Critical State: Counting Mortality
If you read just one thing … read about estimating death in Iraq and Gaza.
First, a note: Critical State is a weekly foreign policy newsletter by The World and Inkstick. We’re now migrating it to Substack, where you can read it every Wednesday.
Shaan Sachdev wrote for The Drift about statistics of those killed in Israel’s war against Hamas — and in Gaza. Sachdev recalls how US President Joe Biden cast doubt on estimations of how many Palestinians had been killed in Gaza. Five months later, during the State of the Union, Sachdev relays, he shared “a stream of statistics that matched the numbers from the ministry he’d cheapened only five months before.” But, Sachdev goes on, “Ironically, by then Biden had less reason to trust the accuracy of the ministry’s data, because in the intervening months, Israeli forces had destroyed much of Gaza’s medical and electronic infrastructure — not just hospital computers, but entire hospital buildings — through which death records were centralized and processed.” Yet, the war continued, supported by the Biden administration, and so Sachdev asks a question: “If acknowledging it changes nothing, how much does the number matter?”
Sachdev takes readers through an American history of counting the dead — from Vietnam to the Gulf War to Iraq. Along the way, the reader is confronted by who gets to determine the final count, who’s left to do the counting, and why — and whether — the tally matters as the killing continues: “Numbers don’t necessarily bring clarity or even urgency to the costs of armed conflict. They don’t stop to tell the tale of the mother and her six children who were reportedly killed when an Israeli airstrike hit a building near Al-Shifa on March 29, or to elaborate upon the doting thirty-year-old father who spent four days trying to unearth his daughter’s body from the rubble of their home in Rafah. … They are the tools and benchmarks by which we who stand outside the horrors of war can appraise suffering and injustice.”
If You Read One More Thing: Labo(ur) of Love
In Hyphen Online, Tasmin Nazeer writes of how Keir Starmer needs to — and can — rebuild trust with Muslim voters.
After establishing that recognition of a Palestinian state is a prerequisite, Nazeer argued that regaining Muslim support goes beyond Gaza, writing, “Labour needs to unequivocally condemn Islamophobia within its ranks and take swift action against those who perpetuate it. That means implementing a zero-tolerance policy for Islamophobic rhetoric and behavior, ensuring that those who engage in such conduct face real consequences, such as being dismissed from the party.”
Nazeer also feels that “Labour must do more to make our voices heard,” pointing to a 2020 Labour Muslim Network report that found that “more than one in four Muslim Labour members had experienced Islamophobia within the party, most saying they lacked confidence in the leadership’s ability to address the issue.” Labour representation in key party positions should be improved, too, writes Nazeer: “That goes beyond tokenism, requiring a genuine commitment to diversifying Labour’s leadership and ensuring that Muslims are actively involved in decision-making processes.” Labour being in power makes this more important, Nazeer concludes.
Losing the Games
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In The Dial, Phineas Rueckert examines how the upcoming Olympic Games are exacerbating the housing crisis in Paris.
Rueckert writes that “exactly 100 days before the opening ceremony of the much-awaited 2024 Paris Olympics — the French state was making good on an eviction notice dating back to June 2021 and emptying the squat, the largest in France.” The building in question isn’t near the infrastructure for the Games, but the Olympic Torch will be carried through the area. Advocates see the eviction as a broader pattern: “cleaning up” the city by cracking down on the vulnerable.
All the people with whom Rueckert spoke for the event felt that the upcoming Olympics “have provided Paris a neat deadline for accelerating processes of urban renewal — and displacement — that were already underway in an effort to sanitize the city for tourists.” And while this could have been an impetus for addressing “chronic homelessness,” many feel authorities instead just turned to, and increased, evictions. Many of the people who are being evicted for the Olympics have been evicted before — some several times.
Deep Dive: A Danish Dilemma
In the journal West European Politics, Frowin Rausis looks at Denmark’s desire to externalize asylum. Rausis opens with a controversial decision from 2021. That year, the Social Democratic government tabled a bill that would allow asylum seekers to be transferred out of Denmark to be processed and given protection. As Rausis puts it, “Witnessing a Social Democratic government embracing this highly controversial idea, even though less than a handful of right-wing governments outside Europe had previously outsourced asylum, is puzzling.” Though the idea dates back to the 1980s, it was revived in the 2000s.
Rausis asserts that this decision was driven by the desire to be seen as problem solvers (after ruling out causes for the decision like technocratic learning and belief in the policy’s efficiency). Rausis describes the “popular attention pathway”: when the mass media devotes significant attention to something, it can tempt decision-makers “to weigh responsiveness to their constituency higher than loyalty to their party ideology.” Between 2014 and 2016, immigration did indeed receive increased media attention in Denmark. Consequently, it is a key issue in political debate.
To justify the policy, “mask its origins,” and resolve the inconsistency with the party’s own ideology, the Danish Social Democratic government took three steps.
First, they referred to policy advisors as the source of the idea, suggesting they were following experts’ lead. Though “empirical evidence” suggests this is not what happened, in acting as though it was, “they disguised their responsiveness to the perceived demand for restrictive policies as openness to expert knowledge and evidence-based policy-making.”
Second, they tried to cast externalization as humanitarian work, making the case not, as right-wing parties tend to, in nationalist terms, but by claiming, for example, that such a policy would spare asylum seekers from perilous migration journeys. This way, they could reassure voters with lip service to universalist ideas and gave it a way to withstand humanitarian and international criticism.
Third, they tried to change the narrative about their party’s identity, “claiming the prerogative regarding the dominant narrative on Social Democratic identity reflects also an attempt to forestall internal criticism.”
Show Us the Receipts
Jon Letman wrote about Exercise Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC), the world’s largest maritime exercise, and how it highlights the potential for Pacific cooperation — and Pacific conflict. After offering a history of RIMPAC, Letman quoted Neta Crawford, co-director of Brown University’s Costs of War Project, an expert who “sees RIMPAC as part of perpetual war preparation that has been normalized and says it’s a trend that appears to be accelerating and intensifying its focus on China.”
Marine Caleb described an agreement between the European Union and Lebanon to reduce refugee departures. The European Union, Caleb explained, “has begun bankrolling Lebanese authorities to help prevent departures.” Experts are worried that the consequence will be human rights violations, in addition to Brussels' hefty price tag. Experts explain that EU officials may well be willing to overlook Lebanese crackdowns on Syrians, for example, provided those Syrians don’t come to the EU. And some caution that, rather than stemming migration flows, this money only exists to show member states that the EU is taking action.
Rebecca Rosman described the struggle of trying to get aid into Gaza. As Rosman wrote, “Whether it’s by land, sea, or air, delivering basic necessities to the territory, since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, has been a logistical nightmare. To make up for a backlog in aid, the Israeli government has been allowing more goods to go in from the private sector, but that method, too, has been fraught.” The trips are perilous for truck drivers, who are mainly Palestinian citizens of Israel, and who are set upon by far-right activists when trying to deliver aid. Other aid officials blame Israel for setting vague guidelines on what is allowed in and when and at which crossing.
Well-Played
A musical mile away.
The Paris of Florida.
But that’s it!
They know.
Fret not.
Not the podcasting schedule!
Critical State is written by Emily Tamkin with Inkstick Media.
The World is a weekday public radio show and podcast on global issues, news, and insights from PRX and GBH.
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Critical State is made possible in part by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.