Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Carolyn Heward, Senior lecturer, Clinical Psychology, James Cook University

Earlier this year, I published a paper on the ethics of researching military populations.

The core argument was straightforward: the standard rules researchers follow to protect participants – for example, informed consent and voluntary participation – don’t work the same in an institution built on hierarchy and obedience.

A soldier can, as protected by ethics, say no to participating in research. But when their commanding officer has nominated them, the practical reality of saying no is very different from the legal right to do so. My paper explored the tension between ethical rights and lived reality.

A couple of weeks ago I was asked to peer-review a manuscript submitted to a psychology journal on the same topic. It didn’t take long for me to become suspicious. As I read on, I came to realise the safeguards in place to protect research integrity are not keeping pace with the tools that can be used to circumvent them.

From factual errors to reproduced memos

Within the first couple of pages of the manuscript, I recognised my own work.

The manuscript had the same argument as mine, a similar structure and conceptual framework. Most alarmingly though, it contained my reflexive memos, reproduced and paraphrased as though they belonged to someone else.

Reflexive memos are a kind of research diary, in which a researcher documents their personal reflections on their own research: the dilemmas they faced, the decisions they made, the things they noticed that shaped their thinking. Reflexive memos aren’t drawn from the literature; you can’t find them in another paper and reference them. They come from the researcher’s own life.

Mine documented what is was like navigating a 24-month institutional approval process that became an ordeal of lost paperwork, shifting requirements and bureaucratic dead ends. They documented the concept of being “voluntold” – that is, watching defence personnel be put forward for supposedly voluntary training programs, and recognising the unspoken pressure that made refusal practically impossible.

In the memos, I also documented the tension I felt as a clinical psychologist between my professional obligations around confidentiality and the reporting requirements imposed on me as a researcher working within the defence organisation.

These were reproduced as if they had happened to someone else.

The manuscript also got something factually wrong. It reproduced a scenario from my fieldwork on an Australian Defence Force base, describing the force’s values displayed on flags on the main thoroughfare.

It substituted the value of “bravery” instead of the correct value, “courage” – a synonym, yes, but any researcher working in this field would spot that immediately.

A lucky catch

I can’t say with any certainty how the manuscript was produced. Nor am I sure of what happened to the manuscript after I raised my concerns.

What I can say is that the systematic paraphrasing throughout, the basic factual error, and the reference list padded with loosely relevant citations, is consistent with the use of AI.

The editor-in-chief of the journal, after confirming the plagiarism, reached the same conclusion.

The journal ran the manuscript through iThenticate, an industry-standard plagiarism software used by many major academic publishers. It returned an 8% similarity match, below the threshold that would normally prompt editorial concern. The 8% corresponded to my published article. The rest had been paraphrased thoroughly enough to look like original work.

The incentive structures of academic publishing, where the number of papers you publish affects your career progression and your institution’s rankings, create conditions where the temptation to cut corners is real.

The editor-in-chief noted that the humanities and social sciences have so far been relatively unaffected by fake science flooding scientific literature. He told me he hopes the social sciences and humanities will remain relatively spared from this phenomenon, but I suspect this may be changing.

The peer review system worked in this case. But only because the manuscript happened to be sent to the person whose work had been reproduced. That’s luck, not a safeguard.

Plagiarism tools are designed to find matching text. They’re not designed to ask whether the experiences reported in a piece of writing could plausibly belong to the person claiming them. That’s a question only a human reader with a genuine knowledge of the field can answer.

A deeper concern

But there was a deeper concern that really got to me.

When someone plagiarises a literature review, they steal intellectual ideas. When someone plagiarises a methods section, they steal intellectual labour.

But when someone reproduces a reflexive memo and presents it as their own, that isn’t about claiming someone else’s ideas; they’re claiming someone else’s experiences.

They’re essentially saying: “I was there, I felt this, this happened to me”. They were not there, they did not feel it, it did not happen to them.

I’ve spent more than a decade working as a clinical psychologist within defence mental health services. That clinical experience is what drew me to this research in the first place. The ethical tensions I documented in my article came from my work as a researcher, from real moments, my lived experiences.

Reading them reproduced in someone else’s name was a particular kind of violation that I’m not sure our existing language around plagiarism quite captures.

Carolyn Heward 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. Plagiarised research passed automated tests, and I detected it – but only because it copied my work – https://theconversation.com/plagiarised-research-passed-automated-tests-and-i-detected-it-but-only-because-it-copied-my-work-279553

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Donald Rothwell, Professor of International Law, Australian National University

The Strait of Hormuz crisis has reached a critical juncture. President Donald Trump has demanded Iran reopen the strait or the United States will further intensify its military assault.

While the strait has not been totally closed to shipping, it has been substantially disrupted and transits have effectively slowed to a trickle. The strait is economically and strategically unique due to the access it provides to the Persian Gulf from which there is no exit point. All shipping passes in and out a single waterway.

The key navigational choke point borders Iran to the north and Oman to the south. It’s only 29 nautical miles wide (53 kilometres) and consists of two-mile-wide (just over three kilometres) navigable channels for inbound and outbound shipping as well as a two-mile-wide buffer zone. This is all in Iranian waters.

In 2025 a total of 20 million barrels per day of crude oil and oil products were estimated to have been shipped through the strait. That’s 25% of the world’s seaborne oil trade to multiple markets in Europe, Asia, and Australia.

So what does the future look like for the Strait of Hormuz, and how might it be reopened? There are three legal, geopolitical and military scenarios.

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Read more:
Why hasn’t the US military used force to secure the Strait of Hormuz?

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1. There’s a ceasefire

A ceasefire could arise from an Iranian capitulation to Trump’s demands to reopen the strait, even on a temporary basis until a permanent ceasefire is reached.

This scenario would leave the strait predominantly in Iranian hands and while hostilities may have ended, there is every prospect that Iran may seek to impose ongoing tolls on any foreign shipping passing through.

Reports have emerged that tolls have been imposed on some ships to escape the strait in recent weeks. These could be viewed as a temporary wartime measure that Iran knew it could extract from desperate shipping companies.

The imposition of tolls on ships passing through an international strait such as Hormuz is prohibited under international law during peacetime, but Iran may give little weight to that constraint following weeks of American and Israeli bombardment.

There is every possibility that under whatever scenario emerges for the strait’s future, Iran will seek to keep in place an ongoing toll regime. The international shipping industry, who would initially bear the burden of paying any such tolls, would most likely reluctantly do so to keep their ships moving.

The cost of any such tolls would then have to be factored into the market resulting in inevitable price rises for all exports from the Gulf region.

This is the most likely scenario given the current diplomatic and military efforts to achieve an end to the conflict, but would depend on Iranian concessions over the future of its nuclear ambitions.

2. The US puts boots on the ground

The second possible scenario is that the US pivots from an air and missile campaign against Iran to a land-based operation involving American boots on the ground.

With a significant build-up of 5,000 additional US troops throughout the Gulf, making an estimated total of 50,000 scattered throughout the region, the US is clearly poised for such an assault.

There has been much speculation as to whether the US would first seize Kharg Island, which handles roughly 90% of Iran’s crude oil exports. The island could provide a launch pad for US ground and sea operations throughout the Gulf.

However, Kharg Island is not located in the Strait of Hormuz and does not offer an immediate military advantage to reopening the waterway. Any US reopening of the strait would eventually require significant naval assets to be deployed to initially secure the strait from all hostile threats, including mines, and then to be able to escort commercial shipping through the strait in both directions.

Recent comments from President Trump suggest he is not inclined to do this alone without the support of US allies. That support has not been forthcoming and in some instances has been directly rejected.

While capable of escalating its current campaign, even Trump may not want to gamble on the military and political risks it would entail. At present, it would appear unlikely the US would pursue this course of action.

3. End the war, but leave the strait closed

The third scenario is the US ends the war but safe passage through the strait is not secured.

There is clearly growing momentum for a coalition of like-minded countries to act to resolve this issue. On March 11 the United Nations Security Council adopted Resolution 2817 directly addressing safety and security of navigation in the Gulf and through the Strait of Hormuz.

A fresh resolution could be adopted authorising UN member states to take collective action to secure the strait. This would provide a clear legal basis for the strait to be cleared and for freedom of navigation to resume under escort from a UN-mandated naval coalition capable of defending itself from Iranian attacks.

The United Kingdom on April 2 coordinated discussions among partners and allies to explore options for how this could be achieved. Australia was part of those discussions.

The UK, Australia and other European and Asian powers such as China who may contribute to such a UN-mandated Hormuz mission will not wish to do so during a hot armed conflict. They will feel more comfortable acting once the US has withdrawn and hostilities between the main protagonists have ended.

This becomes the fall-back option if the current Iran/US impasse over the strait remains and Trump declares victory and withdraws US forces.

What is clear is that the pre-war status quo will not return in the Strait of Hormuz. If hostilities end and an ongoing peace settlement is reached, Iran will still have the capacity to control the strait. This is a reality of geography that the world will need to live with.

Donald Rothwell receives funding from Australian Research Council

– ref. How might the Strait of Hormuz be reopened? Here are 3 scenarios – https://theconversation.com/how-might-the-strait-of-hormuz-be-reopened-here-are-3-scenarios-279840

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Caroline Swee Lin Tan, Associate Professor in Fashion Entrepreneurship, RMIT University

In a high-end fashion store or luxury car showroom, the term “vegan leather” sends a strong message of quality. For many shoppers, it promises the look and feel of real leather without using animal skins. As brands move away from animal leather, “vegan” has come to suggest something that is both kinder to animals and better for the planet.

However, the reality is more complicated. While these materials remove animal products, they often replace one environmental problem with another. Vegan leather is not one material, but a broad label that covers everything from plastic coatings to plant-based surfaces, which is why regulators are starting to question vague green claims.

The appeal of leather alternatives is easy to understand. Concerns about animal welfare, climate change and deforestation have pushed shoppers and brands towards options that seem more responsible.

As a result, “vegan leather” is often seen as the better choice – even though how long it lasts, and where it ends up, is rarely questioned.

The rise of synthetic hide

For decades, these materials were known as “pleather” or vinyl. Today, better finishes have turned thin plastic films into convincing leather lookalikes.

Most vegan leathers consist of polyurethane (PU) or polyvinyl chloride (PVC) coatings bonded to fabric backings. They are waterproof and easy to emboss, but they are also petroleum-derived plastics.

When the surface of a PU‑coated bag cracks or peels, the damage is more than cosmetic. As the coating breaks down, it sheds microplastics into the environment.

The plastic underneath the plants

In response to concerns about plastic, new fake leather materials have been developed from pineapples, mushrooms, apples, grapes and even cacti. These bio-based options are often sold as the sustainable answer.

However, using a plant does not automatically make a product better for the environment.

The issue lies in how these materials are made. A “pineapple leather” shoe may be praised for its plant fibres, but those fibres are usually held together with plastic resins to make the material durable.

The result is a mixed material that cannot be recycled in Australia, even though marketing often focuses on the plant ingredient and hides the plastic underneath.

Plant leather doesn’t last long

A key challenge with many vegan leather alternatives is strength. Raw plant fibres are too weak to handle the repeated wear and pressure faced by shoes, bags and car seats. To improve performance, manufacturers layer plant materials onto plastic binders or polyester backings.

Even then, many of these materials break down sooner than real leather and cannot be properly repaired. Traditional leather can be conditioned, patched and allowed to age over time, but plant-based alternatives tend to fail once the surface coating cracks or peels.

A mushroom- or apple-based bag also cannot be composted because of the plastic beneath its surface, meaning it reaches disposal much sooner. Some plant-based vegan leather products have reported lifespans of as little as two years.

This points to a broader issue. In a circular economy that prioritises reuse, repair and material recovery, sustainability is about keeping products in use and at their highest value for as long as possible.

Brands must walk the talk

The problems hidden by elusive marketing labels are becoming harder to ignore. The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) has made it clear broad labels such as “sustainable” or “eco-friendly” must be backed up with evidence.

If brands use the word “vegan” to suggest lower environmental impact, they must be able to prove that claim by looking at the product’s full life cycle.

At the same time, the Productivity Commission’s 2026 inquiry into the circular economy highlights Australia’s growing problem with products that cannot be recycled. As product stewardship schemes expand, durability, recyclability and what happens to a product at the end of its life will matter as much as animal welfare.

The ethical distinction

None of this means animal leather comes without environmental or chemical costs. These include methane emissions from livestock and the toxic chemicals used in tanning. For many consumers, avoiding animal-derived materials is still an important ethical choice.

However, “vegan” and “sustainable” are not the same thing. One describes what has been left out of a product, while the other describes how that product performs over its entire life. Treating the two as interchangeable can replace meaningful progress with reassuring labels.

The takeaway is a call for material honesty. Sustainability can’t be reduced to a single word or ingredient. It’s measured by how long a product stays useful before it needs to be thrown away. A bag that avoids animal materials but breaks down within a few years simply creates waste sooner.

If vegan alternatives are going to be sustainable, they must be designed to last. Sustainability is measured in years of use, not words on a tag.

Saniyat Islam is affiliated with The Textile Institute.

Caroline Swee Lin Tan 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. ‘Vegan leather’ isn’t as sustainable or eco‑friendly as brands might claim – https://theconversation.com/vegan-leather-isnt-as-sustainable-or-eco-friendly-as-brands-might-claim-278548

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Celia Harris, Associate Professor in Cognitive Science, Western Sydney University

Whether it’s riding a bike or knitting a sweater, there are some tasks you do without thinking.

These are commonly associated with “muscle memory”, the idea your body can remember how to perform complex tasks and, over time, learn to do them automatically.

But do your muscles actually have a memory? And what role does your brain play?

Let’s unpack the science.

What is ‘muscle memory’?

In popular culture, we usually associate “muscle memory” with tasks we do, or skills we learn, without much conscious thought. This could include riding a bike, playing a musical instrument or even tying your shoelaces.

However, cognitive scientists call this type of memory “procedural memory” rather than “muscle memory”. And while it doesn’t always feel like it, procedural memory involves our brain as well as our muscles.

The term “muscle memory” may also be used in a more literal sense to describe how muscles seem to get stronger or bigger if they have been trained before. Research supports this idea, suggesting prior training can speed up muscle growth. It may do this by changing how muscle cells function or are structured. However, scientists still don’t know exactly how this all works. In any case, it seems these changes do not allow muscles to “store” memories or information in the same way as the brain.

How does procedural memory work?

Scientists describe procedural memory as a kind of “non-declarative memory”, meaning it’s memory based on actions, rather than words. This means it can be difficult to share skills you might’ve learnt through procedural memory.

For example, imagine you’re teaching a child to ride a bike. If you hop on the bike yourself, it’s easy to perform all the correct steps (holding the handlebars, mounting the bike, pushing the pedals) at the right times. But it’s much harder to describe that process to another person, especially if you only use words.

Research suggests repetition is the best and fastest way to improve your procedural memory. When we learn a new skill, it initially takes a lot of effort. This is because you need to actively control every action to make sure you’re doing things in the right way and order.

Over time, these skills can become so automatic you barely think while doing them. For example, you might drive home without remembering which route you took. That’s because you’re performing a series of actions you’ve done hundreds of times before.

Maintaining your procedural memory requires multiple parts of your brain to work together. This is because we use different neural processes as we shift from actively learning a skill to acting more automatically.

When you learn something new, you’re largely using the pre-frontal and fronto-parietal regions of the brain. These are associated with attention, memory and deliberate, effortful thinking.

When you start repeating and practising a skill, you instead rely on sensorimotor circuits. These process the sensory information you receive from the outside world, and help your brain determine the best physical response. In this way, these circuits allow you to do complex tasks with less conscious effort.

What’s the impact of conditions such as dementia?

What’s fascinating about procedural memory is it’s largely unaffected by cognitive decline.

For people with dementia or other kinds of cognitive impairment, the hardest tasks are generally those that require conscious effort. However, they often retain more automatic skills that they’ve developed over a lifetime. This is why you may meet people with dementia who can still knit or dance a tango, despite having trouble remembering their loved ones’ names.

Research suggests music taps into procedural memory in an especially powerful way. One Canadian study found people with Alzheimer’s dementia, an irreversible brain condition which affects memory, cognition and behaviour, recognised words better when they were sung as opposed to spoken.

Procedural memory may also help people with cognitive conditions learn new skills, as well as retain old ones. In one Australian study, researchers wanted to know if a person with severe Alzheimer’s dementia could learn a new song. They found that a 91-year-old woman with severe Alzheimer’s, who’d never been a musician, was able to learn a brand-new song. While she couldn’t remember the words during a memory test, she could sing the song again two weeks later.

Can I improve my procedural memory?

Unfortunately, there’s no quick and easy way to strengthen your procedural memory.

To begin, you have to push through the initial phase of learning a new skill, which often requires significant effort and attention. This is where practice comes in. Practising a new skill will help your brain depend less on its attention-focused frontal regions, and rely more on those responsible for motor functions.

To make your practice as effective as possible, it may be worth spacing it out over multiple sessions. This forces you to deliberately bring a memory back to mind and actively reconstruct it, even after you’ve stopped thinking about it. As a result, you’ll become better at forming and retaining long-term memories. Sleeping after each practice session may also help. Research suggests this is because sleep helps you remember and retain new skills.

While improving procedural memory takes time and effort, it’s well worth it. Any new skills you learn will enrich your life. And even if your cognitive health declines, the skills you practice over a lifetime can keep you connected to the people and memories you value.

Celia Harris receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Longitude Prize on Dementia. She is also a founder, director, and shareholder in Memory Aid Pty Ltd.

Justin Christensen 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. What is ‘muscle memory’ and can I improve mine? – https://theconversation.com/what-is-muscle-memory-and-can-i-improve-mine-277471

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Konstantine Panegyres, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History, The University of Western Australia

If you’re feeling fed up with the way things are in the world, then, no matter your politics, you are experiencing an emotion people have felt for millennia.

Perhaps you feel helpless. Maybe you feel like the character in the Roman dramatist Terence’s play The Brothers (160 BCE), who exclaims:

we’re enclosed by so many things from which there’s no escape: violence, poverty, injustice, loneliness, disgrace. What an age we live in!

What can you do? As we will see, ancient people had different ideas about how to act.

One popular option was to retreat – or try to retreat – from the world, renouncing involvement and avoiding society. A less common option was to try to sort things out in the world by yourself, as one person facing all its woes.

Heraclitus’ escape

Heraclitus of Ephesus (c.540-480 BCE) is one of the most prominent Greek philosophers known for becoming disillusioned with worldly affairs.

His main gripe was with politics. He disliked the insolence and stupidity of politicians and the laws they created. He was also tired of the foolishness of the people, who didn’t defend their laws and constitutions: “the people,” he said, “must fight for the law as for city-walls”.

When his friend Hermodorus was banished from Ephesus, Heraclitus condemned the city for elevating foolish men and destroying good men. As the historian Diogenes Laertius informs us, Heraclitus told the leaders of Ephesus that they were so worthless they should kill themselves:

The Ephesians would do well to end their lives, every grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless boys, for that they have driven out Hermodorus, the worthiest man among them, saying, “We will have none who is worthiest among us; or if there be any such, let him go elsewhere and consort with others.”

When the people of Ephesus asked why an intelligent man like Heraclitus ignored politics and preferred instead to play games of knuckle-bones with children, he apparently said civil life was no longer worth an intelligent man’s time:

Are you astonished? Is it not better to do this than to take part in your civil life?

Eventually, Heraclitus couldn’t bear it any more. As Diogenes Laertius continues the story, Heraclitus “became a hater of his kind”. He took to wandering in the mountains, living on grass and herbs, but “when this gave him dropsy, he made his way back to the city and put this riddle to the physicians, whether they were competent to create a drought after heavy rain”. He then tried to cure himself by repairing to a cowshed and burying himself in manure.

Living his life in the mountains away from society, Heraclitus’ health quickly deteriorated. He died soon after at the age of 60.

Sertorius’ dream of escape

Quintus Sertorius (123-72 BCE) was a Roman statesman who distinguished himself by his rhetorical skill and his military victories as a commander against tribes in Gaul.

During the political unrest in Rome in the 90s BCE, Sertorius was sent to command the empire’s Spanish provinces. While there, he became an enemy of the ruling faction at Rome and effectively established his own independent rule of Spain for eight years.

Sertorius’ enemies at Rome sent armies to Spain to defeat him, but were unsuccessful in dislodging him. Sertorius set up his own senate of 300 members. This included a mix of Romans and members of Spanish tribes. He consolidated his popularity by appealing to local superstitions – he went everywhere accompanied by a white fawn, a symbol of divine power.

After years of threats and toil, Sertorius became sick of it all. According to the Greek historian Plutarch (c.46-119 CE), Sertorius met some sailors “who had recently come back from the Atlantic Islands”. The sailors spoke of a land off the coast of Africa with a warm climate and plentiful food and water. Most importantly, it was far away from all the political and military turmoil.

Plutarch tells us that the words of the sailors made an impression:

When Sertorius heard this tale, he was seized with an amazing desire to dwell in the islands and live in quiet, freed from tyranny and wars that would never end.

Nobody today knows for sure what islands these sailors were referring to. Some possibilities are Madeira, Porto Santo or the Canary Islands.

Unfortunately for Sertorius, he never found his “escape”. He endured many more years of political and social strife, until he was murdered by conspirators in 72 BCE.

Can happiness come from disengagement?

Many people living in ancient Greece and Rome appear to have recognised that happiness can come from removing oneself from worldly affairs. The Greek philosopher Epicurus (c.341-270 BCE) advised people to seek obscurity and avoid the world. His famous saying is two words: “live unknown”.

Some disagreed, of course. Plutarch, for example, thought Epicurus’ idea was a mark of defeat and a waste of the potential of living:

he who casts himself into the unknown state and wraps himself in darkness and buries his life in an empty tomb would appear to be aggrieved at his very birth and to renounce the effort of being.

Others, however, seemed to favour the idea that disappearing into a a quiet and hidden life, ignorant of the world’s affairs, could bring happiness. The Roman poet Horace (65-8 BCE), for example, wrote:

Happy the man who, far from business concerns, works his ancestral acres with his oxen like the men of old, free from every kind of debt; he is not wakened, like a soldier, by the harsh bray of the bugle, and has no fear of the angry sea; he avoids both the city centre and the lofty doorways of powerful citizens.

For Horace, someone who is happy is far from cities and armies, living simply on his ancestral farm with animals and loved ones – with no debt.

Taking matters into your own hands

Some, of course, don’t want to retreat from things. They want to solve problems and make the world around them better. But how can you do this if you’re just an ordinary person?

The Athenian playwright Aristophanes (450-388 BCE) had a comical, tongue-in-cheek solution. In his play Acharnians, first performed in 425 BCE, he depicts a man called Dicaeopolis who is fed up with politics.

Dicaeopolis is not only tired of politicians lying and starting endless wars; he is also tired of people voting selfishly for handouts and for harmful policies. The people, he says, “can be bought and sold”.

So Dicaeopolis comes up with a personal solution. He will “make a treaty with the Spartans for me alone and my children and the missus” so his family can live in peace.

His efforts are a triumph. He successfully negotiates the treaty and lives freely, enjoying privileges other citizens cannot, like farming, trading with other states and drinking.

The play is not meant to be taken seriously – it is a comedy, after all, and no private individual would really be able to negotiate a treaty with another city. But its plot reveals something about the political frustration ordinary citizens can often feel.

So what can you do if you are fed up with politics?

Two thousand years later, the options haven’t improved much. The ancient advice is clear: you can withdraw, endure, or laugh. Preferably the last option. It seems to have the best survival rate.

Konstantine Panegyres 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. Despairing at the state of the world? The ancient Greeks and Romans knew the feeling – https://theconversation.com/despairing-at-the-state-of-the-world-the-ancient-greeks-and-romans-knew-the-feeling-279566

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Alexander Howard, Senior Lecturer, Discipline of English and Writing, University of Sydney

Nighttime. A dim and dingy car park. Woefully inadequate fluorescent lights flicker and buzz overhead. Two men stand in half-shadow. One is barely visible, his face almost entirely swallowed by darkness. His voice is low and gravelly:

The list is longer than anyone can imagine. It involves the entire US intelligence community. FBI, CIA, Justice. It’s incredible. The cover-up had little to do with Watergate. It was mainly to protect the covert operations. It leads everywhere. Get out your notebook. There’s more.

The other man is lost for words. He just stands there, mouth slightly open and eyes wide, trying to make sense of what he’s hearing. The exchange ends with a warning: his life, along with that of his colleague, in is grave and immediate danger.

This is a pivotal moment in Alan J. Pakula’s All the President’s Men, which has just turned 50. The film was based on the 1974 book by journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, who investigated the Watergate scandal for the Washington Post.

The man doing the talking in the scene I’ve been describing is Mark Felt (Hal Holbrook), then associate director of the FBI, better known as “Deep Throat”. His interlocutor, temporarily stunned into silence, is Woodward (Robert Redford).

A masterpiece of political cinema, All The President’s Men remains one of the finest films about investigative journalism ever made.

Steeped in a fog of paranoia and distrust – an atmosphere shaped in no small part by cinematographer Gordon Willis’ matchless treatment of light and shade – it is as relevant now as it was on first release.

Uncovering the Watergate scandal

“At its simplest,” journalist Garrett M. Graff writes about the scandal,

Watergate is the story of two separate criminal conspiracies: the Nixon world’s ‘dirty tricks’ that led to the burglary on June 17 1972, and the subsequent wider cover-up. The first conspiracy was deliberate, a sloppy and shambolic but nonetheless developed plan to subvert the 1972 election; the second was reactive, almost instinctive – it seems to have happened simply because no one said no.

What started out as an ostensibly ordinary break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, DC during the US presidential election cycle soon revealed a broader pattern of political espionage, illegal surveillance, campaign sabotage and the systematic misuse of state power. Much of it targeted perceived political enemies.

As the indefatigable Woodward and Bernstein pursued the story, it became clear the burglary was part of a much larger operation – one that reached all the way into the heart of the White House.

Their probing would ultimately lead to the disgrace and resignation of Richard Nixon, who faced near-certain impeachment.

Figuring out the puzzle

Redford was the driving force behind All the President’s Men.

He became interested in the Watergate story while working on The Candidate, a 1972 satire about the backstage machinations underpinning an idealistic Senate campaign that, in an instance of uncanny timing, overlapped with the unfolding scandal.

Redford followed Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation as it panned out in real time. In 1972, he reached out to Woodward directly, hoping to better understand both the facts of the case and the methods of the reporting.

Convinced that the story demanded a restrained, quasi-documentary approach, Redford initially envisioned a black-and-white film shot in a pared-back style, with an emphasis on process rather than star power.

Warner Bros, with whom he had a production deal, thought otherwise. Having already agreed to finance the film, the studio insisted that Redford take a leading role – and marketed the as yet-unmade project as “the most devastating detective story” of the century.

There were early discussions about casting Al Pacino as Bernstein, fresh from the success of The Godfather (1972), but the part ultimately went to Dustin Hoffman. Pakula then signed on to direct, bringing with him a conceptual and tonal sensibility ideally suited to the material.

A quandary remained: how do you build suspense out of a story who outcome is already common knowledge? Film scholars Robert B. Ray and Christian Keathley suggest the filmmaking team’s response to that challenge is “the key” which unlocks the movie.

At one point, during his first meeting with Deep Throat, Woordward admits:

The story is dry. All we’ve got are pieces. We can’t seem to figure out what the puzzle is supposed to look like.

We share the confusion of the reporters as they struggle to get to the bottom of things. What might, in the wrong hands, have been a disastrous mistake turned out to be a masterstroke.

The result is an endlessly watchable and quotable (“Follow the money”) film that generates narrative and dramatic tension through the sheer difficultly of knowing anything at all.

In age beset by disinformation, brazen political deceit, strategic obfuscation and collapsing trust in public institutions, that lesson feels less historically distant than it does disturbingly prescient.

Alexander Howard 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. All The President’s Men at 50: one of the finest films about investigative journalism ever made – https://theconversation.com/all-the-presidents-men-at-50-one-of-the-finest-films-about-investigative-journalism-ever-made-279451

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Garritt C. Van Dyk, Senior Lecturer in History, University of Waikato

Christopher Columbus is back. At least, a statue of him is back, reinstalled by US President Donald Trump on the White House grounds in late March – part of the president’s stated mission to cancel “cancel culture”.

The resurrection of Columbus made good on Trump’s 2025 executive order, “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History”.

The statue is in fact a replica of the original thrown into Baltimore Harbor by protesters on Independence Day 2020 during the Black Lives Matter upheavals of the first Trump presidency.

The protests targeted monuments “honoring white supremacists, owners of enslaved people, perpetrators of genocide, and colonizers”. But damaged pieces of the Columbus statue were later salvaged and became a model for the copy.

Trump has since championed Columbus as “the original American hero, a giant of Western civilization, and one of the most gallant and visionary men to ever walk the face of the earth”.

He might have chosen any statue of the explorer and navigator from Genoa who pioneered European colonisation of the Americas. But clearly reinstating one removed by his opponents sends a more powerful message.

‘Improper partisan ideology’

Restoring statues to their original location isn’t simply about undoing their previous removal. It’s designed to reverse what some see as attempts to “erase history”.

And it has a long history of its own. Roman emperors once feared being condemned to obscurity through “damnatio memoriae” – having their statues destroyed, coins melted down and names chiselled from the facades of buildings.

Trump’s executive order was very much about retaliating against those who want to “perpetuate a false reconstruction of American history, inappropriately minimize the value of certain historical events or figures, or include any other improper partisan ideology”.

Relocating a memorial to a more prominent location – from Baltimore to the White House, for instance – goes one step further. It amplifies the significance of the historical figure and the symbolic restoration of their reputation.

But sometimes just restoring a statue to its original site is symbolism enough.

The memorial to Albert Pike, for example, was and is the only outdoor statue of a Confederate general in Washington DC. Pulled down by protesters in 2020 and returned in 2025, its merits have long been debated.

Pike was a disgraced figure, accused of misappropriating funds and allowing his troops to desecrate the bodies of Union soldiers. There are also alleged ties to an early version of the Ku Klux Klan.

In the words of congressional delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, “Pike represents the worst of the Confederacy and has no claim to be memorialized in the Nation’s capital.”

Advocates for the statue’s retention note there is no mention of the Confederacy or depiction of a military uniform, only Pike’s contribution to the American Freemasons.

But when the statue was pulled down in 2020, Trump certainly took sides: “The DC police are not doing their job as they watched a statue be ripped down and burn. These people should be immediately arrested. A disgrace to our country.”

‘Woke lemmings’

Of course, history isn’t always simple, as memorialising the American Civil War shows.

Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia was established in 1864 as a national military cemetery, with a Confederate section dedicated in 1900 as part of the effort to promote reconciliation between the North and South.

Its Confederate Memorial (designed by a Confederate veteran) features a female figure representing the South holding symbols of peace. A bronze relief below depicts sanitised images of slavery: a woman caring for white children, and a man following his owner into battle as his servant.

A biblical quotation below preaches peace: “They have beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

But another quote in Latin – “Victrix causa diis placuit sed victa Caton” – references Julius Caesar’s victory in the Roman civil war and casts the South’s defeat as a noble lost cause.

The monument was erected in 1914, removed by Congress in 2023, and is scheduled to return in 2027. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed on social media it “never should have been taken down by woke lemmings. Unlike the Left, we don’t believe in erasing American history – we honor it.”

Defiant choices

Similarly, an equestrian statue of Founding Father Caesar Rodney – installed in Wilmington, Delaware, in 1923 and removed in 2020 to prevent damage by protesters – highlights these contested readings of history.

Rodney is famous for riding all night from Delaware to Philadelphia, through a thunderstorm, to break a deadlock and cast the deciding vote in favour of American independence in 1776.

But as well as being a brigadier general and signatory to the Declaration of Independence, he owned 200 slaves on his family’s plantation.

The statue is now scheduled to reappear for six months, this time in Washington DC, to celebrate America’s 250th anniversary on July 4. It will be installed in Freedom Plaza, named in honour of Martin Luther King Junior.

Placing the contested statue of a famous slave owner in a space dedicated to a Black civil rights leader is a provocative, if not defiant, choice. And it shows again how powerful symbols and symbolic actions can be.

The argument that removing statues also erases history doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. It conflates public visibility and symbolic placement with actual knowledge of the past.

In that sense, reinstalling controversial memorials is, in itself, an attempt to rewrite history by erasing a more recent past and returning to an old, disputed status quo.

Garritt C. Van Dyk has received funding from the Getty Research Institute.

– ref. Trump welcomes Columbus to the White House – and reignites America’s history wars – https://theconversation.com/trump-welcomes-columbus-to-the-white-house-and-reignites-americas-history-wars-279746

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Scott Lucas, Professor of International Politics, Clinton Institute, University College Dublin

On February 28, the US and Israel launched a war against Iran following weeks of US military build-up in the region and threats from US President Donald Trump.

In the ensuing weeks, Iran has retaliated by striking US assets in the Persian Gulf states and targets across Israel. Israel has launched a ground invasion into southern Lebanon in response to attacks from Hezbollah.

Oil and gas shipments through the Strait of Hormuz have come to a virtual standstill, threatening a global energy crisis. And thousands have been killed, most in Iran and Lebanon.

The entire Middle East has been affected by this war – and the region will no doubt be very different once it’s resolved.

We asked five experts in international politics and Middle East studies to explain the most important changes they see happening following the war.

The academic experts who shared their analysis of this topic are:

Scott Lucas
Professor of International Politics, Clinton Institute, University College Dublin. He joined University College Dublin in 2022 as Professor of International Politics, having been on the staff of the University of Birmingham since 1989. He began his career as a specialist in US and British foreign policy, but his research interests now also cover current international affairs – especially North Africa, the Middle East, and Iran – New Media, and Intelligence Services.

Andrew Thomas
Lecturer in Middle East Studies, Deakin University. He teaches units on International Relations, Middle East conflict and global governance. His book “Iran and the West: a non-Western approach to foreign policy” (2024) explores how non-Western perspectives on the Middle East and beyond can improve our understanding of intractible conflict.

Chris Ogden
Associate Professor in Global Studies, University of Auckland, Waipapa Taumata Rau. He specialises in the interplay between identity, culture, security and domestic politics in India, China, South Asia, East Asia and the Indo-Pacific. His latest book is “The Authoritarian Century: China’s Rise and the Demise of the Liberal International Order” (Bristol University Press, 2022).

Jessica Genauer
Academic Director, Public Policy Institute, UNSW Sydney. She is an expert in international conflict and provide regular analysis for national and international outlets on war and conflict. Her research interests include conflict, threat perceptions, and post-conflict institution-building with a focus on the Middle East as well as Russia / Ukraine and the US.

Kristian Coates Ulrichsen
Fellow for the Middle East at the Baker Institute, Rice University. His research examines the changing position of Persian Gulf states in the global order, as well as the emergence of longer-term, nonmilitary challenges to regional security. Previously, he worked as senior Gulf analyst at the Gulf Center for Strategic Studies and as co-director of the Kuwait Program on Development, Governance and Globalization in the Gulf States at the London School of Economics.

Chris Ogden is a senior research fellow with the Foreign Policy Centre, London.

Andrew Thomas, Jessica Genauer, Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, and Scott Lucas do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. How will the Iran war change the Middle East? We asked 5 experts – https://theconversation.com/how-will-the-iran-war-change-the-middle-east-we-asked-5-experts-279652

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ibrahim Al-Marashi, Adjunct Professor, IE School of Humanities, IE University; California State University San Marcos

The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has long exerted a strong, often underestimated power in the Middle East. With around 190,000 members, plus an estimated 450,000 reserves in the Basij paramilitary, the largest component of Iran’s Armed Forces also controls much of the country’s politics, intelligence and economy.

After an Israeli airstrike assassinated the Islamic Republic’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on February 28, US President Donald Trump called on the IRGC to lay down its arms in exchange for immunity. IRGC forces refused the offer, and with many more of its leaders killed over the last month, it shows no sign of giving up.

As US ground forces deploy to the Middle East, it is imperative to understand that – despite a month of widespread US-Israeli bombing, damaged infrastructure, internal fractures and decimated leadership – the IRGC will likely resist any invasion of Iranian territory with tenacity. Its history demonstrates why.

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Leer más:
Trump underestimated Iran’s resilience. Now there is only one way out of the war

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From militia to frontline force

The IRGC originally emerged in the 1979 revolution from the ad hoc street militias made up of students loyal to Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s vision of an Islamic Republic. It was opposed to the factions that sought to create a secular republic after the overthrow of the monarchy, and sought to be a national guard to protect the nascent Islamic revolutionary government.

Also known as the Pasdaran-e Enghelab, “Guardians of the Revolution”, it soon evolved into a praetorian guard for the country’s supreme leader.

In the force’s earliest days it prevented a counter-revolution by the Artesh, the standing military under the Shah. The IRGC also fought street battles with rival revolutionary forces, including secular leftists and rival Islamist militias.

With Iraq’s invasion of Iran in 1980, the IRGC emerged as a frontline conventional combat force in tandem with the national military. They repelled Saddam Hussein’s attack by 1982, though the war continued for another 6 years. Many current IRGC commanders were young soldiers or officers at the time, and experienced firsthand how Iraq deployed chemical weapons against them while the West remained silent.

The IRGC also became a counter-insurgency force when Saddam Hussein supported Iran Kurdish rebels in 1980. It has suppressed various internal ethnic rebellions, ranging from a Kurdish revolt in the northwest that began in the 1980s to a Baloch insurgency in the southeast in the 2000s.

Trump’s recent attempts to foment Kurdish revolts will therefore likely meet with profound wrath from IRGC commanders, who have been fighting these ethnic rebel groups for decades.

Lessons from proxies

Through its regional proxies, the IRGC already has extensive experience of protracted wars of attrition against the US and Israel.

In 1982, the IRGC created a foreign expeditionary force, known as the Quds Force. Named after the Arabic for Jerusalem, the Quds supported the creation of Hezbollah in Lebanon in response to Israel’s invasion in that year to expel the Palestine Liberation Organization.

From that point onward, the IRGC was able to confront Israel via its proxy forces. Over 18 years, Hezbollah used tactics such as suicide car bombs to wear down occupying Israeli forces, who withdrew from southern Lebanon in 2000. The operation was widely seen as a military failure for Israel.

These tactics were repeated after the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, when Quds-backed proxy Shi’a militias, such as Kataib Hezbollah, targeted the US military deployed there with improvised explosive devices. The US withdrew from Iraq in 2011, desperate to extricate itself from a “forever war”.

The Quds’ proxies in Lebanon and Iraq provided lessons that the IRGC will surely seek to replicate in the event of a US invasion.

Many of these tactics were designed to wear down an occupying force, and will not be enough to thwart an immediate, high-intensity ground invasion. But if the US fails to achieve its (currently unclear) goals, it could find itself in yet another prolonged occupation and low-intensity war. If it does, the IRGC’s well-honed attrition tactics will be deployed extensively.

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Leer más:
How active have Iran’s proxy groups been since the start of the war?

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Iran, the US and the “Axis of Evil”

After decades of bilateral tensions, the 9/11 attacks in 2001 forced the US and Iran into a brief alliance against the Taliban in Afghanistan. Iran’s regime even reached out to the US in late 2001, offering help to fallen pilots who landed on Iranian soil while combating their mutual enemy.

But in January 2002, George W Bush placed Iran alongside Iraq and North Korea in the now-infamous “Axis of Evil”, making them a target in the US’ War on Terror. For Iran, this marked a abrupt shift in public perceptions of the US.

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Leer más:
Decades of hostility between Iran and the US were preceded by a little-remembered century-long friendship

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The reformist president Mohammad Khatami’s efforts at rapprochement ended. Three years later, the regime supported the rise of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a hardliner who, along with the Supreme Leader, invested in both the expansion of the nuclear program and the IRGC. The IRGC has since evolved to assume multiple security functions in the Islamic Republic.

The only subsequent period of detente between the IRGC and the US was when the Quds Force fought against the Islamic State in 2014 in Iraq, in tandem with US air support. This cooperation occurred during the Obama administration, and a year later, the US entered a nuclear deal with Iran, from which Trump withdrew just two years later in 2017.

When IRGC bases were hit by ISIS terrorist strikes in early February 2019, it therefore viewed the attacks as the result of covert US actions. It blamed the US and Israel, in addition to a rise in Balochi and Kurdish subversion.

In the IRGC’s narrative, the Trump administration’s current war is part of a systemic American effort since the 1980s to attack the IRGC through proxies or economic warfare in order to weaken the Islamic Republic. For them, this is a conflict that has endured since the Iranian Revolution in 1979.

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Leer más:
Iran and the US have been at war for decades – and there’s no end in sight

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Protecting power

The IRGC has been, without a doubt, weakened by the past month of US-Israeli aerial attacks. But its history demonstrates its pattern of officers who have a sense of a distinct corporate identity, and who will defend their institutional power even if their leadership is killed.

This explains why, after Khamenei’s death, the IRGC rallied behind his son Mojtaba to keep its power intact. While some Iranians celebrated and others mourned Khamenei’s death, the IRGC presented a united front in backing his regime. If Iran’s political system fell apart, the IRGC’s in-group status would be lost.

The IRGC has also evolved to operate as a business network. With holdings in the service sector, ranging from media to construction, it controls at least 20% percent of the economy. Given how some IRGC leaders have benefited from corrupt practices in managing these networks, they would fear being held accountable and tried by a new political order, and will not countenance the idea of surrender.

What this network of privilege represents is, ultimately, a deep state. The IRGC is not just an army, but a separate, autonomous and vast military institution, one that has managed to retain its power after Khamenei’s assassination. If the events of history – and of the conflict thus far – are anything to go by, it will fight to the bitter end rather than capitulate.

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Ibrahim Al-Marashi no recibe salario, ni ejerce labores de consultoría, ni posee acciones, ni recibe financiación de ninguna compañía u organización que pueda obtener beneficio de este artículo, y ha declarado carecer de vínculos relevantes más allá del cargo académico citado.

– ref. Iran’s Revolutionary Guard would fiercely resist a US ground invasion. History proves it – https://theconversation.com/irans-revolutionary-guard-would-fiercely-resist-a-us-ground-invasion-history-proves-it-279796

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Jasmin Lilian Diab, Assistant Professor of Migration Studies; Director of the Institute for Migration Studies, Lebanese American University

Lebanon was meant to be preparing for key parliamentary elections in May 2026. Then came the return of war.

Two days after the U.S. and Israel launched their military operation in Iran on Feb. 28, Hezbollah and Israel resumed their own full-scale hostilities. That marked the final collapse of a much-violated ceasefire that for a little over a year had barely kept a lid on fighting. With Israel’s full-scale bombardment of the country and invasion of southern Lebanon again underway, the Lebanese parliament on March 9 postponed scheduled elections by extending its own mandate by two years.

Its justification was a now familiar one: war, instability and a security situation deemed incompatible with democratic process. As conflict escalates across the region and further destabilizes Lebanon with the possibility of long-term Israeli occupation, officials insist that elections are simply not feasible.

But this is not the first time Lebanese elections have been postponed.

Since 2013, the Lebanese government has delayed parliamentary elections multiple times, citing among other factors the war in neighboring Syria, political deadlock and disputes over electoral law. Each delay has been framed as temporary, necessary and exceptional. Yet taken together, they reveal a pattern: Elections in Lebanon seem to be always approaching – and continually postponed.

This is not simply a story of crisis interrupting democracy. It is a story of how crisis is used to govern it.

Crisis as justification and opportunity

There is little question that the latest postponement of elections comes amid trying conditions – airstrikes, displacement and mounting insecurity – that make the logistics of an election extremely difficult.

Indeed, on its face the parliament’s decision appears pragmatic. Elections require mobility, stability and functioning institutions, all of which are currently under strain.

But arguments for postponement obscure an important reality: Political crises in Lebanon have contributed to a self-fulfilling logic that protects the political status quo.

The extension of parliament’s term was announced by Speaker Nabih Berri, a central figure in the country’s political order since Lebanon’s civil war ended in 1990. That order has long been defined by power-sharing among entrenched elites, as well as a system widely criticized for enabling corruption, patronage and institutional paralysis.

The current system was formalized in the Taif Agreement, which formally ended Lebanon’s devastating 15-year civil war. The accord distributed power along sectarian lines, with key state positions allocated to religious communities. While intended to ensure representation, it instead entrenched elite bargaining and veto power, making consensus both necessary and perpetually elusive.

Over time, this has produced a political system defined less by governance than by managed deadlock – where institutional paralysis is not incidental but built into the system itself. This fragility is compounded by the interplay of domestic and external forces, including the significant political and military role of Hezbollah. Emerging out of the Lebanese civil war and the broader context of Israeli occupation in the 1980s, Hezbollah developed as an armed resistance movement and later consolidated its position as both a political actor and a military force operating alongside the state, complicating the already tenuous balance of power.

This fragility is further reflected in repeated institutional deadlock, including prolonged presidential vacuums like between 2014 and 2016. Then, Hezbollah and its allies blocked consensus over a candidate, leaving the country without a head of state for over two years.

The politics of delay

Within Lebanon’s fractured political context, postponing elections has serious consequences. Fundamentally, it changes when and how political accountability happens in ways that benefit those already in power. In Lebanon, elections increasingly function as deferred events: always anticipated but continually postponed.

This prolongs the tenure of a political class that has faced sustained public anger since the 2019 uprising, when mass protests erupted across the country over economic mismanagement, corruption and deepening inequality. The movement forced the resignation of the government and exposed the fragility of the state’s political and economic order.

While this challenges individual leaders and the broader system of governance, it did not translate into sustained structural reform or a meaningful reconfiguration of power. Instead, the post-2019 period has been marked by deepening economic collapse, institutional paralysis and repeated political deadlock that has included prolonged delays in government formation.

Election delays also narrow the space for political alternatives. New parties, independent candidates and reformist movements rely on electoral cycles to gain visibility and legitimacy. Postponing elections thus also defers possibilities for political transformation.

Finally, postponement reinforces a system in which accountability is continually suspended. Without elections, there is no formal mechanism through which citizens can register discontent or enact change.

In this sense, delay is not simply a byproduct of instability. It is a political outcome with clear beneficiaries in power, both within the Lebanese state and among actors such as Hezbollah, whose influence is often reinforced in periods of internal and external crisis.

Crucially, elections are never canceled outright. They are deferred, extended, rescheduled. While the promise of democratic participation remains, its realization is continually pushed into the future.

Displacement and exclusion

The current crisis also raises deeper questions about who is able to participate in Lebanon’s political life. Escalating violence in the south has displaced thousands, disrupting livelihoods, mobility and access to basic services. Participation in elections becomes not only difficult but, for many, secondary to survival.

This dynamic is not new. Periods of conflict in south Lebanon, from the prolonged Israeli occupation prior to 2000 to the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war, have repeatedly disrupted electoral participation, displacing communities and reshaping who is able to vote, where, and under what conditions. Electoral processes have, at times, proceeded despite such disruptions, but often in ways that marginalize those most affected by violence.

This follows a broader pattern in which those most affected by crises in Lebanon are also those least able to shape the country’s political outcomes.

Lebanon’s electoral system has long been marked by exclusion: from diaspora voters who face logistical and administrative barriers to those displaced – entirely excluded from the political process.

Today, renewed conflict, including Israeli military operations in the south, intensifies these constraints.

The postponement of elections, then, is marked by both genuine logistical constraints and facilitating the interests of entrenched political elites.

It also risks deepening existing inequalities. Large segments of the population, particularly those in the majority-Shiite south, will face disproportionate barriers to participation as displacement, insecurity and the destruction of infrastructure make voter registration, campaigning and access to polling stations significantly more difficult.

These are the same communities whose political representation is most directly shaped by cycles of violence, displacement and uncertainty.

Why elections still matter

All this does not mean that elections no longer matter in Lebanon. On the contrary, their repeated deferral points to their continued importance. But it also highlights the fragile nature of democratic processes within a system shaped by entrenched power and persistent instability.

At the same time, there are ongoing, if uneven, efforts to reckon with this paralysis. Reform-oriented political actors and segments of civil society have continued to push for electoral transparency, diaspora participation in elections and institutional reform.

International actors, including the International Monetary Fund and the European Union, have also tied financial assistance and recovery frameworks to governance reforms, including calls for credible and timely elections. Yet these pressures have so far yielded limited structural change, often absorbed into the same status quo they seek to transform.

Meanwhile, the escalation of violence in the south and the persistent possibility of expanded military confrontation continues to reshape the conditions under which any future election might take place.

In Lebanon, democracy is not suspended in times of crisis but stretched. And in that stretching, the distance between citizens and political change continues to grow. That will only continue unless emerging pressures, both domestic and international, are able to create forms of genuine accountability.

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

– ref. Lebanon’s political elites are using displacement and humanitarian crisis to delay elections again – https://theconversation.com/lebanons-political-elites-are-using-displacement-and-humanitarian-crisis-to-delay-elections-again-263677