A Lot of Headline Questions

I answer them all

Good Evening:

Nope.

Almost certainly.

Because of this song by Tom Waits:

Nope.

Because they’re dumb and uncomfortable. The question should be why women did not stop wearing them.

Auto, meaning automatic.

Pen, meaning, well, pen.

Get it?

Uh, that depends if we’ve grown gills or blowholes by 2027. Outlook: Not so good.

Okay, let me explain how prices work. There’s this supply curve, which shows how much it costs to produce any particular volume of an item. Then there’s a demand curve, which shows how much the market will pay for ascending quantities of the item in question. Where the supply curve meets the demand curve? That’s your price right there.

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Today on #DogShirtTV, I called for civility in politics. We used to respect normal business hours. Back in the good old days, once the week was over, it was over. You could sit back, have a beer, and rest assured that no one would destroy democracy until Monday.

But the good old days are gone. Nothing is sacred now. We are not allowed to have fun anymore.

Also, the estimable Holly Berkley Fletcher and the estimable Alicia Wanless came by to talk about missionaries, Finnish, the African middle class, which celebrities are not actually idiots, and more:

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The Situation

In today’s The Situation column, I argue that President Donald Trump’s dismantling of Voice of America reflects his contempt for a United States dedicated to truth, reliability, and the promotion of freedom and democracy throughout the world, part and parcel of a broader campaign to reshape American foreign policy:

Understand this move as part and parcel of a lot of other unilateral American disarmament going on in the first weeks of the second Trump administration. Unilateral disarmament in the information space is part and parcel of unilaterally conceding key negotiating latitude to Russia over the heads of the Ukrainians. It is part and parcel of unilaterally undermining the core security underpinnings of NATO. It is part and parcel of publicly endorsing Russophillic far-right parties in European countries. It is part and parcel of a policy of destroying decades of relations with friendly nations with trade policies based on deranged and ever-shifting factual claims.

Because all of these policies depend on lies. And people who build policy on the basis of lies were always ultimately going to be on a collision course with VOA.

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Today On Lawfare

Compiled by the estimable Caroline Cornett

A Primer on 21st-Century Economic Weapons

In a review of Edward Fishman’s “Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare,” Alex Zerden praises Fishman’s account of U.S. campaigns of economic warfare against Iran, Russia, and China. Zerden highlights how Fishman’s years working at the highest level of U.S. sanctions policy offer unique insight into a typically opaque, complex process:

The use (and misuse) of these economic tools over the past two decades lies at the heart of Edward Fishman’s “Chokepoints: American Power in the Age of Economic Warfare.” Through a detailed and engaging diplomatic history, “Chokepoints” illuminates the often opaque mechanisms of U.S. economic power deployed against adversaries via the U.S.-dominated and U.S.-dollar- denominated global financial system and, more recently, U.S.-developed advanced semiconductor technologies supply chain.

The Narrative Purpose of Climate Change Litigation

Meredith Warren explains why—despite the rarity of landmark victories in climate change lawsuits—climate change litigation collectively creates a powerful narrative and communicates climate harm. Warren discusses the increasing prevalence of claims alleging that inaction against climate change violates human rights, cases that seek to compel government action on climate change, and the spread of climate change litigation beyond the Global North:

So, why do cases continue to be filed? A closer look into the landscape of climate litigation reveals the strategic purpose of these cases. Hidden behind the highly covered courtroom win, climate change litigation has taken a page from historic strategic litigation and focused on the cumulative effect of bringing cases in a plethora of jurisdictions. Cases test new legal pathways and, often, are expecting to fail. Of course, the ultimate goal for climate campaigners is to obtain relief for claimants, and a courtroom victory is still desired. However, to best understand the climate change litigation project as a whole, one must appreciate the narrative power that comes from these cases. Legal norms travel across borders and legal cultures. As a result, the flurry of strategic cases paired with each case’s advocacy campaign creates an influential profile for climate litigation. So, while landmark victories remain a rarity for now, a case’s value can be understood in terms of its public visibility and the ability of claimants and litigators to tell their story.

How Drones Make Civil Wars Worse

In the latest installment of Lawfare’s Foreign Policy Essay series, Joshua A. Schwartz, John Chin, and Haleigh Bartos suggest that the increasing accessibility of drones can prolong civil wars, increase their severity, and make them easier to ignite but harder to resolve. The authors analyze the way in which rebels, foreign intervening powers, and other actors utilize drones to advance their interests:

Drones can create three perverse dynamics in the context of civil wars. First, drones may make civil wars more likely to break out in the first place because their commercial availability and low cost increase access to airpower and thus make it easier for weaker actors to rebel against the state. Second, drones make it cheaper and lower risk for foreign states to intervene in and thus fuel civil wars. Third, the precision and surveillance capabilities of drones combined with the large quantity that can be deployed make it more difficult to maneuver and advance on the battlefield. This makes civil wars less likely to end in quick government victories, increasing the likelihood of stalemates and bloody, drawn-out conflicts.

Podcasts

On Lawfare Daily, I speak to Scott R. Anderson, Matthew Boaz, and Anna Bower about the status of the civil litigation against Trump’s executive actions, including the freezing of the disbursement of federal funds, the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development, and the firing of probationary employees:

On Escalation, co-hosts Tyler McBrien and Anastasiia Lapatina cover ‘The Orange Revolution’—the culmination of Ukrainians’ resistance to Russian interference in the 2004 presidential campaign—and a 2008 NATO summit where the U.S. and European allies formulated a high-risk plan to protect Ukraine:

Videos

Lapatina, McBrien, and I spoke at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, where we discussed the making of Escalation, Lawfare’s new narrative podcast that tells the story of the U.S.-Ukraine relationship through interviews with over 50 diplomats, journalists, spies, and key decision-makers. We also shared behind-the-scenes insights and explored what lies ahead for Ukraine:

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Today’s #BeastOfTheDay is the black rain frog, which earns its title for perfectly representing my mood when my weekend is disrupted by The Situation:

Seriously. There is no image of the black rain frog that does not express my precise mood. This Beast is just like that.

Images Source

In honor of today’s Beast, grump about it. We’re all entitled.