Transcript 0:05 Welcome to Trendlines, a podcast on global affairs brought to you by World Politics Review. 0:10 My name is Peter Dory, and I'm joined as always by World Politics Review editor-in-chief Judah Grunstein for this week's briefing. So, uh, what has crossed your desk this, this week, Judah? 0:21 The big story in the early part of the week was a ruling by the Tribunal of the Law of the Sea, uh, over a case that the Philippines brought against China in the South China Sea. 0:33 In the immediate aftermath of the announcement of the ruling, we put together a report, uh, of some of our coverage, which includes a Global Insiders interview series on all of the various, uh, claims and claimant states to the territorial disputes there, as well as, uh, briefings and articles on China's activities in the South China Sea, and the rivalry and tensions between the United States and China over this issue. 1:07 Th- now, the South China Sea has become a major regional hotspot due to conflicting territorial claims between China and several regional countries, including the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as, uh, several others, uh, over various islands, rocks, and outcroppings. 1:25 And recently it's been in the news due to Chinese land reclamation or island-building activities on several reefs, as well as US Navy freedom, freedom of navigation patrols near them. 1:38 And the, the stakes of the disputes aren't necessarily the feature them- the features themselves, most of which are unusable for human habitation, for instance, but rather the maritime rights that they confer, uh, around them. 1:53 And those depend on the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. 1:57 Uh, and, and although the tribunal that, uh, that just ruled on the case has no jurisdiction over the actual territorial disputes, uh, it ruled on several technical aspects of how to classify certain features, uh, under dispute. 2:14 Uh, and that ruling was heavily in favor of the Philippines. Um, so most importantly, it rejected China's main overarching argument, uh, which was a vague claim of sovereignty over most of the South China Sea. 2:29 Uh, again, vague because it's never really defined the claim, and it's only really, uh, uh, and, and it's only really made the claim by demarcating the, the South China Sea on various official maps with, uh, the so-called nine-dashed line that it says reflects its historical territory. 2:50 And so again, while the, the ruling doesn't resolve the disputes over who the features actually belong to, it classified them in ways that significantly, s- significantly strengthened the Philippines' negotiating position. 3:04 It's a binding ruling, but the, the tribunal has no enforcement powers, and so there's no mechanism to impose the ruling. And so now the key will really be how everyone responds to it. 3:16 China has already rejected the tribunal's jurisdiction, and it refused to even participate in the case. 3:23 Um, at the same time, there are reputa- reputational costs for it to simply flaunt the ruling, uh, given a lot of regional anxiety over its rising power and, uh, in some ways, its, uh, increased assertiveness over the past few years, especially in the South China Sea. 3:41 Uh, for its part, the United States is trying to keep other claimant countries from backing China into a corner by piling on with very public posturing over the ruling. 3:52 Uh, for now, there are still a number of potential avenues for a negotiated settlement, with China preferring bilateral talks, obviously, in which it has the advantage as the stronger power, and the smaller and weaker claimants preferring a multilateral forum like ASEAN. 4:09 Uh, what's really at stake, though, is whether China will abide by its commitments under international law, and in so doing, signaling that it's willing to subscribe to a rules b- a rules-based order and basically be a responsible stakeholder, uh, or whether, by contrast, it will seek to act as really all great powers have acted throughout history, particularly when it comes to spheres of in- influence in their near abroad, which is to say, to hold themselves to be above the law. 4:42 And it's, uh, certainly not the only bind that China has found itself in, uh, in, uh, in the last week or two. 4:49 Um, the other, uh, conflict of interest or internal conflict of interest, uh, that China faces is, uh, in South Sudan, uh, where, um, 5:00 as, uh, probably many listeners know, uh, we had a civil war, uh, which started in 2013 and which ended officially, uh, last year with a peace agreement, um, signed in Addis Ababa. 5:13 And, uh, but, uh, where fighting has broken out again, uh, l- uh, last Friday, only one day before the celebrations were, uh, due for the fifth, uh, day of independence in Juba. 5:26 And it's not, not, uh, really clear yet why the fighting started and who exactly was participating, uh, in it. Um, but, uh, it has already cost several hundreds lives. 5:36 There is a ceasefire for now, uh, but it's not clear if it's going to hold. And it has, uh, one more time underlined the fragility of peace, and, uh, democratization, and the peace process as a whole in South Sudan. 5:50 And you had a very good, um, piece by Richard Gowan on the side, uh, looking at China's role and interest in that conflict, because China is, uh, South Sudan's, um, uh, most significant trading partner in terms of its, uh, of, of its, uh, crude oil production. 6:09 And it is also one of the top troop contributors to the United Nations peace mission in South Sudan, which is a first for China to take such a prominent role with a combat battalion on the ground in South Sudan. 6:25 So there's quite a few, quite a lot going on there for China, and it is already quite heavily invested in South Sudan's peace process and politics. 6:36 And that has also been reflected in a quite tragic loss for China with two peacekeepers who got killed in recent fighting in Juba and with more at risk, obviously, because they are stationed there and are there in a combat role to protect civilians. 6:51 And as Richard points out, China is probably the only major player in this conflict who has not yet maxed out its potential to influence the conflict parties in South Sudan for the better. So the U.S. 7:10 doesn't have a very strong, doesn't have a strong influence on either the government or the opposition. 7:17 The same is true for European powers and the UN, and the neighboring countries have shown to be quite unwilling to take positive influence on the conflict. And that leaves China, which has 7:31 set precedence for this kind of influence in the past where they have pressured South Sudanese officials to take certain actions. But, and this is quite interesting, this 7:44 taking a public stance and a very active role in managing this conflict in South Sudan, as Richard points out, would probably be in the economic interest of China because they don't have any interest in 7:56 prolonging the conflict there. But it would be at odds with its very public anti-interventionist foreign policy generally, where they really try to go against policies advocated by the U.S. 8:14 and European powers that try to intervene in countries and meddle in their internal affairs. So Richard goes into more details of the Chinese position and influence and so on. 8:29 It's very, I really encourage everybody to check out this piece, but it's really an interesting situation for China to be in. 8:36 One of the things that Richard points out is that among the risks for China is that it publicly tries to resolve the conflict and fails, and in so doing loses face in a very public arena. 8:51 Again, it highlights one of the major things to watch in international politics and global geopolitics in the coming months and years, which is what kind of actor China will be, 9:09 both in its neighborhood and in the world, whether it will be a responsible stakeholder in a rules-based order in its own neighborhood, and whether it will be willing to take a more assertive role globally 9:26 to reinforce the international order. Again, it shows the ways in which there are conflicting expectations. We want China to be assertive, but in the right way. Okay. Thanks, Judah, for joining me again this week. 9:40 Thank you. It's been a pleasure. Only hours after we recorded this week's briefing, news broke about another devastating terror attack in France. A truck driver crashed his vehicle into a crowd in Nice, killing dozens. 9:56 So for this week's report, I have brought back Judah before the microphone to get his perspective on the attack and the question, why France faces such an incredible high risk of terror attacks currently. 10:11 I'm Judah Grunstein. I'm the editor-in-chief of World Politics Review, and I've lived in France for the past 15 years and in Paris for the last nine. 10:26 Nice's annual Bastille Day celebrations were coming to a close when the driver of this white truck suddenly accelerated at high speed along the city's Promenade des Anglais, plowing his vehicle into the crowd, mowing scores of people down and sparking mass panic. 10:47 For me, the news came through someone I know, in this case my son, who came in from the other room to tell me to turn the news on. And we watched the initial reports, 11:01 which were obviously shocking and, as has often been the case, shocking but not surprising. 11:08 I was actually quite concerned about something like this happening yesterday because of the symbolic nature of the Bastille Day holiday. There was also something of a collective sigh of relief throughout the country 11:26 last Sunday at the end of the European soccer championship tournament, which took place for the previous month or so under very heavy security 11:40 due to the fact that the French football stadium was one of the targets of the November attacks. And so when the tournament finished without any incident, 11:55 there was a big sense of relief here. And obviously the nature of the Bastille Day holiday made it an obvious choice for this kind of an attack. France's role 12:12 over the past Uh, several years in particular, but even before that, uh, its role in Afghanistan, uh, with regard to, uh, fighting, uh, terrorist groups, uh, and supporting local governments that are also fighting them, uh, particularly in, uh, the Sahel and in Africa and in obviously Syria and Iraq. 12:40 Um, there's also an opportunistic element in the sense that France has a significant population of citizens of, uh, 12:53 citizens descended from immigrants of Arab origin and Muslim origin, as well as African origin, Muslim African origin, 13:02 uh, and has had, uh, has been one of the countries that has experienced a significant amount of its citizens going to, for instance, uh, Syria to fight with the Islamic State. 13:19 It has also, even before that, for instance, uh, Mohamed Merah, who was, uh, one of the first, uh, at- uh, terrorist attackers here, had traveled apparently to Afghanistan, uh, to 13:34 try to train with, uh, uh, to, to train with, uh, groups there. 13:40 So between these two things, uh, uh, between these two elements, France is very high profile in the fight against some of these groups, uh, in Africa and the Middle East, as well as the fact that there is a, uh, big population or significant population of potentially sympathetic people, uh, that have also, uh, 14:06 with, with a significant, uh, amount of young men and, uh, young men that have traveled to these conflict zones. So all of those add up. 14:15 Um, now when you, when you look also at certain particular elements of, um, France's, uh, socioeconomic and cultural landscape, um, 14:28 it, it adds, it adds a, a further element, for instance, that you'd see less in the United States. To begin with, the United States' 14:36 population of, uh, of, uh, Muslim citizens or, or, or residents is much smaller, uh, but at the same time, uh, the, the Muslim population in the United States is, is, is more integrated and less, uh, less marginalized. 14:55 Uh, the United States has a different approach to immigration and to the practice of religion that is more multicultural, whereas France has, uh, an approach that is, uh, more assimilationist. 15:10 Uh, the, the French national identity is meant to be a universal identity that precedes any other, uh, aspect of identity. So ethnicity, religion, uh, national origin, uh, 15:27 is secondary to being French. At the same time, there's something of an irony in the sense that France does have, uh, a good amount of success in terms of integrating its immigrant populations. 15:42 So you see a lot of, uh, uh, a lot of intermarriage between descendants of immigrants and French people whose family roots have been here for longer. Uh, the language adoption, for instance, is, is almost universal. 16:00 And at the same time, you have a lot of very obvious failures in terms of economic inequalities, um, various, uh, s- social and social discriminations against people, particularly of Arab origin. 16:16 Uh, all sorts of, uh, studies have shown, for instance, that having an Arab name, uh, is, is a handicap in terms of trying to find work. 16:27 Uh, and you also have a, a certain amount of population segregation in the sense that you have, uh, what in France are known as the banlieue, 16:36 uh, which translates in English to the suburbs, but it is, it, it's more of a, of a sort of peripheral ghetto, uh, that surrounds most of the major cities where many of the housing projects were built to house the, the families of, uh, migrant workers who came in the post-war period, 16:59 uh, from what were then still French colonies and have remained, uh, through the generations. Uh, and you have, uh, elevated rates of, uh, youth unemployment, uh, 17:13 educational achievement lower, the quality of the schools is lower, the quality of the services l- is lower, um, and often these banlieue are geographically isolated from, uh, each other and from the, the, the major metropolitan areas and the downtowns. 17:34 [upbeat music] There has been a second night of rioting in France after two teenagers were killed in an accident involving a police car on Sunday. Now, police say about 80 officers were hurt in the violence. 17:48 Five are thought to be in a critical condition. It all happened in the Villiers-le-Bel suburb of Paris. 17:57 Uh, so you have generations of immigrant origin families that have grown up in some ways excluded from French society. And so that creates more of a, of a pool of potential recruits, uh, for these kind of groups. 18:14 And, and then finally, uh, you have, uh, two developments more recently. 18:21 Uh, one is, uh, sort of a watershed moment in, in the banlieue in 2005, which were the riots of that time, and the French response, which was a very muscular police response under, uh, the then interior minister, uh, Nicolas Sarkozy, who later on became president. 18:41 Uh, which was a moment that created a lot of, uh, cleavages, uh, between that generation of 15 to 20-year-old, uh, kids growing up in the banlieue, uh, and what they saw as a French society that really wanted nothing to do with them. 19:01 Uh, and at the same time, you had an influx of radical preachers, uh, Islamic, uh, radical Muslim preachers that really were trying to recruit 19:14 young people especially to a S- Salafi form of Islam that changed the nature of the kind of Islam that was being practiced in the banlieue. 19:27 Uh, it also coincided with a different kind of immigration from the countries of origin from, uh, that changed from, um, more cosmopolitan and secular immigrants to more rural and traditional and religiously observant immigrants. 19:43 So all of these factors combined to create, um, uh, a pool of potential recruits among French youth, uh, that we've seen over the past, uh, four to five years. 19:57 The French political culture, uh, it definitely has a long tradition of violence dating back to the French Revolution, obviously. Um, and even in normal 20:11 practice, it is confrontational, uh, a lot of cleavages, a lot of, uh, very virulent, uh, uh, rhetoric and, uh, 20:22 uh, and even, uh, even at some of the demonstrations or at most of the demonstrations, there's always sort of a, an element, uh, of what they call here casseurs who are, uh, which in, in French means breakers, but, uh, they're basically there looking for trouble and violence with the police. 20:42 Um, and, and you also do have right now between the two sort of leading French intellectuals, um, um, in terms of Islamic, uh, studies, um, 20:57 Gilles Kepel and Olivier Roy, um, a, a dispute over what the origin of this is, whether it is the radicalization of Islam, uh, as I mentioned, the, the, the radical preachers that began, uh, preaching in the banlieue, which is the, the position argued by Gilles Kepel, or whether it's, as you said, the Islamiciz- Islamicization of radicalism, which is Olivier Roy's, uh, thesis. 21:26 I think that, uh, there's definitely an element of both. Uh, the, what I described earlier was really the, the radicalization of Islam thesis. Uh, in support of the, 21:41 the Islamicization of radicalism thesis, there's, there's the fact that a lot of the most recent, uh, French-born or French-living terrorists that struck, have struck in France 21:55 r- really are, are not, uh, what you'd consider to be practicing, uh, orthodox practicing fundamentalist Muslims, even, uh, if you consider that, uh, the, the kind of Islam that the Islamic State espouses is an aberration or a perversion. 22:16 Uh, many, uh, many of these people haven't even been practicing that in terms of their lifestyles. Uh, a lot of them have amounted mainly to, uh, petty crimin- petty criminals and thugs. They've done jail time. 22:30 Uh, some of them might have been radicalized in prison. Uh, but in terms of their lifestyles, they've eaten at McDonald's, for instance. 22:36 Uh, the, one of, one of the, the November attackers, uh, was, was someone who ate McDonald's, which, which obviously doesn't conform to, uh, the, uh, halal code. There you have an argument to say these are just young, 22:52 young people with a chip on their shoulder who would have been engaging in this kind of violence perhaps maybe as soccer hooligans or, uh, in another time as leftist, uh, activists or, or rightist activists, political activists, let's say. 23:09 Um, and, and that's compelling too. 23:13 The, the, the, the distinction I'd make, for instance, between, uh, Basque terrorism, uh, in the past or political, uh, violence and terrorism in the past is that the, the, the cause that's being embraced at, at this particular moment is one that's, that, that begins outside of France in terms of what's being, uh, fought for. 23:36 You don't see any of these attackers, uh, saying that they're do- they're, they're attacking Paris or attacking Nice or attacking France, uh, in order to improve the lot of third-generation, uh, immigrant origin youth in the banlieue. 23:54 They're doing it because France is a, a infidel crusader state, uh, attacking the Islamic state in Syria, or because France is a, a, a, 24:07 a Western colonial state, uh, oppressing Muslims in, uh, northern Mali, for instance. These are obviously, this is obviously the kind of rhetoric that you see from the attackers. 24:18 Uh, but you don't see anything that has to do with France, France's domestic situation or politics or socioeconomic, uh, disparities, uh, at all. So I would say that that's a major distinction. 24:31 This is a conflict that o- originates, in a sense, outside of France, and that is being imported into France, uh, by, uh, French citizens, uh, or residents, uh, some of whom have traveled outside to these conflict zones, but some of whom just simply have not. 24:49 Uh, so I think that's a major distinction. 24:52 Uh, and with regard to what is ultimately behind this, you know, I, I think in some ways we, we have a tendency to come up with narratives that make the most sense and that, uh, that, that are satisfying because they are neat and clean and fit together nicely on paper. 25:13 Um, but, uh, again, there's, there's often, uh, especially in, in cases of, of violence and senseless violence for, for most people against innocent people, uh, there's a huge element of, uh, irrational or non-rational, uh, human behavior. 25:31 Uh, and, and that defies, uh, our efforts to neatly categorize or explain or come up with a narrative that, uh, that, that, that explains it. 25:41 Um, and, and I think that th- this, that's part of the case when it comes to the, the, the terrorism that we're seeing, uh, in the past five years here in France, but also in the United States, this kind of lone wolf terrorism, uh, which, uh, which feels categlo- categorically different and quali- qualitatively different than even, for instance, the, the 9/11 attacks, uh, which were carried out by people from outside the country, uh, having to do with, uh, international and geopolitical, uh, grievances. 26:15 Uh, this is something different even if there is that, uh, uh, a layer of international and geopolitical grievances, uh, that's, that, that is, uh, that's deployed. 26:27 Uh, when you see the profiles of the people that are involved, uh, it's, it's fair to wonder whether those are justifications that are being, uh, painted on after the fact, uh, or not. 26:40 [instrumental music] French security forces are already fully stretched. After all, the country has been in a state of emergency for over six months now. The police are starting to get tired. 26:55 They've been in action since the January 2015 attacks on Charlie Hebdo. Then with last November's attacks, we really had to mobilize everything we had. We're just not able to cope with all of this. 27:09 Let me preface by saying that, uh, at the time that we're talking and, and at, at the time that we're, we're recording this, uh, there's still very few details that have come out about the identity of the latest attacker. 27:23 Apparently, there was some, uh, uh, there were some, uh, identification papers, uh, that suggest he was a Tunisian, uh, in France, um, but that's still very unclear with this particular case. 27:39 Um, in the past, the attackers have been e- either French citizens, uh, or European citizens, uh, Belgian, uh, or French residents. 27:48 And in addition, many and even perhaps most have been known to the security services, uh, and, uh, were either under surveillance, uh, 27:58 until recently before the, the attacks that they carried out, or in some cases were, should have still been under surveillance. 28:06 Um, and so that has raised, uh, an enormous amount of questions about, uh, France's, uh, counterterrorism and intelligence services. Actually, in the aftermath of each, uh, attack, there have been, um, 28:21 uh, changes made to the, the both systems. 28:27 So, uh, for instance, after the Mohamed Merah attack, there were, uh, changes made to online surveillance and, uh, monitoring of radical websites, uh, as well as, uh, monitoring of movement, uh, outside the country to certain, uh, conflict zones. 28:47 Uh, in the aftermath of the, uh, Charlie Hebdo attack, there were, uh, reforms made to the, uh, counterterrorism, uh, legal apparatus that allowed for a 29:03 more, more muscular approach, uh, despite the fact that the French counterterrorism legal structure was already pretty muscular due to the wave of terrorism that France experienced in the '80s and '90s. 29:16 Um, and then, uh, most significantly in the aftermath of the November attack, 29:22 um, there was the, the state of emergency and the, what they, what's called here the Plan Sen- Sentinelle or Sentinel, which is the deployment of the French military, uh, in, uh, major cities and, uh, sensitive, uh, locations. 29:38 A lot of that has been called into question most recently by a parliamentary report that was released on France's security, uh, and counterterrorism approach. 29:50 Anytime an attack takes place, there's a temptation to say that it was a, a failure, whether human, human error or a systemic failure. 29:58 Uh, and at the same time, nothing, there, there's no such thing as 100% security that can prevent all attacks. In this case, the, the key really is to learn from the mistakes. 30:10 Uh, and for now, it seems like the French, uh, state is, uh- is a little slow to do so. 30:18 In the immediate aftermath of the November attacks, there was a state of emergency that was put into place that had been scheduled to end July 26th that has now been extended in light of this latest attack in Nice. 30:31 And that's been very controversial as well because there have been a huge amount of searches without warrants and people being put under house arrest and with very little to show for it. 30:47 There have been a number of attacks that have been prevented. 30:51 It's unclear whether they were prevented due to the state of emergency, but what is clear is that there are a lot of people that have been targeted by the state of emergency without cause. 31:03 And that obviously becomes a problem if there's a certain demographic or population that feels marginalized, that feels like they're not a full part of French society. 31:17 And then in addition, they're targeted by the state of emergency to little advantage in terms of any leads for security investigations. It sort of adds fuel to the fire in terms of creating a reservoir of potential 31:34 recruits for radicalization. And if any of our listeners have thoughts on the attack in Nice or China's role in the world, write us. We would love to hear from you. 31:48 You can contact us at podcast at worldpoliticsreview.com or on Facebook and Twitter. If you haven't done so already, you can subscribe to the World Politics Review newsletter on worldpoliticsreview.com 32:02 and to this podcast on iTunes or a podcast app of your choice. Please also leave a rating or a comment for Trendlines in iTunes that really helps other people to discover the show. 32:13 Trendlines is produced and edited by me, Peter Dury. 32:15 You can follow me and World Politics Review on Twitter, and you can find links to pieces covering the issues we talked about in the show notes on worldpoliticsreview.com. 32:23 Have a fantastic weekend and see you next week for a new episode of Trendlines.
