Category: MIL-OSI

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew McInnes, Reader in Romanticisms, Edge Hill University

Would Jane Austen have even understood the question of whether she was gay? Michel Foucault, French theorist and author of The History of Sexuality (1976), would answer: “Non”.

Foucault argues that, even though homosexual acts had been performed in the past, homosexuality as an identity did not develop until the later 19th century. Before then, you could do homosexuality, but you couldn’t be a homosexual. That’s because homosexuality as an identity didn’t exist yet.

Anne Lister, a contemporary of Austen’s who wrote coded diaries about her sexual liaisons with women and is now often hailed as the first modern lesbian, might disagree with Foucault. But it is unlikely that Austen thought of herself as gay.

In 1995 the London Review of Books (LRB) ran a review of Deidre Le Faye’s monumental edition of Austen’s letters. The piece, written by US literary critic Terry Castle was called Sister-Sister, but it was cheekily retitled “Was Jane Austen Gay?” on the cover. In her article, Castle suggested that Austen appears mainly dismissive of men in her correspondence, and was similarly dismissive of the various proposals she is said to have received.

Castle’s review, especially the LRB’s provocative retitling, caused a storm in a teacup of Austenian proportions. Readers of the LRB and Austen scholars fell into a fury of scandalised incomprehension, trading competing interpretations of Austen’s private life and public writing.

For Castle, Austen’s most significant relationship was with her sister, Cassandra. Her nuanced argument about the erotics of this relationship was brought to life recently in a collaboration between the LRB and City of London Sinfonia in London’s Covent Garden, the event’s name recalling the LRB coverline for Castle’s essay.

Becoming Jane and friends

A one-off show which was part of the LRB and City of London Sinfonia’s Ideas in Concert series, Was Jane Austen Gay? brought to life Castle’s essay and the tumultuous response to it. Actresses Claudie Blakley, who played Charlotte Lucas in the 2005 Pride and Prejudice, and Lost in Austen’s Jemima Rooper read out Castle’s essay, as well as letters from, to, and about Austen. A concert mixing songs from Austen’s own music collection with modern-day Austen film soundtracks accompanied the staged reading.

The show began and ended with Castle’s bewildered response to the brouhaha that erupted over her argument on Austen’s inner life. “Surely,” bemoans Castle, “literary critics writing in the London Review are still allowed to speculate about such things”. As Blakley and Rooper demonstrated in the reading of Castle’s essay, Castle herself was not above a little childishness – malevolence, even.

She describes – deliciously – Cassandra’s portrait of Jane as having eyes like “small astigmatic raisins”. So mean, and so Austen-like! And she also ventriloquises a taboo wish, which she detects running through writing on Jane and Cassandra: “Why did Jane have to be the one to die?”

Blakley and Rooper performed Castle’s essay in different voices, affecting an American twang for the critic’s rueful response to her British reception. They also alternated between breathless excitement for Jane, mournfulness for Cassandra, and pomposity for Austen’s family biographer James Edward Austen-Leigh.

There were voices, too, from Austen’s fiction, including Northanger Abbey’s Henry Tilney, an “unheterosexual” (to borrow critic D.A Miller’s phrase gentleman with a fondness for fine fabrics, and Emma, erotically enamoured with Harriet Smith.

The evening allowed for a deeper dive into Austen’s letters, as well as a taster of Anne Lister’s, and took great delight in dramatising the aftermath of Castle’s essay, often very funnily. This included a letter from the Independent’s arts correspondent castigating Terry Castle’s prurience, while mistaking her for a man. The LRB editors laconically responded: “We wonder what Ms McDonald would have written had she been alert to the fact that Terry Castle is a woman.”

Alexandra Wood, violinist and creative director of City of London Sinfonia, brought together a wonderful ensemble to provide a musical counterpoint to Blakley and Rooper’s dramatised reading of Castle’s essay. When Blakely and Roper discussed Jane’s flirtatious style in her letters to Cassandra, the music teased and flirted with the audience.

Another letter published in the wake of Castle’s essay, by the great Austen scholar Claudia Johnson – sadly overlooked in this event – begins: “Is she prudish? – is she queer?” Johnson playfully shifts focus from Austen’s sexuality to the oddness of one of her character’s here. Fanny Price is “queer” because she is immune to the dubious charms of Henry Crawford, who is asking these questions about her in Mansfield Park.

Reviewing attitudes to Austen’s sexuality that run the gamut from frigid to lesbian, Johnson defends Castle’s argument that sisterly bonds are among the most powerful in Austen’s writing. She expresses a preference for the naughty Austen glimpsed in her letters to Cassandra and available as a narrative voice – mischievous, stylish, “unheterosexual” – in her novels.

It is a voice that finds excitement and enjoyment by pressing at the confines of the marriage plot, which enforces a kind of normative heterosexuality on proceedings. It laughs at the misunderstandings and miscommunications that seem to bedevil all the actual marriages in Austen’s novels, and sides with characters like Henry Tilney, Emma Woodhouse and Fanny Price, who stand apart from these heterosexual demands, desiring otherwise.

Like Johnson, along with Castle and the organisers of “Was Jane Austen Gay?”, I find this naughty Austen more seductive than alternative visions of her as a heteronormative moraliser. Reading Austen’s novels queerly opens them up as works with surprising and subversive things to say about how to live and think and write. Even if Austen herself did not – and could not – think of herself as a homosexual, her writing invites queer interpretations, celebrating the mischievous, the stylish, and the “unheterosexual”.

Rather than asking “Was Jane Austen Gay?”, perhaps we should ask, “How can we read Austen today?” The original Castle essay and the LRB/CLS event named after it provide ways to do just that, thinking about Austen speculatively, wittily, and musically.

This article features references to books that have been included for editorial reasons, and may contain links to bookshop.org. If you click on one of the links and go on to buy something, The Conversation UK may earn a commission.

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Andrew McInnes received funding from AHRC for his Early Career Researcher Leadership Fellow project, ‘The Romantic Ridiculous’, which ran from 2020-2022.

– ref. Why asking ‘Was Jane Austen gay?’ still causes controversy – https://theconversation.com/why-asking-was-jane-austen-gay-still-causes-controversy-275180

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Dorje C. Brody, Professor of Mathematics, University of Surrey

When deciding whether to invest in environmental projects, it’s important to consider the economic value of any long-term benefits.

Whether climate solutions (such as offshore wind power or solar farms) are recognised as valuable or worthless depends very much on which economic model is used to evaluate it.

If the present value of the benefit (calculated by using a widely accepted financial model called “exponential discounting”) is too small compared to the cost, it may seem to damage the economy too much.

As a mathematician researching in finance, my study shows how it is possible to use another financial model called “social discounting” to value the long-term benefits far into the future. My colleague and I have demonstrated that a perfectly consistent valuation method can be established using social discounting.

Exponential discounting is commonly used to calculate the present value of a future benefit. Banks use this all the time to calculate the value of products linked to interest rates. Exponential discounting tells us how much to put in an account now to reach that future value – it incorporates how, when interests accumulated overnight are instantly put into the account, those interests will accumulate additional interests.

Social discounting is another way of calculating the present value of future, long-term benefits such as the prevention of drought, forest fire, or the submersion of coastal cities.

A recent University of Exeter report titled Recalibrating Climate Risk highlights a range of shortcomings in how traditional economic models are applied to climate issues.

While it makes sense to use exponential discounting if the future beneficiary of the decision made today is the same person who is making the decision, that isn’t always the case when they are different.

The benefits of long-term social projects for sustainable energy or climate change may only arise in 100 years. By using an exponential discounting model, a large benefit occurring in the distant future will be assigned an unfairly low value right now. This won’t be enough to justify the costs involved in funding the project, so the project might not get off the ground.

Given that future generations have no say on choices made by society today, it seems unfair to heavily discount their future benefits. Nevertheless, there is a strong argument, most notably advocated by the climate economist and Nobel laureate William Nordhaus, that investment in climate projects should be treated like any other investment; subject to the usual exponential discounting.

The Nordhaus argument is widely used to evaluate climate policies around the world. For example, a UK thinktank called the Global Warming Policy Foundation has used it to warn the government against investing in safeguarding future generations. Fossil fuel companies employ versions of the Nordhaus argument to deter public investment in climate policy and focus on the short-term benefits of an economy based on fossil fuel extraction.

There is a catch

Leaving aside morale and ethical debates on the use of exponential discounting, a little-known principle in finance shows that the exponential rate of discounting cannot decline over a long time horizon when benefits of climate policies are delivered.

One consequence is that the benefit of long-term social projects to tackle climate change is inevitably heavily discounted in the exponential model. This makes the investment seem less attractive, making it difficult for lawmakers to pass climate bills.

An alternative assessment follows from using social discounting, where the discounting is considerably milder so that the present value of the benefit of a climate policy far in the future may be as significant as the amount of investment required for implementing the policy, making the investment a worthwhile proposition.

In spite of its morale attraction, in the academic literature it was thought for a long time that it is not possible to evaluate future benefits in a consistent way using a social discounting. Without evaluating future benefits in a reliable, consistent way makes it difficult to argue the economic case for a climate investment. But my research shows that it is possible.

There are no economic or financial reasons to circumvent the use of social discounting on the basis of consistency. So it’s time to move on from the old-school economic arguments favoured by the fossil fuel industry and other climate sceptics.

Dorje C. Brody has received funding from UKRI.

– ref. Funding climate projects: our financial model can better illustrate long-term value – https://theconversation.com/funding-climate-projects-our-financial-model-can-better-illustrate-long-term-value-275849

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Frances Hand, DPhil Candidate, Faculty of Law, University of Oxford

In the UK, women have more choices about how to give birth than ever before, from a water birth at home to a caesarean delivery in hospital. But choice does not always mean labour unfolds as initially planned.

First-time mothers are more likely to experience medical interventions during labour. The most common include episiotomies, a cut made at the vaginal opening to widen the passage, and assisted vaginal births using forceps or a ventouse, also known as a vacuum device.

While some procedures, such as caesarean deliveries, are widely understood, others are less familiar. In the UK, doctors must obtain a woman’s consent before carrying out any medical intervention during labour. This involves explaining the risks, benefits and alternatives.

But being asked to absorb new information and make decisions during labour, without prior knowledge of these procedures, can make this process very difficult.

Birth trauma

Experiences such as these can leave women with lasting and complicated feelings about childbirth. Even when mother and baby leave hospital without long-term physical injuries, the psychological impacts can be significant – affecting the mother, her attachment with her baby, and also relationships with loved ones.

To explore this further, our team carried out a retrospective service evaluation at a maternity unit in south-east England. We asked women to look back on their experiences of assisted vaginal births.

Many said the intensity of labour and the need to process unfamiliar information meant the time available to make decisions felt too short. Two-thirds reported feeling under-informed about assisted vaginal delivery, and 11.6% said they consented to interventions they did not fully understand.

One way to better support decision-making during labour may be to provide clearer and more consistent information during pregnancy. Research suggests access to this information can be a lottery. Some people receive detailed explanations from midwives or antenatal classes while others do not, even if they would like that support.

Social media is often used to fill this gap, but it can be difficult to separate reliable advice from misinformation. Birth influencers have gained large followings, despite some sharing inaccurate or potentially harmful claims.

Algorithms may also create the impression that only one type of birth is acceptable or “normal”. In reality, one in five first-time mothers have an assisted vaginal birth. Knowing this might help reduce the feelings of failure that some women report after having an intervention.

Access to reliable, evidence-based information is an important step in reducing the likelihood of women feeling “out of control” during birth, which is a risk factor for birth trauma.

Access to information

Access to information should be a right, not an obligation. Some participants in our evaluation said they would not find additional detail helpful. They felt that in-depth discussions about risks and benefits before labour might feel overwhelming unless the intervention became necessary. Women and birthing people who feel this way should be able to decline that information.

What matters most is the ability to access information for those who want it. Our findings suggest that familiarity with the basics of labour interventions before birth could improve decision-making. If consent discussions arise during labour, there is then more time to focus on the individual’s particular situation.

Participants suggested standardising antenatal education, possibly with input from both midwives and obstetricians, or including clearer discussion of labour interventions during routine antenatal appointments.

However, many maternity units are working with limited staff and heavy workloads, and antenatal appointments are often brief. Any additional discussions about labour interventions would need to be realistic about clinicians’ time and capacity. Alongside our audit with women, we also asked clinicians at the same hospital for their views on improving consent for assisted vaginal birth. This work is now being analysed.

Access to antenatal education plays an important role in helping women prepare for childbirth. Our findings suggest that information about assisted vaginal birth is not equally available to everyone.

Women should be able to learn about these procedures at a time and in a way that suits them. This could support more informed consent conversations during labour, and improve experiences of care overall.

Morganne Wilbourne receives funding from the Kennedy Institute of Rheumatology for her DPhil at the University of Oxford.

Frances Hand does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why labour decision-making shouldn’t start in the delivery room – https://theconversation.com/why-labour-decision-making-shouldnt-start-in-the-delivery-room-276030

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham

Four years ago, on February 24 2022, Russian president Vladimir Putin announced that his forces had begun a full-scale invasion of Ukraine – the reasons for which we have explored here. Within minutes, explosions were heard in major Ukrainian cities as Russian troops flooded across the border.

Russian forces made swift gains, capturing key areas near the capital of Kyiv. But the offensive soon stalled and, by December, Russia had been forced to withdraw its forces and consolidate in the east where the war has ground on ever since.

We asked Stefan Wolff, Tetyana Malyarenko, Scott Lucas and Mark Webber, four regular contributors to the Conversation UK’s coverage of Ukraine, for their take on the most surprising development of the war so far and its likely trajectory from here.

A very traditional war – with added drones

Stefan Wolff, Professor of International Security, University of Birmingham; Tetyana Malyarenko, Professor of International Security, and Jean Monnet, Professor of European Security, National University Odesa Law Academy

For us, the most surprising development remains Moscow’s decision to launch a large-scale ground invasion of Ukraine in the first place. Even though many Russian and western analysts expected a swift Ukrainian defeat, this always seemed unlikely from the perspective of Ukraine.

The mobilisation of Ukrainian society early on in the war testified to this and underlined that there was no realistic scenario under which the Kremlin could swiftly achieve its goals – to oust President Volodymyr Zelensky and “demilitarise” and “denazify” Ukraine.

Much less surprising was Russia’s transition to a war economy and a traditional war of attrition, which became a foregone conclusion as soon as Moscow’s plan for a victory parade in Kyiv within weeks of the full-scale invasion turned out to be a pipe dream.

Combat methods have evolved over the past four years, especially regarding the integration of drones. Russia has exploited drone technology to attack the whole range of critical infrastructure in Ukraine, not just military targets. But the foundation of Russian and then Soviet military doctrine – the use of mass armies and tactics of mass destruction – has remained untouched.

Moving forward, both sides have sufficient resources and external support to maintain the status quo. They will continue to fight each other in the hope of exhausting their opponent. But neither side is likely to reach this point of exhaustion soon. And until it does happen, political, economic and social stagnation in both Russia and Ukraine will continue to take its toll on their citizens.

Putin’s hopes are pinned on Trump

Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, University College Dublin

On the day the war broke out, I was in a discussion group of political and military analysts. When we got the news that Russian special forces had landed at the Hostomel airbase near Kyiv, each of us thought the capital would fall within a few weeks.

However, four years have passed and Ukraine now controls more territory than it did in June 2022. This is despite facing the second-most powerful military in the world, Russia’s disinformation assault and political warfare trying to split Europe, and abandonment by the Trump camp.

The Russian president’s unwillingness to give up his quest for Ukraine as part of a “Greater Russia” and the Trump camp’s willingness to sacrifice Ukrainian and European security are less of a surprise.

Putin made clear in an essay in 2021 that this would be his legacy project. So any soundbites about “peace around the corner” – particularly from Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner – are cynical declarations or wishful thinking.

The Kremlin will not accept less than the seizure of all of the strategic Donetsk region, the rest of the country without effective security guarantees, and the fall of the Zelensky government. Putin cannot accept less because this would be the failure of his project at the cost of 1.3 million casualties and counting.

His hope is that Trump’s envoys will enable him to achieve what he cannot on the battlefield. The Trumpists do not believe in alliance but in transactional relationships, which is why the Kremlin is now dangling joint economic projects in front of the US government.

But, irrespective of this, I see no change in the war’s trajectory in the near future. A negotiated end to the invasion is close to impossible because of the Kremlin’s quest for “victory” through Kyiv’s capitulation. That capitulation is unlikely.

Russia has made only marginal advances on the ground. And Zelensky is maintaining his line over sovereignty, territory and security. Although Ukraine’s energy infrastructure has been seriously damaged, most Ukrainians support continued resistance.

While cumbersome in its support, which has been complicated by pro-Kremlin figures like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Slovakia’s Robert Fico, the EU is also stepping up its backing of Kyiv and partially filling the gap that has been left by Trump.

The Kremlin is facing a tightening of economic constraints on its quest. It is cutting social spending and increasing taxes to maintain the war. However, as there has been no widespread public pressure domestically that could curb the Kremlin’s ambitions, the invasion will grind on.

Two ways to overcome the stalemate

Mark Webber, Professor of International Politics, University of Birmingham

For me, the biggest surprise so far has been the resilience and adaptability of the Ukrainian war effort. Most observers, myself included, assumed in 2022 that the Ukrainians would buckle under the Russian onslaught.

Nato-led training programmes have undoubtedly been important for Ukrainian defenders. But seemingly more vital has been the determination provided by national identity. Putin’s 2022 claims that Ukraine had been committing genocide against Russian speakers and that its government was a neo-Nazi dictatorship were both spurious and counterproductive.

I too believe Russia’s war methods in Ukraine were grimly predictable. Waves of infantry assaults designed to overwhelm defences through sheer volume have been a recurring strategy in previous Russian military campaigns in Chechnya, Georgia and Syria.

But this strategy has resulted in a stalemate in Ukraine with the frontlines effectively frozen. There are two things that could alter this. The first is a change of approach by China, which has effectively subsidised Russia’s war effort through technology transfers and energy purchases.

Beijing could cut off some of the technology it provides Russia and exert pressure on Moscow to encourage flexibility in the peace negotiations. But, at present, it has no interest in abandoning Russia. Their alliance is a way of balancing the US and Nato in the global competition for influence.

The second possible agent of change is a massive armament effort on behalf of Ukraine. This would require Germany, France and Britain to boost already significant arms provisions and to allow their use in a manner that is not constrained by fears of escalation.

However, this scenario also seems unlikely. These three countries lack the domestic political imperative to back Ukraine to victory. And the US, which was overly cautious even under the presidency of Joe Biden, has now left the field of battle.

Stefan Wolff is a past recipient of grant funding from the Natural Environment Research Council of the UK, the United States Institute of Peace, the Economic and Social Research Council of the UK, the British Academy, the NATO Science for Peace Programme, the EU Framework Programmes 6 and 7 and Horizon 2020, as well as the EU’s Jean Monnet Programme. He is a Trustee and Honorary Treasurer of the Political Studies Association of the UK and a Senior Research Fellow at the Foreign Policy Centre in London.

Mark Webber is a Senior Non-resident Fellow at the NATO Defence College in Rome and a trustee of NATO Watch. He has previously received funding from the Economic and Social Research Council and the British Academy to carry out research on NATO.

Tetyana Malyarenko receives funding from the Research Council of Norway (project WARPUT, 361835, implemented by Norwegian Institute of International Affairs).

Scott Lucas does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Ukraine war: after four surprising years, where does it go next? Experts give their view – https://theconversation.com/ukraine-war-after-four-surprising-years-where-does-it-go-next-experts-give-their-view-276706

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Andrew Gawthorpe, Lecturer in History and International Studies, Leiden University

As the US continues to assemble military assets in the Middle East and Europe ahead of a possible strike against Iran, Donald Trump is running up against two problems that have plagued American presidents before him.

The first is civilian misunderstanding of war. Fresh from what he sees as quick and easy victories against Iran last June and Venezuela this January, Trump wants military options which allow him to damage Iran at little risk or cost. But unfortunately for the president, no such option exists. And there are reports – which Trump denies – that his top general has warned him about the risks involved.

Despite the damage it has sustained in recent conflicts with the US and Israel, Iran maintains formidable capabilities. It has the ability to harass and perhaps close key shipping lanes, launch missile strikes against US forces and allies across the region, and perhaps carry out terrorist attacks throughout the world.

Trump’s repeated threats to overthrow the Iranian government make it much more likely Tehran will use these capabilities rather than exercising restraint as it did when the US attacked it last year.

According to several media outlets, Trump’s military advisors have informed him of these risks. The president is reportedly not taking the news well. CBS News reports that Trump is “frustrated with what aides describe as the limits of military leverage against Iran” and is pushing for options that will give him a painless victory.

These exchanges between the military and its civilian masters are reminiscent of the interventions of the 1990s. During the Clinton administration, the White House repeatedly pushed the Pentagon to come up with low-risk plans for engagement in Somalia and the Balkans. The president and his staff wanted to be seen as doing something about urgent humanitarian tragedies, but they also didn’t want to risk a political upset by getting American soldiers killed.

Top military officers, particularly the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, Colin Powell, pushed back against the civilians. War entails risk, they told the White House, and American soldiers could die if risks were not weighed appropriately.

In his memoirs, Powell recalled his response to a question from Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright: “‘What’s the point of having this superb military that you’re always talking about if we can’t use it?’ I thought I would have an aneurysm.”

As so often with Trump, he is pushing this dynamic of civilian ignorance meeting military expertise to extremes. The current build-up against Iran started not with a clear strategy or objective, but a presidential social media message promising Iranian protesters that “help is on the way”. His current frustration stems from the difficulty of translating that vague promise into an actionable military plan.

Pushing at the limits of action

The second theme that is shaping and limiting Trump’s options is imperial overstretch. However powerful the US military is, it has limits – and in recent years, it has been pushing against them.

In particular, the US has a critical shortage of key missile defence munitions such as Thaad interceptors and Patriots. These platforms would be vital in defending against Iranian retaliation, but the US has been burning through them in recent years by providing them to Israel, Ukraine and Taiwan. The navy has also run down its own stocks of SM-2, SM-3 and SM-6 missiles, which are vital for defending the fleet and other American forces.

The result is that the US lacks the munitions to sustain a long, high-intensity conflict with Iran. If it gets into one, it will have to draw missiles from elsewhere, leaving its forces in Europe and the Indo-Pacific even more understocked than they already are. And because the country has a limited production capacity of these missiles, it could be literally years until the US can replenish its stocks and be ready for contingencies in places like Taiwan.

For a president who promised to avoid unnecessary overseas entanglements and put “America First”, this risk of overstretch is particularly ironic. But it is a function of Trump’s lack of serious strategic vision.

‘Strategic incontinence’

One name for it might be “strategic incontinence”. Rather than focusing on a few vital national interests and assigning capabilities accordingly, Trump seems to pinball between different regions of the globe without regard for whether the US has the capabilities to achieve his goals. He seems to tweet his way into commitments – too many of them – without asking basic questions about military capabilities or missile stocks.

Trump may still attack Iran. He has already put himself in a difficult position, engaging in a massive military build-up and threats of action before he knew whether he could follow through, or at what risk. For a president who is particularly concerned with avoiding looking weak, backing down now might be out of the question.

If Trump does attack Iran despite the warnings of his military advisers, it will be one of the riskiest military decisions that a US president has taken in a very long time. The geopolitical consequences and political price will be his to bear, but could affect us all.

Andrew Gawthorpe is affiliated with the Foreign Policy Centre in London as a senior fellow.

– ref. Trump’s plan for strikes on Iran carries major risks – and the US military knows it – https://theconversation.com/trumps-plan-for-strikes-on-iran-carries-major-risks-and-the-us-military-knows-it-276775

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Renaud Foucart, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University

New US tariffs set at 10% have come into effect, days after the country’s Supreme Court blocked the bulk of President Donald Trump’s sweeping import taxes. The shock move came as a major blow to the president’s determination to rebalance US trade and bring manufacturing back home.

For more than 30 years, the United States has been importing substantially more goods and services from the rest of the world than it exports.

In many ways, this trade deficit is a good problem to have. US citizens are among the richest in the world. Every time citizens or governments buy more than they sell, someone must pay the difference. In the US, this deficit is financed by foreign investments and public debt. The US owes the rest of the world US$27.61 trillion (£20.5 trillion) more than it is owed back, a unique position.

Foreign investors are not doing it out of generosity: those US investments have been doing very well, and many countries have been able to sustain export-led industries to a large extent thanks to US deficits. The AI investment boom, for instance, is driven by investors from all over the world betting on the success of a handful of US-based companies.

But cheap imports from the rest of the world have a dark side. They played a major role in the reduction of manufacturing jobs and the social and political consequences – such as the surge of left and rightwing populist movements – that followed. In 2000, 17 million Americans were employed in manufacturing; there are only 13 million now.

The stubborn US trade deficit

At least since the first term of President Barack Obama, the deficit has been seen as a major problem.

Obama’s objective was to encourage US exports by making it easier to sell to foreign markets. But he also pursued a policy of energy independence – the “all of the above” strategy of encouraging fracking, oil extraction and investment in renewables. This strategy has been a tremendous success, to the point where the US now exports more energy than it imports.

But it did not end trade deficits.

Joe Biden took over in the White House and launched two vast programmes aimed at restoring manufacturing jobs. The goal was to use the US position as the global investment destination to steer cash towards states such as Ohio, Indiana or Michigan, which were traditionally reliant on factory jobs.

This led to a boom in green energy and semiconductors. But as it also made Americans richer, they imported more and it did not end trade deficits.

Trump’s two mandates took a more direct approach: taxing imported goods. The first term was haphazard, and tariff wars with China led to higher consumer prices while failing to deliver the political gains he expected.

But the second mandate has so far been much more organised, starting with “liberation day”, when he announced he would tax US imports in proportion to the bilateral trade deficit with each country.

Just like those of Obama and Biden, Trump’s strategy did not reduce the deficit – in fact it was higher in 2025 than in 2024. But it has so far been a major success in bullying traditional partners into submission with the threat of tariffs.

Perhaps the most consequential moment was the collective decision of members of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) to carve out a US exception to the global minimum tax on multinational companies. This international effort, intended to make the likes of Amazon and Apple pay a fair amount of tax, was designed to apply to the entire world, even without US approval.

The theoretical logic was flawless. If any country does not tax at least 15% of the profit located on its territory, other signatories can tax it instead. But America’s traditional economic partners in the OECD feared Trump enough to grant the US an exemption. It will be the only country allowed to practise tax competition.

As the US Supreme Court has now ruled most of Trump’s tariffs illegal, this may be a turning point in his second presidency.

Trump has not backed down from his claims, but may no longer be able to act on the stroke of a pen, and could be forced to tax all trading partners at a similar rate.

This is undoubtedly great news for countries like Canada, which chose not to bow down to threats, or China, which managed to bring Trump to the negotiating table by systematically retaliating against his threats.

In contrast, the European Union agreed to a deal allowing the US to tax EU imports but not the other way around. As the UK exports far fewer goods to the US than the EU does, it accepted a slightly preferential deal. But pledges to invest billions in the UK as part of the package were cancelled just days after they were announced.

The short-term benefits of signing those asymmetric deals were obvious – after all, no one wins a trade war and tariffs are mostly a tax on the consumers of the importing country. But the long-term reputational costs will be much harder to manage. In an increasingly multipolar and uncertain world, European nations have sent a clear message that they are easy to manipulate with a bit of projected strength.

Renaud Foucart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. The Supreme Court has curbed Trump’s ability to bully his allies. But tariffs were never going to end the US trade deficit – https://theconversation.com/the-supreme-court-has-curbed-trumps-ability-to-bully-his-allies-but-tariffs-were-never-going-to-end-the-us-trade-deficit-276781

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Philip Murphy, Director of History & Policy at the Institute of Historical Research and Professor of British and Commonwealth History, School of Advanced Study, University of London

The arrest of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor was, without a doubt, a shocking moment. The release by US officials of 3.5 million pages of documents regarding Mountbatten-Windsor’s longtime friend, the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, have led to multiple allegations of wrongdoing on the part of the eighth in line to the throne – which he denies.

But as an expert in British and Commonwealth history, I’m baffled by some of the headlines claiming that this moment is “the worst constitutional crisis” in the modern age.

In fact, the affair pales in significance beside the abdication crisis of 1936. The latter has tended to be portrayed in the media as a romantic saga of forbidden love – with the young Edward VIII being forced to choose between the crown and his desire to marry his soon-to-be twice divorced lover, Wallis Simpson.

Yet in retrospect, it more resembles a rather genteel coup, with raised eyebrows taking the place of tanks on the palace forecourt.

A set of key establishment figures, including the prime minister, the archbishop of Canterbury and the editor of the Times, effectively used the marriage crisis to lever from the throne a monarch whose morals and judgement they distrusted.

There might have been room for a compromise on the matter. Edward raised the possibility of a “morganatic marriage” with Wallis, under the terms of which any offspring would not be in line to the throne. Yet prime minister Stanley Baldwin, who kept negotiations over the king’s future tightly under his own personal control, would not hear of this.

The stakes were infinitely higher than in 2026. Britain was still a great global economic and military power, and its monarch was the figurehead of an empire of more than 500 million people. The British government was deeply concerned that the damage done to the monarchy’s prestige could weaken its own authority overseas.

Meanwhile, at home, the right to vote for all adults was still a relatively new experiment. A government still dominated by the rural and urban elites worried about how working-class voters would react to a scandal at the pinnacle of Britain’s social hierarchy. Luckily for them, the British press and the BBC maintained a wall of silence around the king’s relationship with Simpson until just days before the abdication. This ensured that the government’s narrative dominated the headlines.

Ejecting Edward from the throne brought about the accession of his brother, whose debilitating shyness made him ill-suited to a public role.

The abdication crisis had concrete constitutional repercussions. In its immediate wake, the government of the Irish Free State, which had been granted dominion status by the Anglo-Irish Treaty of 1921, passed two bills designed to weaken ties with London and the crown.

They removed all mention of the king and his representatives from the Irish constitution, while allowing the monarch a limited role in the country’s diplomatic relations. The following year, the taoiseach (as he then became), Éamon de Valera, introduced a new constitution under which southern Ireland effectively became a republic in all but name.

The abdication crisis signalled very publicly that the monarch was obliged to follow the will of the of the civil authorities, even in matters relating to his private life. Arguably, this played an important role in the evolution of the British constitutional monarchy, helping to ensure its survival into the 21st century.

Even the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, in 1997 certainly seemed at the time to present a more serious threat to the House of Windsor than the current scandal. In sharp contrast to the deferential restraint of the press in 1936, the media seemed determined to whip up public grief in ways that many observers found disturbing.

The mood of the moment found expression in hostility towards the members of the royal family, including Queen Elizabeth II herself, for their supposedly “unfeeling” response to the tragedy. Downing Street felt obliged to step in when the palace proved incapable of handling the public relations fallout of Diana’s death.

Is the monarchy under threat?

Recent polling has suggested that public confidence in the crown is at an all-time low. Yet although support for the outright abolition of the monarchy has grown in recent decades, it remains relatively low at only around 15%.

Furthermore, the crown is so deeply embedded in the British political system that no government – without a staggering amount of self confidence and a lot of time on its hands – is likely to embark on the task of extracting it.

By contrast, of course, it will be relatively simple to remove Mountbatten-Windsor from the line of succession in UK domestic legislation, although the British government will want to coordinate this with the other Commonwealth realms which could prove more complicated.

The royal family has time to redeem itself. And as Winston Churchill pointed out, it’s a mistake to ever let a good crisis go to waste.

Looking ahead to what may be a lengthy reign, Prince William, who has given strong hints that he is impatient with the status quo, has the perfect excuse when he accedes to the throne to sideline opponents of reform.

For a would-be reforming king, there’s plenty of low-hanging fruit. There’s the antiquated honours system with its embarrassing use of the label “empire”. There’s the headship of the now largely obsolete Commonwealth, with its own embarrassingly imperial connotations. And with less than half the population of England and Wales now describing themselves as Christian, renouncing the supreme governorship of the troubled Church of England seems long overdue.

Although the fate of a disgraced uncle may be relatively peripheral to all this, Mountbatten-Windsor is still a potent symbol of the dangers of business-as-usual. His fall might just be the crisis the royal family needs.

Philip Murphy has received funding from the AHRC.. He is a member of the European Movement UK.

– ref. Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor arrest: this isn’t even close to the worst constitutional crisis the monarchy has faced – https://theconversation.com/andrew-mountbatten-windsor-arrest-this-isnt-even-close-to-the-worst-constitutional-crisis-the-monarchy-has-faced-276552