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By Jomo Kwame Sundaram
KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia , May 15 2024 – The IMF warns of a decade ahead of ‘tepid growth’ and ‘popular discontent’, with the poorest economies worst off. But as with inaction on Gaza, little is being done multilaterally to avert the imminent catastrophe.

Grim IMF prognosis
Noting the world economy has lost $3.3 trillion since 2020, International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva announced this grim warning before last month’s Spring meetings of the Bretton Woods institutions.

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Instead of prioritising economic recovery, finance ministers and central bank governors in Washington agreed to continue policies worsening the situation. After all, curbing inflation helps preserve the value of financial assets.

Current policies suppressing demand are justified as necessary for financial stabilisation. They do nothing to address the various ‘supply-side disruptions’ mainly responsible for ongoing inflationary pressures.

These include the ‘new geopolitics’, the COVID-19 pandemic, wars, illegal unilateral sanctions, and market manipulation. Thus, ostensibly counter-inflationary measures have worsened pressures perpetuating stagnation.

Brave new world!
The new Cold War of the last decade and other geo-political considerations increasingly shape economic and financial policies worldwide. Powerful nations have weaponised their formulation, implementation and enforcement.

Years of economic stagnation have diminished productive and competitive capabilities. Meanwhile, recent geopolitics has changed geoeconomic relations, hegemony and its discontents. Laws, regulations and judicial processes are increasingly deployed for political – and economic – advantage.

Thus, Western governments have generated inflationary pressures with their economic and geopolitical policies, even if inadvertently. Perceptions of strategic decline are mainly attributable to the ostensibly market-based policies pursued.

The European Central Bank has followed US Fed interest rate hikes from 2022. Both still maintain high interest rates, ostensibly to keep inflation in check. Unsurprisingly, most developing country monetary authorities have had to raise interest rates to reduce capital flight and bolster their exchange rates.

Such interest rate hikes by central banks have raised the costs of funds, squeezing both consumption and investment. Raising interest rates has proved blunt and limited, while more appropriate measures have curbed inflation more effectively.

Instead of checking inflation due to supply disruptions, higher interest rates have squeezed both investment and consumption spending by both the private sector and government. Such cuts have hurt demand, jobs and incomes worldwide.

Although interest rate hikes worldwide have been contractionary, other US macroeconomic policies since the 2008 global financial crisis have maintained full employment in the world’s largest economy, with limited gains for most others.

Policymakers’ hands tied
Many developing country governments borrowed heavily in the late 1970s, mainly from Western commercial banks. But after the US Fed sharply raised interest rates from 1979, severe sovereign debt distress paralysed many heavily indebted governments in Latin America and Africa for at least a decade.

Much more government borrowing, increasingly from bond markets in the decade before 2022, exposed many developing economies to debt stress. This can be much worse than in the 1980s, as debt levels are higher, with more diverse creditors.

With borrowing exposure much higher and more market-based, with less from banks, debt resolution is much more difficult. Many governments have also guaranteed state-owned enterprise borrowings, with some even doing so for well-connected private enterprises.

Meanwhile, policymakers in developing countries today are even more constrained by their circumstances. Vulnerable to market vicissitudes and with fewer macroeconomic policy instruments available, they face pro-cyclical policy biases due to market pressures and supportive institutions.

Besides financial market pressures for fiscal austerity, multilateral financial institutions like the IMF impose such conditions on countries seeking emergency credit and other debt relief.
All this has led to deep government expenditure cuts, especially for public investments, crucial for recovery of the real economy. Hence, governments commit not to spend despite the urgent need for such counter-cyclical expenditure.

Voluntary vulnerability?
Central bank independence typically implies greater sensitivity to market pressures and private financial interests rather than national and government policy priorities.

Instead of strengthening national capacities and capabilities, central bank independence and autonomous fiscal policy authorities have disarmed developing country governments in the face of greater external vulnerability.

This toxic mix may well keep vulnerable governments in protracted debt peonage, unable to free themselves from its yoke, let alone give them the room to create conditions for renewed growth.

Economic liberalisation and globalisation have irreversibly transformed developing economies, with lasting consequences. Export opportunities have become more limited, not least due to the weaponisation of economic policies.

Meanwhile, most developing countries have turned to private creditors despite higher interest rates and borrowing costs. But even private market lending to the poorest nations has dried up since 2022 after the US Fed raised interest rates sharply.

With higher Fed interest rates, finance has abandoned developing countries for ‘safety’ in US markets. As debt service costs soared, distress risks have risen sharply.

Hence, many economies in the Global South are barely growing, especially after earlier collapses of commodity prices, which later worsened due to falling demand as supplies rose due to earlier investments.

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By Joyce Chimbi
NAIROBI, May 15 2024 – The oceans are as fascinating as they are mysterious. Home to the largest animals to ever live on Earth and billions of the tiniest, the top 100 meters of the open oceans host the majority of sea life, such as fish, turtles, and marine mammals. But there is another world far below the surface. In the belly of the ocean, there are seamounts—underwater mountains that rise 1,000 meters or more from the seafloor.

It is within this context that negotiations on critical science, technical skills, and technology deepened on the second day of the 26th session of the Subsidiary Body on Scientific, Technical, and Technological Advice (SBSTTA) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). Putting ocean action on the global agenda is a top priority to ensure conservation and sustainable use of marine and coastal biodiversity. Emphasizing an urgent need for further work on ecologically or biologically significant marine areas.

“The survival of humanity is interlinked with the sustainable use of ocean and marine biodiversity resources. We rely on the ocean for food, relaxation, and inspiration. But now the ocean is under threat, and that threat is being passed on to our lives on land. We have to invest time, money, and every resource possible to save our oceans and, by doing so, save ourselves. Our biggest revenue comes from fisheries, and now we have to worry about rising sea level as we are a low-lying island,” Eleala Avanitele from the Forest Peoples Program in Tuvalu told IPS.

Scientists warn that Tuvalu, the fourth-smallest country in the world, is sinking due to its vulnerability to rising sea levels, as the nation comprises nine low-lying coral atolls and islands. Across the globe, the world is in a crisis as oceans provide 50 percent of all oxygen on Earth and 50 to 80 percent of all life on Earth. This life is now at stake.

Thus far, the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, also known as the Biodiversity Plan, has been front and centre during ongoing negotiations, as it is a strategic plan for the implementation of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), a global agreement that covers all aspects of biological diversity and is considered a framework for governments and the whole of society.

Harrison Ajebe Nnoko Ngaaje from Ajemalebu Self Help (Ajesh) in Cameroon told IPS that his organization is a CSO registered in Cameroon, Ghana, Tanzania, and the USA to create synergies and collaboration within and beyond the continent for the restoration, protection, and sustainable management of key biodiversity areas.

“Conservation and sustainable use of marine and coastal biodiversity is very critical to Cameroon due to its vast and unique ecosystem and biodiversity. Limbe Beach, for instance, has shiny black sandy beaches made of lava sand from the Mt. Cameroon eruptions, an active volcano in the south-west region of Cameroon. We have mangroves under serious threat of degradation. Ajesh is strongly focused on marine protected area management and the conservation of marine aquatic ecosystems.”

More than half of all marine species could be in danger of extinction by 2100. Nearly 60 percent of the world’s marine ecosystems have been altered or handled unsustainably. Marine, coastal, and island biodiversity were discussed within the context of the Biodiversity Plan. Target 3 of the Plan aims to ensure and enable that by 2030 at least 30 percent of terrestrial and inland water areas, and of marine and coastal areas, especially areas of particular importance for biodiversity and ecosystem functions and services, are effectively conserved and managed.

The main goal of the SBSTTA discussions was to find and fix areas that need more attention under the Convention in order to help carry out the Biodiversity Plan for marine, coastal, and island biodiversity.

Despite the Conference of the Parties adopting the program of work on marine and coastal biological diversity at its fourth meeting in 1998 and the program of work on island biodiversity in 2006, the world is significantly behind schedule when it comes to the conservation and sustainable use of marine and coastal biodiversity. Nevertheless, CBD continues to prioritize and facilitate cooperation and collaboration with relevant global and regional organizations and initiatives with regard to marine and coastal biodiversity.

“It is very important that civil society, youths, and Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLCs) are part of the SBSTTA process, observing and being allowed the opportunity to make remarks. Parties make decisions but these actors also implement and are at the forefront of facing the consequences of biodiversity loss,” Ngaaje says.

Onyango Adhiambo, a youth delegate from academia and research under the International University Network on Cultural and Biological Diversity, supported Ngaaje’s remarks.

“Young people will need to understand the science, technical skills, and technology at play in saving our planet, for soon we will need to step in and step up. The future, which is now at stake, belongs to us, and when called upon to intervene on what the parties agree to, we must do so efficiently, effectively, and sustainably to save natural resources for future generations,” Adhiambo said.

Highlights from the session included a recognition of the importance of science for decision-making and that there are many areas of the programmes of work on marine and coastal biodiversity and on island biodiversity that have not been fully implemented and for which enhanced capacity-building and development, in particular for least developed countries and small island developing states, are needed.

The 2022 Biodiversity Plan says that we can get back on track by creating “ecologically representative, well-connected, and fairly governed systems of protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures, recognizing indigenous and traditional territories, where applicable, and integrating them into larger landscapes, seascapes, and the ocean, while ensuring that any sustainable use, where appropriate in such areas, is fully consistent with conservation outcomes, recognizing and respecting the rights of indigenous peoples and local communities, including over their traditional territories.”

Equally important is the agreement under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea on the Conservation and Sustainable Use of Marine Biological Diversity in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, which was adopted on June 19, 2023.

Collaboration in ocean conservation beyond national boundaries was strongly encouraged on issues such as marine genetic resources, including the fair and equitable sharing of benefits; measures such as area-based management tools, including marine protected areas; environmental impact assessments; and capacity-building and the transfer of marine technology.

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