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One Good Thing: This Chinese dance show is the only thing I care about

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The best thing about falling down rabbit holes is that you never know where they’ll lead. Eighteen months ago, I had no idea I’d spend most of the pandemic falling in love with a Chinese show about street dancing — and that it would shift my worldview in the process.
But that’s before I discovered Street Dance of China, a reality competition show where high-level dancers from all across China, and this season from all around the world, join teams and compete for the title of China’s best street dancer. It’s subtitled, and it runs long: Each season’s 12 episodes usually range from 90 to 120 minutes apiece, with last year’s finale broadcast live in a six-hour marathon. And its format is initially a bit confusing to anyone unfamiliar with typical street dance competitions. But despite these hurdles, I watched all 12 episodes of the show’s third season as they aired last year, then rewatched them again and again.
I began watching SDC because the third season featured Wang Yibo, a multi-talented actor/dancer/idol I’ve followed since first watching his fantasy drama series <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/3/27/21192718/the-untamed-netflix-review-rec-mdzs-cql">The Untamed</a> a year and a half ago. As it turned out, Yibo was a brilliant gateway drug to a whole new obsession. SDC not only gave me new appreciation for street dance as a culture and as an art form, but also introduced me to a whole new way of thinking about China.
Like many white Americans, my main view of Chinese culture has historically been filtered through the framework of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/atlanta-shooting-political-rhetoric-violence/2021/03/19/f882f8e8-88b9-11eb-8a8b-5cf82c3dffe4_story.html">often-sinophobic US media</a>, the occasional martial arts or arthouse film notwithstanding. Until I watched this show where Chinese pop culture put itself on elaborate display, I hadn’t fully realized how skewed the typical US media portrayal of China can be — especially the false idea that China is primarily isolationist, and that Chinese pop culture is disinterested in actively engaging with the rest of the world.
To some extent, I owed that impression to the Chinese Communist Party, which has a habit of cracking down on external cultural influences if it feels they’re growing too pernicious. In recent years, for example, chilly receptions have greeted <a href="https://www.vox.com/latest-news/2017/3/3/14795636/china-south-korea-pop-culture-kpop-attacks-thaad">Korean pop culture</a>, <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2020-11-09/nba-works-super-hard-reestablish-open-dialogue-china">basketball</a>, and <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/beat-china-hip-hop-ban">hip-hop</a>. In fact, a <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/beat-china-hip-hop-ban">hip-hop media ban</a> in China, which went into effect in 2018 after a controversial series of incidents involving high-profile Chinese rappers, inadvertently spawned Street Dance of China. With other forms of hip-hop culture banned, dancing was the only way for TV networks to satisfy their audiences’ growing interest in hip-hop. <a href="https://radiichina.com/hip-hop-dance-china/">Street dance culture has been growing</a> in China, so there’s a thriving competition scene and an incredible pool of talent to draw from.
As such, SDC, which launched in 2018, offers a <a href="https://www.sixthtone.com/news/1001870/pop%2C-lock%2C-break%2C-repeat-street-dance-of-china-wows-audiences">highly popular</a>, highly positive alternative view of hip-hop: one that emphasizes its dancers’ artistry, sense of community, and multiculturalism. Thanks to its vibrance and sense of community, as well as the sheer joy of many of its dance routines, SDC was an ideal form of pandemic escapism.
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The show, like the umbrella of street dance itself, brings together a broad range of modern dance styles, from jazz and hip-hop to breaking, locking, and waacking. The format balances choreographed routines with spontaneous freestyle battles. The performances often fuse traditional narrative storytelling with fun, cross-genre experimentation, combining a love of Chinese culture with a broad multicultural mindset in the dance styles and song choices. Season three saw everything from homages to Chinese folklore and Bruce Lee to homages to Charlie Chaplin, Jim Carey, Sailor Moon, and <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=olsf1LM3P4U">tomb raiders</a>.
Dancers compete for places on four teams, each helmed by a celebrity captain, most of whom so far have been former K-pop idols with considerable dance experience. Season three featured Exo’s Zhang Yixing (Lay), Got7’s Jackson Wang, actor Wallace Chung, and Yibo, each competing against each other, often hilariously, to build their own teams and spare their dancers from weekly elimination. Their combined popularity drove the show to a massive ratings increase (the show announced in its season three finale that its ratings had nearly doubled over the season and that its revenue had increased by 65 percent), along with a considerable international fandom.
As a part of that fandom, I came for the captains, but I stayed for the dancers, who by the finale had begun to seem less like competitors and more like an extended family (to them and to me). Fortunately for fans of last season, many of the competing dancers have returned for season four, which has expanded focus from merely pitting dancers against each other to bringing street dancers from around the world to join the competition, turning the show into a truly global event.
If that sounds like a surprising direction for a Chinese reality show to take, it’s nothing compared to the quiet surprises every episode of SDC has held for me. Each week, the show welcomes dancers of color like Bouboo, a French immigrant who has become one of the show’s most popular stars; Chinese ethnic minorities such as Yi and Wa dancers; one fantastic deaf dancer; and dancers who are openly queer, although their sexuality is never acknowledged on the show.
Even the age range of the dancers is diverse, with the season three finale seeing some of the show’s oldest competitors squaring off against some of the youngest. That’s not to say that there’s nothing problematic about this aggressively rosy depiction of Chinese culture as welcoming and inclusive. It is a deliberately selective view of a nation whose government’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/22311356/china-uyghur-birthrate-sterilization-genocide">human rights abuses</a> are well known and well publicized.
But SDC’s politics are mostly self-contained — a reminder that the CCP, after all, is not synonymous with China itself, and that China itself is not a monolith. The present tensions between our respective governments have arguably <a href="https://www.vox.com/22558949/china-violence-asian-americans">made it harder</a> for Americans to recognize and respect Chinese culture as complex, nuanced, and containing multitudes. Meanwhile, each week, SDC resists the US’s dominant narrative of China as static and hostile, simply by bringing together a lot of highly talented people who love dancing.
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If you want to watch SDC, I recommend starting with season three, since it’s the most easily accessible and introduces you to most of the dancers who return in season four. Thanks to a team of dedicated fansubbers, <a href="https://twitter.com/i/events/1318741007509319680">full translated episodes</a> are available to watch for free. The fansubs are generally superior to the officially released subtitles — but the show’s network, Youku, has also made <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLATwx1z00HseGqtY7R08f5AAUW7QWFtcv">the entire third season available on YouTube with English subtitles</a>.
Season four began airing in August, with Yixing and Yibo returning as team captains alongside Han Geng and his former Super Junior bandmate, Canadian prodigy Henry Lau. Because of its international focus, the season is more diverse than ever, with well-known dancers hailing from regions around the globe. Youku simulcasts episodes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLATwx1z00Hsf-xawZ5vEG3G09-jQVpdKN">on YouTube</a>, with English subs on the day of release. The new season, so far, has held lots of format changes and plenty of surprises.
Even so, it still feels like the family reunion I didn’t know I needed. It’s a welcome reminder that even in the midst of an isolating pandemic, in many ways, the world is smaller than ever.
Street Dance of China is <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLATwx1z00HseGqtY7R08f5AAUW7QWFtcv">streaming</a> on <a href="https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLATwx1z00Hsf-xawZ5vEG3G09-jQVpdKN">YouTube</a>.
For more recommendations from the world of culture, check out the <a href="https://www.vox.com/one-good-thing">One Good Thing</a> archives.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22630249/one-good-thing-street-dance-of-china-wang-yibo">https://www.vox.com/22630249/one-good-thing-street-dance-of-china-wang-yibo</a>

vox One Good Thing: This Chinese dance show is the only thing I care about

The best thing about falling down rabbit holes is that you never know where they’ll lead. Eighteen months ago, I had no idea I’d spend most...

Arizona launches a bold new experiment to limit racist convictions

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Arizona’s conservative state Supreme Court took a surprising step last week that could lead to juries in that state being more racially diverse, and thus <a href="https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/127/2/1017/1826107">less likely to treat racial minorities more harshly</a>.
It announced that it will <a href="https://twitter.com/KorematsuCtr/status/1431372457760284672">eliminate “peremptory challenges”</a> in Arizona — a practice that allows trial lawyers to remove jurors from a case, often for arbitrary or ill-defined reasons.
Although criminal justice reformers, including some who sit on the Supreme Court of the United States, have warned for decades that peremptory challenges are often used to <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/03-9659.ZC.html">exclude jurors because of their race</a>, the practice remains widespread in the United States. Arizona will be the <a href="https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2021/08/29/court-aims-to-end-racial-bias-in-jury-selection-with-new-rules/">first state to eliminate peremptory challenges entirely</a>; the state’s new rules will take effect in January.
People of color are less likely to serve on juries for a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1f2iawp0y5Y">wide range of reasons</a> — racial minorities are less likely than white people, for example, to appear on voter registration lists and vehicle registration lists, which many jurisdictions use to develop a pool of potential jurors. But multiple studies suggest that peremptory strikes play a major role in producing juries that are whiter than the population as a whole.
Typically, in both criminal and civil jury trials, a court will assemble a panel of potential jurors that is much larger than the actual number of jurors needed to hear the case. Though the rules vary from state to state (and the federal system has its own set of rules), lawyers on both sides of a case may ask the judge to remove a juror “for cause” if there is reason to doubt that juror’s impartiality. (A prosecutor, for example, may wish to exclude a juror who is related to the defendant.)
Peremptory challenges, meanwhile, allow lawyers to strike jurors even if they are unable to convince the judge to do so for cause. Typically, a lawyer who uses a peremptory challenge to remove a juror does not have to explain why they decided to do so, and is allowed to remove a juror for arbitrary reasons. A lawyer may, for example, use a peremptory challenge to remove a juror because they <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/514/765">do not like the juror’s haircut</a>.
The number of peremptory challenges available to lawyers varies depending on the type of case and which court is hearing the case. In most federal felony trials, for example, the <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/rules/frcrmp/rule_24">prosecution may strike up to six jurors</a>, while the defense may strike 10.
There are a few constitutional limits on peremptory strikes. Most notably, in <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/476/79">Batson v. Kentucky</a> (1986), the Court held that lawyers may not remove a juror because of that juror’s race, and it laid out a three-part test that judges should use to sniff out whether a particular juror was removed for racist reasons.
In practice, however, Batson is difficult for judges to apply, and it rarely leads to convictions being tossed out because a juror was struck for racist reasons — even though data suggests that racial jury discrimination is quite widespread. As a pair of Arizona judges explained in a <a href="https://www.azcourts.gov/Rules-Forum/aft/1208">petition</a> asking the state supreme court to abolish peremptory challenges, “decades of litigation over Batson challenges have consumed countless hours of attorney time and judicial resources. Yet in Arizona, only five cases have been reversed over a Batson challenge.”
The stakes are very high if racial minorities are less likely to serve on a jury than white Americans. A 2012 study of felony trials in Florida, for example, found that Black defendants are 16 percent more likely to be convicted than white defendants when no Black person serves on the jury. <a href="https://academic.oup.com/qje/article/127/2/1017/1826107">This gap disappears</a> if the jury has a single Black member.
The upshot of the Arizona Supreme Court’s new rules is that racial discrimination through peremptory strikes will cease to exist in Arizona because peremptory strikes will themselves cease to exist. But the new rules were also <a href="https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2021/08/29/court-aims-to-end-racial-bias-in-jury-selection-with-new-rules/">criticized by prosecutors</a> and <a href="https://blog.simplejustice.us/2021/08/30/arizona-eliminates-peremptory-strikes/">at least some defense lawyers</a> because they will take away a tool that can potentially be used to screen out biased jurors.
Ultimately, the state supreme court appears to have decided that the benefits of eliminating peremptory challenges, including the benefit of eliminating a frequent vehicle for race discrimination, outweigh the risk of having some bad jurors remain on juries.
Peremptory challenges have a long pedigree that predates the United States. Yet while the practice existed in English courts for many centuries, English prosecutors were stripped of their ability to exercise peremptory strikes <a href="https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/303899584.pdf">as far back as 1305</a>.
It was, instead, a protection afforded to defendants. As William Blackstone, a famous chronicler of English law, wrote in 1769, criminal defendants retained an “arbitrary and capricious species of challenge to a certain number of jurors” out of respect for the principle of “<a href="https://press-pubs.uchicago.edu/founders/documents/amendV-VI_criminal_processs14.html">in favorem vitae</a>,” a Latin phrase meaning “in favor of life.” The idea was that, if the life or liberty of a criminal defendant could be placed in the hands of a jury, the defendant should have some ability to exclude jurors who might be biased against them.
American courts, however, largely have not followed the centuries-old English practice of only giving peremptory strikes to defense counsel. Typically, federal and state courts within the United States permit prosecutors and defense lawyers to exercise some peremptory challenges — although some jurisdictions do give extra challenges to the defense.
Indeed, peremptory strikes are so widely used by prosecutors and defense attorneys that, when assembling a pool of potential jurors, courts typically summon far more potential jurors to serve jury duty than they actually need — because the courts assume that many of these potential jurors will either be removed for cause or removed by a peremptory challenge.
Batson recognized that peremptory strikes may be used to remove jurors for unconstitutional reasons. “Purposeful racial discrimination in selection of [potential jurors] violates a defendant’s right to equal protection,” Justice Lewis Powell wrote for the Court in Batson. It also violates the rights of the jurors themselves, who should have an equal opportunity to decide the fate of their peers, regardless of their race.
Yet, while racially motivated peremptory strikes are unconstitutional in theory under Batson, Justice Powell’s decision also made it very difficult for courts to sniff out discrimination.
Under Batson, if the defendant raises a credible claim that a juror was excluded because of the juror’s race, the prosecution must “come forward with a neutral explanation” for why it decided to exclude a particular juror. At that point, it’s up to the judge to determine whom to believe.
One problem with this system is that there are all kinds of lawful reasons a prosecutor may wish to strike a juror who happens to be a person of color. The prosecutor may legitimately believe that the juror expressed a bias against police, for example. Or they may simply feel that the juror seemed inattentive during the juror screening process. The Constitution forbids excluding a juror because the juror is of a particular race, but it doesn’t forbid a prosecutor from striking a juror for being inattentive or a skeptic of police, even if that juror is also a person of color.
Peremptory strikes may be used to remove a juror for completely arbitrary reasons. In <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/514/765">Purkett v. Elem</a> (1995), for example, the Supreme Court permitted a prosecutor to strike two Black jurors because the prosecutor disapproved of one juror’s “long hair” and thought that both jurors’ “mustaches and the beards look suspicious to me.”
Judges are not mind readers. So, when faced with a prosecutor’s race-neutral explanation for why they struck a particular juror, a judge will often have no way to determine that the prosecution’s real motive was racism.
Many prosecutors are even trained on how to <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/why-is-it-so-easy-for-prosecutors-to-strike-black-jurors">devise pretextual reasons</a> to exclude jurors. In 2004, Texas prosecutors were advised to tell judges that they excluded jurors not because of a particular juror’s race, but because the juror “agreed with O. J. Simpson verdict” or “watched gospel TV programs.”
Data suggest that racial jury discrimination is widespread, even after Batson. The Arizona Supreme Court decided to eliminate peremptory challenges after two of the state’s appellate judges petitioned them to do so. That <a href="https://www.azcourts.gov/Rules-Forum/aft/1208">petition</a>, co-authored by Judges Peter B. Swann and Paul J. McMurdie, cites several studies suggesting that people of color are unusually likely to be excluded from juries.
A study of capital cases in North Carolina, for example, found that prosecutors “were responsible for eliminating 12% of whites who went through the [jury selection] process without being removed [for cause], and 35% of blacks who did so,” while “the defense’s strikes eliminated 35% of whites who were not removed [for cause], and 3% of blacks.”
A study in Mississippi found that “Black venire members are 4.51 times as likely to be excluded from a jury due to peremptory challenges from the prosecution in comparison to White venire members.” And federal data shows that “in criminal cases, the proportion of white jurors seated varied only 3% from their representation in the population.” Meanwhile, “black jurors were underrepresented by 16%, Native American jurors were underrepresented by 51% and Hispanic jurors were underrepresented by 21%.”
Courts, moreover, have been aware of similar data for at least the past several decades. In Batson, which was decided in 1986, Justice Thurgood Marshall wrote a concurring opinion arguing that the goal of ending race discrimination in jury selection “can be accomplished <a href="https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/476/79">only by eliminating peremptory challenges entirely</a>.”
Marshall cited a raft of studies arguing that race discrimination in the use of peremptory strikes was pervasive, including a study of prosecutions in Dallas that found that “the chance of a qualified black sitting on a jury was 1 in 10, compared to 1 in 2 for a white.”
Thirty-five years after Batson, it appears that Marshall was correct that Justice Powell’s decision did not go far enough, if the goal was to prevent race discrimination in jury selection. The disparities Marshall warned about in Batson remain widespread.
The primary argument for retaining peremptory challenges is that eliminating them will prevent trial attorneys from removing jurors who they correctly believe might be biased, even if the juror doesn’t do anything suspicious enough to justify removing them for cause.
Several prosecutors criticized the Arizona Supreme Court’s move, arguing that, in the words of Maricopa County prosecutor Kenneth Vick, “expecting a prospective juror to <a href="https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2021/08/29/court-aims-to-end-racial-bias-in-jury-selection-with-new-rules/">candidly admit that they cannot be fair</a> is not realistic.” Trial lawyers often pay close attention to a potential juror’s body language or other subtle signals when determining whether to exercise a peremptory strike, rather than relying solely on how the juror responds to lawyers’ questions.
Scott Greenfield, a criminal defense lawyer in New York, offered a <a href="https://blog.simplejustice.us/2021/08/30/arizona-eliminates-peremptory-strikes/">similar criticism</a> of the new Arizona rules on his personal blog. Greenfield warned of a situation where a criminal defense attorney spots “a glint of hatred as [a potential juror] stares at the defendant,” but the lawyer is unable to remove that juror because they can no longer exercise peremptory strikes.
There are two reasons, however, to be hopeful that Arizona’s experiment with eliminating peremptory challenges will not lead to systemic injustices against a defendant. One is the Supreme Court’s recent decision in <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/19pdf/18-5924_n6io.pdf">Ramos v. Louisiana</a> (2020), which held that “the Sixth Amendment’s right to a jury trial requires a unanimous verdict.”
That’s not a perfect safeguard against biased jurors — as Greenfield argues, there is a risk that the “juror with the killer eyes” will convince a juror who is inclined to vote for acquittal to flip their vote. But the requirement that convictions must be unanimous does diminish the ability of a biased juror to sway a verdict toward conviction.
The other reason to be optimistic that Arizona’s new rules might succeed is that, while they are novel within the United States, they are in line with the rules in other democracies. Great Britain, for example, <a href="https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1988/33/section/118">eliminated peremptory challenges in 1988</a>, and <a href="https://www.parl.ca/DocumentViewer/en/42-1/bill/C-75/royal-assent#ID0EZC;">Canada did so in 2019</a>.
Realistically, we cannot know what the full impact of Arizona’s new rules will be until the rules have been in place for some time. But, at the very least, Arizona’s experiment could teach us whether Justice Marshall was right when he warned that we cannot abolish discrimination in jury selection until we get rid of peremptory challenges.
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22648651/arizona-jury-race-batson-kentucky-peremptory-strikes-challenges-thurgood-marshall">https://www.vox.com/22648651/arizona-jury-race-batson-kentucky-peremptory-strikes-challenges-thurgood-marshall</a>

vox Arizona launches a bold new experiment to limit racist convictions

Arizona’s conservative state Supreme Court took a surprising step last week that could lead to juries in that state being more racially div...

NATO allies are preparing for a future without America’s “forever wars”

Afghanistan wasn’t just America’s 20-year war. It also belonged to US allies.
“This has been above all a catastrophe for the Afghan people. It’s a failure of the Western world and it’s a game changer for international relations,” <a href="https://www.corriere.it/economia/finanza/21_agosto_30/borrell-afghanistan-catastrofe-europa-crei-forza-primo-intervento-d045301e-0904-11ec-92ce-f1aac6dc2317.shtml">the European Union’s chief diplomat Josep Borrell told an Italian newspaper Monday</a>, according to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/30/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/#link-3264HDAXBBCPZCKI4LQZPKTYHI">Washington Post</a>.
“Certainly,” he continued, “we Europeans share our part of responsibility. We cannot consider that this was just an American war.”
As President George W. Bush said in October 2001 while <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/08/news/america-strikes-back-washington-and-london-make-their-case-bush-vows.html?searchResultPosition=5">announcing air strikes against al Qaeda and the Taliban</a>, the US had the “collective will of the world” behind its mission in Afghanistan. (<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/22/germany.france">Iraq, of course, was a different story</a>.) The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has invoked Article 5 — the common-defense clause — only once in its history, after the September 11 attacks. More than 51 NATO members and partner countries sent troops to Afghanistan, with a combined 130,000 troops at the deployment’s peak.
NATO’s combat mission ended in 2014, but coalition troops remained to help train and advise Afghan security forces. Even as some countries wound down their military presence in the later years of the war, a total of <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/military">1,145 allied troops died in Afghanistan</a> of the approximately <a href="https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/costs/human/military">3,500 service members killed</a>.
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<figcaption>President George W. Bush gives an address on Afghanistan and the war on terror, saying the US “will not fail” at Travis Air Force Base on October 17, 2001.</figcaption>
<cite>Jim Verchio/WireImage via Getty Images</cite></figure>
The United States, starting with Donald Trump, and continuing with Joe Biden, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2021/08/18/1028607717/strange-bedfellows-indeed-the-trump-biden-consensus-on-afghanistan">made clear the plan to withdraw from Afghanistan</a>. But the rapid collapse of the Afghan government and the <a href="https://www.vox.com/22618215/afghanistan-news-taliban-advance">swiftness of the Taliban takeover</a> turned that departure into chaos. The United States looked blundering and inept, and it dragged its allies down with it. Some countries <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/germany-afghans-evacuation/2021/08/21/d33941ce-0202-11ec-ba7e-2cf966e88e93_story.html">struggled to evacuate their personnel and Afghan associates</a> as the situation around the Kabul airport worsened. All had to reckon with the reality that after 20 years, <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/fields-of-operation/afghanistan#:~:text=British%20fatalities%20in%20Afghanistan&text=As%20at%2023%20July%202015,a%20result%20of%20hostile%20action.">and lives lost</a>, and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47391821">billions spent</a>, little was left to show for it.
That has led to recriminations in London and Berlin and Brussels, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/20/dominic-raab-resignation-pressure-afghanistan/">directed at leaders there</a>, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-58300984">and at the United States</a>. “Was our intelligence really so poor?” <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/world/europe/britain-afghanistan-johnson-biden.html">former British Prime Minister Theresa May asked in Parliament earlier this month</a>. “Was our understanding of the Afghan government so weak? Was our knowledge on the ground so inadequate? Or did we just think we had to follow the United States and on a wing and a prayer it would be all right on the night?”
Some <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/david-petraeus-on-american-mistakes-in-afghanistan">voices on this side of the Atlantic</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/SkyNewsPolitics/status/1429429464430166029?s=20">and the other</a> are simply advocating US engagement in Afghanistan continue indefinitely. But even among those who are not, there is a genuine frustration at how Afghanistan unraveled, and questions of how closely the US consulted with its coalition allies on its withdrawal timeline.
That has revived a debate that has beset the transatlantic alliance for years, especially during the Donald Trump era: Are the United Kingdom and Europe too dependent on the US for their security? And will the shifting US priorities finally require correcting that imbalance? Katharina Emschermann, deputy director at the Center for International Security at the Hertie School in Berlin, said, there is “uncertainty in Europe about the future course of US foreign policy, and what it means for it.”
“Part of the discord that we’re seeing now is probably also rooted in the sense of unease about how things are going to go on in the future,” Emschermann added.
It is still unlikely that Afghanistan begins a real remaking of NATO. But at the very least, allies may take it as a sign that Joe Biden’s reassurances that <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-foreign-policy-g7-summit-munich-cc10859afd0f542fd268c0a7ddcd9bb6">“America is back”</a> is not enough.
The Trump administration <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2020/2/29/21158939/us-taliban-sign-peace-deal-troops-afghanistan">signed a peace deal</a> with the Taliban in February 2020. According to the terms of the deal, US-led NATO forces would depart Afghanistan by May 2021.
Biden, as president, recommitted to the US withdrawal, though in April he extended the final deadline, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/biden-us-troop-withdrawal-afghanistan/2021/04/13/918c3cae-9beb-11eb-8a83-3bc1fa69c2e8_story.html">first to September 11</a>, and later <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/07/08/remarks-by-president-biden-on-the-drawdown-of-u-s-forces-in-afghanistan/">inching it back</a> to Tuesday, August 31. In April, Secretary of State Antony Blinken met in Brussels with the NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg, who said NATO would also begin its drawdown. “We went into Afghanistan together, we have adjusted our posture together and we are united in leaving together,” <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-lloyd-austin-antony-blinken-afghanistan-national-security-c11c5620cd0830f40e5ece7f4d189012">Stoltenberg said</a>.
Togetherness was simply the default. NATO governments didn’t have the capacity to stay in Afghanistan after the US left. Privately, diplomats grumbled that they weren’t fully consulted, or raised doubts about the US plans. But once the US made its decision, the decision was also made for <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-kabul-government-and-politics-germany-berlin-c8fdc02182519cfeffa1335c622ab27e">approximately 7,000 non-American NATO forces on the ground.</a>
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<figcaption>NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg visits the Italian-run military base Camp Arena in Herat, Afghanistan, in 2018.</figcaption>
<cite>Antonio Masiello/Getty Images</cite></figure>
“It showed basically, how dependent we really are,” Jana Puglierin, senior policy fellow and head of the Berlin office at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said of allies like Germany. “Because then it was immediately clear that we needed to follow the American withdrawal, and withdraw, as well.”
Allies <a href="https://apnews.com/article/joe-biden-kabul-government-and-politics-germany-berlin-c8fdc02182519cfeffa1335c622ab27e">took steps to wind down their presence</a>, and as the security situation started deteriorating, some began <a href="https://www.france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20210713-france-calls-on-its-citizens-to-leave-afghanistan-amid-security-fears">asking personnel and nationals to leave.</a> But the US and its allies did not fully anticipate (<a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/77801/cias-former-counterterrorism-chief-for-the-region-afghanistan-not-an-intelligence-failure-something-much-worse/">or chose to downplay</a>) the Taliban’s accelerated run through Afghanistan, and the collapse of Afghan defenses. That left NATO and European governments also <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2021/08/17/nato-scrambles-to-complete-afghanistan-evacuations-as-soon-as-possible/">rushing to get its personnel out</a>.
“The immediate feeling around this whole situation is that perhaps there should have been more consultation and more joint planning about how to manage the exit strategy,” said David O’Sullivan, who served as EU ambassador to the United States from 2014 to 2019.
“The feeling is that this all kind of descended into something of a scramble,” he continued, “which is very difficult to manage, which put the European countries in a lot of difficulty — not only to get their own nationals out, but also to get out all the Afghans who are working closely with them, and were clearly at risk.”
Governments <a href="https://www.defensenews.com/global/europe/2021/08/17/nato-scrambles-to-complete-afghanistan-evacuations-as-soon-as-possible/">like Germany</a> and <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/afghanistan-boris-johnson-says-collapse-happened-faster-than-even-the-taliban-predicted-12384383">the United Kingdom</a> faced harsh criticism for their failures to prepare and evacuate their citizens and their Afghan allies. Some lawmakers there responded by <a href="https://news.sky.com/story/afghanistan-tony-blair-says-us-and-uk-troops-should-have-stayed-put-to-see-it-through-as-withdrawal-could-lead-to-uk-security-threat-12387874">pushing the idea that after 20 years, the US</a> — and Western allies — should have stayed even longer in Afghanistan. “The Biden choice I thought was false. It was either total commitment of American forces and a lot more American deaths with a never-ending war, or pulling out,” <a href="https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9yc3MuYXJ0MTkuY29tL2Nob3BwZXI/episode/Z2lkOi8vYXJ0MTktZXBpc29kZS1sb2NhdG9yL1YwL2lDQnZOREZMTlUxdkwtdDExVDd0U3RZMFVMTElELVpvYlU1ak9kM0hxR1U?hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwiAro6dh9nyAhVFUt8KHS_ACrQQjrkEegQIAhAF&ep=6">Owen Paterson, a Conservative British MP said on The Telegraph’s Chopper’s Politics podcast.</a>
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<figcaption>UK military personnel board an aircraft departing Kabul on August 28.</figcaption>
<cite>Jonathan Gifford/UK Ministry of Defense via AP</cite></figure>
But the prevailing sentiment revolved around the idea that the <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/defense-secretary-lloyd-austin-visits-afghanistan-troop-withdrawal/story?id=76557517">Biden administration had failed to consult with allies</a> and refused to be flexible in ways that might have lessened the chaos of the withdrawal — though what could have been done differently wasn’t always articulated. “Nobody asked us whether it was a good idea to leave that country in such a quick way,” Johann Wadephul, a deputy caucus leader for Merkel’s Christian Democrats in Germany’s parliament, told <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/quote/5350Z:US">Bloomberg Television</a>. “So, the very irritating situation we now have — the chaos we are facing in Kabul — is of course the result of this.”
Even though many NATO governments had already largely scaled back their commitments in Afghanistan, they, too inherited the mayhem and perception of failure in the US’s military withdrawal. And with that, came the realization they were limited in the ability to change the influence the narrative, or the final outcome.
“I think definitely the shock and the optics of how quickly things fell apart play a big part in the scope of the reaction,” said Garret Martin, a senior professional lecturer in the School of International Service at American University.
A sense of impotence, Martin said, has laid bare the extent of allies’ dependence on the United States. “I think that was hard to swallow that once the United States decided that it was over the game was over.”
At a G-7 meeting last week, European leaders <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/white-house/biden-stick-aug-31-afghan-withdrawal-deadline-u-s-speeds-n1277536">pushed the United States to extend the August 31 deadline for troop departure</a>. The available days to evacuate nationals and Afghan allies were dwindling, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/26/world/afghanistan-taliban-biden-news">made worse by an unstable security situation</a> that, after the meeting, <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-service-members-killed-kabul-airport-attack-what-we-know-about-the-victims/">became even more volatile</a>.
<a href="https://www.euronews.com/2021/08/24/afghanistan-boris-johnson-to-urge-g7-leaders-to-boost-aid-for-refugees">The US didn’t change course</a>. That means people will be left behind; now, the United States and its allies are depending on the Taliban to let people continue to leave <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/08/30/world/afghanistan-news#dozens-of-countries-say-they-will-accept-afghan-refugees-after-aug-31">after the August 31 date.</a> French President Emanuel Macron has proposed the United Nations designate a “safe zone” in Kabul to allow people to depart. “Will we be able to do it? I cannot guarantee that,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/30/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/#link-LOZ323CSY5HP7LE5USWVX4QEHQ">he said in an interview with French television channel TF1</a>, according to the Washington Post.
All of these machinations from allies in the past week also showed how little control they had over the situation in Afghanistan. Puglierin described it, at least in Germany, as a sense of “helplessness.”
“We realize that we are completely dependent, that it would not even be possible to evacuate our own citizens without the Americans going back in the thousands, without, Americans running this military airport,” she said.
The dependency on the United States fuels insecurity about what happens if the country’s domestic interests diverge more profoundly from Europe’s. Since the Barack Obama administration, the United States has made clear it is losing its appetite for forever wars, but the Trump administration’s “America First” policies — <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/01/14/us/politics/nato-president-trump.html">and sometimes open hostility to the EU and NATO</a> — accelerated fears that Europe wouldn’t be able to rely on the US.
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<figcaption>President Biden joins G7 summit leaders in a group photo in June 2021. In a G-7 meeting last week, European leaders pushed the US to extend the August 31 deadline for troop departure.</figcaption>
<cite>Jonny Weeks/Getty Images</cite></figure>
Biden has said the right things, <a href="https://apnews.com/article/biden-foreign-policy-g7-summit-munich-cc10859afd0f542fd268c0a7ddcd9bb6">and has promised allies he will work to rebuild the relationship</a>. But the Afghanistan adds to “this realization that maybe some of the things that were attributed to Trump, were actually part of something deeper that’s going on in the US on both sides of the political spectrum,” Benjamin Haddad, director of the Europe Center at the Atlantic Council, said.
As the US adjusts its relationship with the world, and its role in it, Europe must adapt, too. This is not to say that all of Europe wants the United States to continue its “forever wars” — and allies have been critical of US overreach, as in Iraq (<a href="https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/61086/did-americans-really-call-french-fries-freedom-fries">which also strained relations</a> with allies).
But Europe may feel the effects of the withdrawal from Afghanistan more acutely than the United States.
Geography offers at least one explanation: <a href="https://www.connexionfrance.com/French-news/Macron-says-Europe-must-protect-itself-from-wave-of-Afghan-migrants">European leaders</a> don’t want to accept a surge of Afghan immigrants. The memories of the 2015 refugee crisis, with thousands of people fleeing Syria, the Middle East, and northern Africa by boat to Europe, are still very sharp, as is how the handling of the humanitarian catastrophe <a href="https://www.pri.org/stories/2016-06-24/how-brexit-campaign-used-refugees-scare-voters">destabilized</a> European politics. Political backlash to the arrivals helped give <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36130006">rise to extreme right-wing and nationalist parties</a> across Western Europe. Even though support for some of these parties has waned, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/08/18/world/europe/afghanistan-refugees-europe-migration-asylum.html">upcoming elections in Germany and next year in France</a> have added to the skittishness. French President Emmanuel Macron recently <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/17/macron-accused-of-pandering-to-far-right-over-afghan-crisis">said</a> France must “anticipate and protect itself from a wave of migrants.”
In Germany, Afghanistan <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory/german-chancellor-candidates-face-off-1st-election-debate-79710401">may not dominate the election debate, but it certainly won’t be ignored</a>. The country had about 1,000 troops in Afghanistan, second to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/biden-us-troop-withdrawal-afghanistan/2021/04/13/918c3cae-9beb-11eb-8a83-3bc1fa69c2e8_story.html">US at the war’s close</a>. Germany’s decision to commit troops to Afghanistan was politically momentous, and became the country’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/27/world/27germany.html?scp=2&sq=Kulish%20Germans%20Kunduz&st=cse">first real combat mission for German soldiers since World War II.</a> Puglierin, of ECFR, also said that part of selling that mission to the public was selling its humanitarian mission, and building democracy and the Afghan state. That crumbled, and Germans will now need to reckon with that legacy.
<a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/world/uks-johnson-accused-of-complacency-over-afghanistan-retreat">That reckoning is also happening in the United Kingdom</a>. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-47391821">More than 450 UK troops died in Afghanistan</a>, with some members of Parliament arguing that <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-58254794">the UK should have never left Afghanistan</a>. Patrick Porter, a professor of International Security and Strategy at the University of Birmingham, said the debate on Afghanistan was mostly about “this age old-question of Britain’s significance as a major power, that’s not a superpower, and where that all fits,” he said. “Afghanistan is the latest canvas on which that unease is projected.”
That unease is shared across capitals in Europe. It may be directed at the US, but in some ways it’s a deflection — a reality that these countries aren’t as singularly powerful as they want to be. US allies are wondering where they fit in the US’s priorities. “The process of self-reflection, with regard to what went down, is only just beginning,” Emschermann said.
Afghanistan has opened up new fault lines in NATO, but it will likely not be the thing that fully fractures it.
Experts told me that the military withdrawal added to a growing skepticism of the United States, and its larger commitment to collaboration with allies. “People are unsure how much Trump is in Biden, how much of the Trump phenomenon was part of the United States foreign policy consensus — whether Trump wasn’t so much an outlier, but whether he was representing something bigger,” Puglierin said.
For NATO allies, who’ve built their security around the United States, it is getting harder to ignore the reality that US priorities are shifting. Some of this is seen in explicit foreign policy goals — for example, the US’s focus on China — and some of it is less directly linked, like America’s domestic political polarization.
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<figcaption>British armed forces work with the US military to evacuate eligible Afghans and their families on August 21.</figcaption>
<cite>UK Ministry of Defense via Getty Images</cite></figure>
Afghanistan has laid bare that many allies are reliant on the United States. And that has led to the question of whether Europeans now need to ease themselves off that reliance, and invest and build their own security. During the Trump era, Macron pushed for a <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46108633">“European army;”</a> Afghanistan is reviving another round of debate along these lines.
Borrell, the EU’s chief diplomat, suggested as much in the interview with the Italian newspaper L’Economia. “The E.U. must be able to intervene to protect our interests when the Americans don’t want to be involved,” <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/08/30/afghanistan-kabul-taliban-live-updates/#link-LOZ323CSY5HP7LE5USWVX4QEHQ">he said</a>.
But even if Europe does begin to rethink its own security, it is unlikely that Afghanistan will unravel the transatlantic relationship entirely. “As for American allies, I think it’s not that they’re no longer there,” O’Sullivan said. “It’s just that maybe we need to do much more, to demonstrate our own autonomous willingness to defend ourselves, while at the same time wanting to keep the alliance which I think is fundamental to European security architecture.”
And some experts were skeptical that Europe would really take steps to invest or build up its own security, separate from the United States and the transatlantic alliance. “We’ve had these calls a lot,” Martin said. “So I think whether that will serve as a wake-up call, I think it remains to be seen.”
Tensions over Afghanistan are raw, but those grievances may not be long-lasting. As Porter noted, the US said it was going to leave Afghanistan, and it did.
“It’s creating an enormous amount of short-term noise,” Porter said. “It’s helped touch off and really reinvigorate a number of searching debates about foreign policy. But in fact, I think this is one of those instances where there’s less than meets the eye.”
 
 
source <a href="https://www.vox.com/22639474/afghanistan-nato-europe-refugees-germany-uk">https://www.vox.com/22639474/afghanistan-nato-europe-refugees-germany-uk</a>

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"Sobering" Dip In New Zealand COVID-19 Cases Amid Tight Lockdown

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<div class="ins_instory_dv_cont"><img alt="'Sobering' Dip In New Zealand COVID-19 Cases Amid Tight Lockdown" src="https://c.ndtvimg.com/2021-08/dad7f39g_new-zealand-auckland_625x300_30_August_21.jpg" title="'Sobering' Dip In New Zealand COVID-19 Cases Amid Tight Lockdown" /></div>
Coronavirus: New Zealand is under a tight lockdown to curb the spread of the Delta variant.
</div>
Wellington:
New Zealand's government on Tuesday reported that new COVID-19 cases fell for a second day, down to 49, amid the tight lockdown the country undertook during the latest outbreak this month.
Except for a small number of cases in February, New Zealand was mainly coronavirus-free for months, until an outbreak of the Delta variant imported from Australia prompted Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern to order a snap nationwide lockdown on Aug. 17.
The total number of cases in the outbreak is at 612, with 597 in New Zealand's largest city of Auckland and 15 in the capital Wellington.
The declining number of daily cases signals that the social restrictions are reducing the spread of the highly infectious Delta variant, Ardern said in a news conference.
"We have a second day where our numbers have declined. We want the tail of this outbreak to be as short as possible," Ardern said.
Around 1.7 million Aucklanders will remain in strict level 4 lockdown for another two weeks, while restrictions for the remainder of the country will ease slightly from Wednesday.
Police placed checkpoints at the outskirts of Auckland to ensure no non-essential movement was allowed into the city.
Police also said they had arrested 19 people on Tuesday following anti-lockdown protest around the country.
There are now 33 people in hospitals from the latest Delta outbreak, the Director General of Health Ashley Bloomfield said, with eight cases in stable condition in intensive care.
"It is sobering to see six cases in the outbreak are under the age of one," he said
But he added that the public health measures in place were slowing the spread of the virus and cases will continue to decline.
Ardern's lockdowns, along with closing the international border from March 2020, were credited with reining in COVID-19.
However, the government now faces questions over a delayed vaccine rollout, as well as rising costs in a country heavily reliant on an immigrant workforce.
Just over a quarter of the population has been fully vaccinated so far, the slowest pace among the wealthy nations of the OECD grouping.
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
 
 
source <a href="https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coronavirus-a-sobering-dip-in-new-zealand-covid-cases-amid-tight-lockdown-2524604">https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/coronavirus-a-sobering-dip-in-new-zealand-covid-cases-amid-tight-lockdown-2524604</a>

news world "Sobering" Dip In New Zealand COVID-19 Cases Amid Tight Lockdown

Coronavirus: New Zealand is under a tight lockdown to curb the spread of the Delta variant. Wellington: New Zealand's government on...