Category: The Conversation – Global Perspectives

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Kate Dooley, Senior Research Fellow, School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, The University of Melbourne

Ahead of the United Nations climate summit in Belém last month, Brazil’s President Lula da Silva urged world leaders to agree to roadmaps away from fossil fuels and deforestation and pledge the resources to meet these goals.

After failing to secure consensus, COP president Andre Corrêa do Lago announced these roadmaps as a voluntary initiative. Brazil will report back on progress at next year’s UN climate summit, COP31, when it hands the presidency to Turkey and Australia chairs the negotiations.

Why now?

These goals originate in the outcomes of the first global stocktake of the world’s progress towards the Paris Agreement goals, undertaken in 2023.

At the COP28 talks in Dubai in that year, there was an agreement to transition away from fossil fuels and to halt and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030.

Yet achieving these goals relies on a “just transition”, where no country is left behind in the transition to a low-carbon future, including a “core package” of public finance to address climate adaptation, and loss and damage. The Belém outcome fell short.

Forests need urgent protection

Forest loss and degradation is continuing, at an average rate of 25 million hectares a year over the last decade, according to the Global Forest Watch. This is 63% higher than the rate needed to meet existing targets to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. Yet the climate pledges submitted for the Belém COP remain far off track from this goal.

In the 2025 Land Gap Report, my colleagues and I calculated the scale of this “forest gap” – the gap between 2030 targets and the plans countries are putting forward in their climate pledges.

We show the pledges submitted up until this year’s climate summit would cut deforestation by less than 50% by 2030, meaning forests spanning almost 4 million hectares would still be cut down. The pledges would lead to forest degradation – where the ecological integrity of a forest area is diminished – of almost 16 million hectares. This is only a 10% reduction on current rates.

Together, this equates to an anticipated “forest gap” of around 20 million hectares expected to be lost or degraded each year by 2030. That’s about twice the size of South Korea.

While this underscores the inadequacy of commitments, the analysis is based on pledges submitted up to the start of November 2025, at which point only 40% of countries had submitted an updated plan. Major pledges submitted during COP31, such as from the European Union and China, don’t change this analysis.

Forest wins in Belém

A new fund for forest conservation called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility was launched in Brazil, attracting $US6.7 billion in pledges ($A9.9 billion).

The forest fund focuses on tropical deforestation, the leading cause of emissions from forest loss. But it has a key weakness: the limited monitoring of forest degradation, which could allow countries to receive payments while still logging primary forests.

The fund will establish a science committee and plans to revise monitoring indicators over the next three years, creating an opportunity to strengthen its ability to protect tropical forests.

The COP30 leaders’ summit also saw the launch of a historic pledge of $US1.8 billion ($A2.7 billion) to support conservation and recognition of 160 million hectares of Indigenous Peoples’ and local communities’ territories in tropical forest countries.

But global action on forests needs to extend beyond the tropics. Across both deforestation and forest degradation, countries in the global north are responsible for over half of global tree cover loss over the past decade.

Beyond tropical forests

A global accountability framework on forests is needed to increase ambition on climate action, including in countries and regions with extensive forests outside of the tropics, such as Australia, Canada and Europe.

In these regions, industrial logging is a major driver of tree-cover loss but receives far less political attention than tropical deforestation. Wide gaps in reporting – between deforestation and degradation – mean logging-related degradation often goes unreported.

In a recent report, only 59 countries said they monitor forest degradation. Of these, almost three-quarters are tropical forest countries.

The IUCN World Conservation Congress which convened in Abu Dhabi this year prior to the climate talks, passed a motion on delivering equitable accountability and means of implementation for international forest protection goals. This arose from a recognised need to promote greater equity between forest protection standards across countries.

All of this points to an urgent need to tackle accountability in global forest governance. The forest roadmap to be developed for COP31 in Turkey could help drive stronger alignment and transparency across UN processes – from the UN Forum on Forests’ 2017–2030 plan to the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework’s 2030 target to halt and reverse biodiversity loss.

Australia could lead on forests

Australia could help shape global forest ambition in the year ahead. It is currently the only country whose emissions pledge promises to halt and reverse deforestation and degradation by 2030 – a clear signal that developed countries must lead.

As President of Negotiations at COP31, Australia can also work to bring Brazil’s fossil-fuel and forest roadmaps into formal negotiations. But this depends on two things: credible leadership from developed countries and long-overdue climate finance. As a deforestation hotspot with ongoing native forest logging, Australia has considerable work to do to meet this responsibility.

Kate Dooley receives funding from the Australian Research Council and a number of philanthropic organisations. She is affiliated with Climate Integrity and the Minderoo Foundation.

– ref. Millions of hectares are still being cut down every year. How can we protect global forests? – https://theconversation.com/millions-of-hectares-are-still-being-cut-down-every-year-how-can-we-protect-global-forests-271305

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Stephanie Wescott, Lecturer in Humanities and Social Sciences, Monash University

There’s a lot of debate around the extent to which the manosphere is playing out in young people’s lives and relationships.

Some suggest claims about its malevolence are misplaced. Others think just because something happens on the internet doesn’t mean it affects lives offline.

But this is in spite of a significant body of international evidence demonstrating otherwise.

In this post-digital world, there is little or no delineation between what’s viewed and experienced online and what’s lived in the “real world”. This means we have to consider the potential harms of the manosphere not as remote or abstract, but as very real, and not to be underestimated or dismissed.

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The manosphere is a dark, but growing part of the internet that’s harming everyone who gets sucked into it. In this three-part series, Mapping the Manosphere, we’ve asked leading global experts how it works, what the dangers are and how this online phenomenon is playing out in real life.

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The gendered content spiral

Broadly, the manosphere is centred on anti-feminist, misogynistic and anti-gender equity ideas and beliefs.

Content can initially appear harmless. It presents information and insights on health, fitness and financial and career success.

But these are generally founded on rigid gendered ideas, extreme and isolating pursuits of self-optimisation and unhealthy ideas about relationships with girls and women.

New research has identified a shift in the manosphere towards monetisation and entrepreneurialism, pseudoscientific wellness and alignment with extremist ideologies.

Users may encounter content documenting extensive morning routines, beginning at 4am. These videos can involve multiple wellness-related rituals, recommendations for preserving testosterone and diatribes on men’s “natural” roles as providers in families.

The manosphere-adjacent content generated by tradwives and stay-at-home girlfriends glamorises an aesthetic (and unrealistically curated) life. A woman performs a caring role in the home, eschewing feminist ideas and advocating for women’s return to the domestic sphere. It’s often connected to white supremacy and far-right conservatism.

There’s evidence boys can find manosphere content helpful and positive. Some seek validation and belonging in these spaces. This makes the need for them to engage with it critically even more prescient.

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Read more:
Andrew Tate’s extreme views about women are infiltrating Australian schools. We need a zero-tolerance response

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Real world harm

Research widely shows manosphere content causes harm both to the boys and men who consume it and to other people in their lives.

Viewing manosphere content is known to contribute to unhealthy body image.

It’s also correlated with beliefs about violence being permissable. Manosphere sentiments have been identified among men who use violence.

Our own research into the influence of manosphere content on boys’ behaviour in schools has shown a shift in boys’ attitudes towards women and girls. Teachers report a discernible uptick in incidents of gendered violence in their schools.

There is also emerging concern that manosphere content is contributing to a growing ideological shift among young men and young women. Across multiple countries, young men are voting more conservatively than they used to.

Further, there is abundant evidence that misogyny – a central theme in manosphere content – is a predictor of all forms of violence. This includes gendered and extremist violence.

There are growing calls to place misogyny at the centre our efforts to counter and prevent extremist violence. This means acknowledging the role of the manosphere in the process of radicalisation.

Racist and misogynistic attitudes have also been identified as an urgent concern for national security, given they are significant contributors to violent extremism.

The next frontiers

Alongside the established evidence, we’re seeing signs of where manosphere beliefs might manifest next, if they’re not already.

In relationships and dating, advice circulating in manosphere spaces will continue to frame intimacy in transactional and manipulative terms. This will erode trust and mutual respect, while normalising male entitlement in relationships.

Over time, such messages risk reshaping, or regressing, expectations around dating, partnership and consent.

The manosphere frames work and study as competitive arenas. Discourses around “high-value men” and “grindset” culture blame feminism or “soft” values for perceived failures or inefficiencies.

This narrative positions career success as a masculine duty while dismissing collaboration and diversity, with long-term consequences for equity in schools and workplaces.

Finally, manosphere narratives of crisis and decline dovetail with populist politics. In the United States, aggrieved male voters have been central to Donald Trump’s rise, attracted to his performance of strongman masculinity.

Similar dynamics may surface elsewhere as leaders draw on themes of protection, grievance and a return to “traditional” order.

Where to from here?

The danger with manosphere content is that it exaggerates and exploits real (and perceived) problems, issues and grievances among boys and men.

This means it’s becoming increasingly confusing to distinguish what are legitimate and reasonable concerns among young men, what has been manufactured and how victimhood can be constructed by manosphere ideologies.

Explicitly honing young people’s critical digital literacy is an approach committed to empowering young people to become more discerning: to question not only what they are viewing, but its ideologies, how it makes them feel, and how platforms are designed to provoke particular responses.

These skills promote the development of critical dispositions: essential lifelong skills that will help them to consume information in a more informed, less reactive way. Critical literacy in kids helps them to become adults who are informed and discerning, and therefore, empowered.

Stephanie Wescott receives funding from Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety and the Australian Research Council.

Steven Roberts receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Australian Government and ANROWS, among others. He is a Board Director at Respect Victoria, but this article is written wholly separate from and does not represent that role.

– ref. From violence to sexism, the manosphere is doing real-world harm – https://theconversation.com/from-violence-to-sexism-the-manosphere-is-doing-real-world-harm-262205

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Juan Zahir Naranjo Cáceres, PhD Candidate, Political Science, International Relations and Constitutional Law, University of the Sunshine Coast

Two centuries ago, US President James Monroe declared the Western Hemisphere off-limits to European powers in what would became known in history books as the “Monroe Doctrine”.

The proclamation established the foundation for a new era of US dominance and “policing” of the region.

In the decades that followed, almost a third of the nearly 400 US interventions worldwide took place in Latin America. The United States toppled governments it deemed unfavourable or used force later ruled illegal by international courts.

In 2013, then-Secretary of State John Kerry announced “the era of the Monroe Doctrine is over”. It signalled a shift towards treating the region as partners rather than a sphere of influence.

Now, however, the National Security Strategy released last week by the Trump administration has formally revived that old doctrine.

It helps explain the administration’s interventionist actions in the region over the past couple months, from its deadly boat strikes in the Caribbean to its selective use of sanctions and pardons.

Why Latin America is so important

In typical hubristic fashion, the document openly announces a “Trump Corollary” to the Monroe Doctrine, elevating the Western Hemisphere as the top US international priority. The days when the Middle East dominated American foreign policy are “thankfully over”, it says.

The document also ties US security and prosperity directly to maintaining US preeminence in Latin America. For example, it aims to deny China and other powers access to key strategic assets in the region, such as military installations, ports, critical minerals and cyber communications networks.

Crucially, it fuses the Trump administration’s harsh rhetoric on “narco-terrorists” with the US-China great power competition.

It frames a more robust US military presence and diplomatic pressure as necessary to confront Latin American drug cartels and protect sea lanes, ports and critical infrastructure from Chinese influence.

How the strategy explains Trump’s actions

For months, the Trump administration has been striking suspected drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, killing dozens of people.

International law experts and human rights officials say these attacks breach international law. The US Congress has not authorised any armed conflict in these waters, yet the strikes have been presented as necessary to protect the US from “narco‑terrorists”.

Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro has also been branded a “narco‑dictator”, though Venezuela is a minor player in the flow of drugs to the US.

On December 2, President Donald Trump told reporters that any country he believes is manufacturing or transporting drugs to the US could face a military strike. This includes not just Venezuela, but also Mexico and Colombia.

On the same day, Trump also granted a pardon to Juan Orlando Hernández, Honduras’ former president. He had been sentenced to 45 years in prison for helping move hundreds of tons of cocaine into the US.

The new National Security Strategy attempts to explain the logic behind these contradictory actions. It emphasises the need to protect US “core national interests”, and stresses:

President Trump’s foreign policy is […] not grounded in traditional, political ideology. It is motivated above all by what works for America — or, in two words, ‘America First’.

Within this logic, Hernández was pardoned because he can still serve US interests. As a former president with deep links to Honduran elites and security forces, he is exactly the kind of loyal, hard-right client Trump wants in a country that hosts US military personnel and can help police migration routes to the US.

The timing underlines this: Trump moved to free Hernández just days before Honduras’ elections, shoring up the conservative networks he once led to support Trump’s preferred candidate for president, Nasry Asfura.

In Trump’s “America First” calculus, pardoning Hernández also sends a couple clear signals. Obedient partners are rewarded. And power, not principle, determines US policy in the region.

The obsession with Venezuela

The new security strategy explains Trump’s obsession with Venezuela, in particular.

Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves and a long coastline on the Caribbean Sea, which is a vital sea lane for US goods travelling through the Panama Canal.

Under years of US sanctions, Venezuela signed several energy and mining deals with China, in addition to Iran and Russia. For Beijing, in particular, Venezuela is both an energy source and a foothold in the hemisphere.

The Trump administration’s National Security Strategy makes clear this is unacceptable to the United States. Although Venezuela is not named anywhere in the document, the strategy alludes to the fact China has made inroads with like-minded leaders in the region:

Some foreign influence will be hard to reverse, given the political alignments
between certain Latin American governments and certain foreign actors.

A recent report suggests the Maduro government is now attempting a dramatic geopolitical realignment. The New York Times says Maduro’s government offered the US a dominant stake in its oil and gold resources, diverting exports from China. If true, this would represent a clear attempt to court the Trump administration and end Venezuela’s international isolation.

But many believe the Trump administration is after regime change instead.

The Venezuelan opposition leader, María Corina Machado, who won the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize, is pitching a post‑Maduro future to US investors, describing a “US$1.7 trillion (A$2.5 trillion) opportunity” to privatise Venezuela’s oil, gas and infrastructure.

For US and European corporations, the message is clear: regime change could unlock vast wealth.

Latin America’s fragmented response

Regional organisations remain divided or weakened, and have yet to coordinate a response to the Trump administration. At a recent regional summit, leaders called for peace, but stopped short of condemning the US strikes off Latin America.

Governments are instead having to deal with Trump one by one. Some hope to be treated as friends; others fear being cast as “narco‑states”.

Two centuries after the Monroe Doctrine, Washington still views the hemisphere as its own backyard, in which it is “free to roam” and can meddle as it sees fit.

The authors 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. Why is Trump so obsessed with Venezuela? His new security strategy provides some clues – https://theconversation.com/why-is-trump-so-obsessed-with-venezuela-his-new-security-strategy-provides-some-clues-271530

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Michelle Lynn Kahn, Associate Professor of History, University of Richmond

For 14 years while Syria’s brutal civil war raged, Germany provided a safe haven for those fleeing the violence. Now, a year after that conflict ended with the fall of the Assad regime in December 2024, many in Germany – including the country’s leader – want those same Syrians gone.

In November, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz announced a controversial plan to deport Syrian refugees “in the near future.” He also urged the 1 million Syrians in Germany, most of whom are Muslim, to voluntarily return.

This hardened stance toward Syrian refugees, expressed at the highest level of government, has been interpreted as Merz’s attempt to stave off Germany’s rising far-right party, the Alternative for Germany (AfD). In the February 2025 national election, the AfD won almost 21% of the vote, making it the second-largest party in the parliament. The government’s perceived rationale is that in getting tough on immigration, Merz will steal some of the thunder on an issue that has seen the AfD swell its support.

However, the reality is more complex. Racism and Islamophobia are not purely far-right phenomena. Rather, they have been part of mainstream German politics and society for decades.

As an expert in German migration history and far-right extremism, I have studied the history of racism and Islamophobia in Merz’s own party, the centrist Christian Democratic Union (CDU). My recent book explains how the CDU used similar tactics during the 1980s to kick out another group of predominantly Muslim migrants: Turks, who are Germany’s largest ethnic minority.

Paying Syrians to leave

Since Bashar Assad’s regime was toppled on Dec. 8, 2024, nearly 1.5 million externally displaced Syrians have voluntarily returned to their home country. That number comprises about one-quarter of all those who have fled since Syria’s civil war began in 2011.

However, Syrian refugees in Germany have been reluctant to return. Many have integrated into German society. About 15% have acquired German citizenship, and nearly half of working-age Syrians are employed in Germany. Some 250,000 Syrian children attend German schools.

The international legal principle of non-refoulement, which applies to German law, prohibits refugees from being forcibly returned to a country where they face serious threats to their life or freedom. As of December 2025, the United Nations Refugee Agency still stresses that refugees should not be forced to return to Syria.

Meanwhile, an official German program that facilitates the voluntary return of Syrians has been in effect since January 2025.

To persuade Syrians to leave, Germany is now offering to pay them. Since January, Syrian refugees in Germany have been able to apply online for up to US$4,650 (4,000 Euros) per family to assist their voluntary return. The financial incentives are facilitated through the German government’s official program.

Other European countries, along with the European Union and the U.N. Refugee Agency, are also offering Syrians financial incentives. A similar German policy applies to other migrant nationalities.

A destroyed homeland

Germany’s repatriation schemes have come under severe criticism from leading human rights organizations like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

For starters, critics say, the money is far too meager to restart one’s life in Syria. Financial incentives can help with reintegration, but only if they are “robust and durable,” according to the Migration Policy Institute.

Moreover, two-thirds of people in Syria are dependent on humanitarian aid. Over 7 million remain internally displaced, and many Syrians do not have electricity, water, sanitation or medical supplies.

Many people’s homes there are destroyed or mired in land disputes.

Syrian human rights activists have also argued that the country remains unsafe for religious minorities, women and queer people.

Even German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul softened his stance after a visit to Damascus on Oct. 30. “Here, hardly anyone can live a dignified life,” he said.

Turks in the 1980s: A similar policy

This is not the first time Germany has attempted to pay migrants to leave. In the 1980s, Merz’s party, the CDU, implemented a similar policy against Turkish migrants.

Millions of Turks came to West Germany in the 1960s and 1970s. The government formally recruited them as guest workers to help rebuild Germany after World War II.

By the late 1970s, they increasingly brought their spouses and children, becoming Germany’s largest ethnic minority.

Meanwhile, racism and Islamophobia skyrocketed in 1980s Germany — both on the far right and in the center.

While neo-Nazis violently attacked Turks, Germans on all sides of the political spectrum argued that Islam was incompatible with Europe. It is a view that 40 years on is being echoed by politicians on the right both in Europe and in the Trump administration.

Kicking out the Turks

In that racist climate, then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who led the centrist CDU from 1982 to 1998, expressed his desire to reduce the Turkish immigrant population by 50%.

But kicking out half of West Germany’s Turkish population was no easy feat — especially given the sensitivities that still plagued a country scarred by Nazi atrocities and the genocide of European Jews.

In the post-war years, West Germany was desperate to reestablish its reputation as a liberal democracy committed to human rights. As such, forced deportations were not an option.

Kohl’s solution, a precursor to Merz’s, was to pay Turks to leave. In 1983, West Germany passed the controversial remigration law, which offered Turks financial incentives to voluntarily return.

The 1983 law was widely criticized by rights activists as a “kicking out policy.”

Ultimately, 15% of Turkish migrants — approximately 250,000 men, women and children — took the money and left. It was one of the largest and fastest mass remigrations in modern European history.

However, returnees often faced financial and social hardship in Turkey. They struggled to reintegrate into the nation’s then-flailing economy. Many, especially children, were ostracized as “Germanized Turks.”

As the Turkish case shows, even a voluntary return is not always a happy homecoming.

Will Germany deport Syrians?

Germany today cannot realistically expect large numbers of Syrian refugees to accept the financial incentives. Amid the still ongoing humanitarian crisis in their home country, they would face far more dire hardships than Turks did in the 1980s.

In fact, only about 1,300 Syrians in Germany have voluntarily returned since Assad’s regime collapsed last year. That is just 0.1% of Germany’s Syrian population.

Merz has already announced that if Syrians refuse to leave, Germany will begin deporting some of them. He recently invited Syria’s president to Germany to discuss deporting Syrians with criminal records.

Other countries have already begun deportations of Syrian nationals, including Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan, the countries where most Syrian refugees are located.

Merz is, of course, responding to real political dynamics in Germany. The far right is indeed rising, which the center has responded to by moving further right. And as such, the fact that Merz’s party is cracking down on migration should not come as a surprise.

But today, as in the past, the response risks pandering to racism and Islamophobia that have been embedded in Germany’s mainstream. And Syrians, like Turks before them, are caught in the crossfire.

Michelle Lynn Kahn has received funding from the National Humanities Center, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Historical Association, American Jewish Archives, and Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

– ref. Germany’s plan to deport Syrian refugees echoes 1980s effort to repatriate Turkish guest workers – https://theconversation.com/germanys-plan-to-deport-syrian-refugees-echoes-1980s-effort-to-repatriate-turkish-guest-workers-271475

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Ray Laurence, Professor of Ancient History, Macquarie University

Roman concrete is pretty amazing stuff. It’s among the main reasons we know so much about Roman architecture today. So many structures built by the Romans still survive, in some form, thanks to their ingenious concrete and construction techniques.

However, there’s a lot we still don’t understand about exactly how the Romans made such strong concrete or built all those impressive buildings, houses, public baths, bridges and roads.

Scholars have long yearned for more physical evidence from Roman worksites to provide clues.

Now, a new study – led by researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and published in the journal Nature Communications – sheds new light on Roman concrete and construction techniques.

That’s thanks to details sifted from partially constructed rooms in Pompeii – a worksite abandoned by workers as Mount Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE.

New clues about concrete making

The discovery of this particular building site hit the news early last year.

The builders were quite literally repairing a house in the middle of the city, when Mount Vesuvius blew up in the first century CE.

This unique find included tiles sorted for recycling and wine containers known as amphorae that had been re-used for transporting building materials.

Most importantly, though, it also included evidence of dry material being prepared ahead of mixing to produce concrete.

It is this dry material that is the focus of the new study. Having access to the actual materials ahead of mixing represents a unique opportunity to understand the process of concrete making and how these materials reacted when water was added.

This has re-written our understanding of Roman concrete manufacture.

Self-healing concrete

The researchers behind this new paper studied the chemical composition of materials found at the site and defined some key elements: incredibly tiny pieces of quicklime that change our understanding of how the concrete was made.

Quicklime is calcium oxide, which is created by heating high-purity limestone (calcium carbonate).

The process of mixing concrete, the authors of this study explain, took place in the atrium of this house. The workers mixed dry lime (ground up lime) with pozzolana (a volcanic ash).

When water was added, the chemical reaction produced heat. In other words, it was an exothermic reaction. This is known as “hot-mixing” and results in a very different type of concrete than what you get from a hardware store.

Adding water to the quicklime forms something called slaked lime, along with generating heat. Within the slaked lime, the researchers identified tiny undissolved “lime clasts” that retained the reactive properties of quicklime. If this concrete forms cracks, the lime clasts react with water to heal the crack.

In other words, this form of Roman concrete can quite literally heal itself.

Techniques old and new

However, it is hard to tell how widespread this method was in ancient Rome.

Much of our understanding of Roman concrete is based on the writings of the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius.

He had advised to use pozzolana mixed with lime, but it had been assumed that this text did not refer to hot-mixing.

Yet, if we look at another Roman author, Pliny the Elder, we find a clear account of the reaction of quicklime with water that is the basis for the exothermic reaction involved in hot-mixing concrete.

So the ancients had knowledge of hot-mixing but we know less about how widespread the technique was.

Maybe more important is the detail in the texts of experimentation with different blends of sand, pozzolana and lime, leading to the mix used by the builders in Pompeii.

The MIT research team had previously found lime clasts (those tiny little bits of quicklime) in Roman remains at Privernum, about 43 kilometres north of Pompeii.

It’s also worth noting the healing of cracks has been observed in the concrete of the tomb of noblewoman Caecilia Metella outside Rome on the Via Appia (a famous Roman road).

Now this new Pompeii study has established hot-mixing happened and how it helped improve Roman concrete, scholars can look for instances in which concrete cracks have been healed this way.

Questions remain

All in all, this new study is exciting – but we must resist the assumption all Roman construction was made to a high standard.

The ancient Romans could make exceptional concrete mortars but as Pliny the Elder notes, poor mortar was the cause of the collapse of buildings in Rome. So just because they could make good mortar, doesn’t mean they always did.

Questions, of course, remain.

Can we generalise from this new study’s single example from 79 CE Pompeii to interpret all forms of Roman concrete?

Does it show progression from Vitruvius, who wrote some time earlier?

Was the use of quicklime to make a stronger concrete in this 79 CE Pompeii house a reaction to the presence of earthquakes in the region and an expectation cracking would occur in the future?

To answer any of these questions, further research is needed to see how prevalent lime clasts are in Roman concrete more generally, and to identify where Roman concrete has healed itself.

Ray Laurence 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. A 2,000-year-old building site reveals the raw ingredients for ancient Roman self-healing concrete – https://theconversation.com/a-2-000-year-old-building-site-reveals-the-raw-ingredients-for-ancient-roman-self-healing-concrete-271405

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Shawna Foo, Senior Research Fellow, School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney

During the last global coral bleaching event in 2023 and 2024 , the Great Barrier Reef experienced the highest temperatures for centuries and widespread bleaching. With bleaching events becoming more frequent, the very existence of coral reefs is under threat.

This, in case it’s not clear, is a major problem. Coral reef ecosystems are essential for many species of plants and animals to survive. They provide humans with essential food security (many fish can’t survive without them), prosperity (via tourism and fisheries) and shoreline protection.

But heat stress can weaken corals, making them vulnerable to disease. At the same time, warm conditions can make the pathogens that cause disease stronger and more virulent.

For our research, published today in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, we tracked hundreds of coral colonies on One Tree Reef in the southern Great Barrier Reef in Australia during a 2024 heatwave. Weakened by heat stress, one particular type of boulder coral, Goniopora, developed a disease called black band disease.

These corals are old – probably at least 100 years old – and are like the old growth forest of the reef.

Six months later, 75% of these coral colonies in the reef community we monitored were dead.

This is especially worrying because these massive corals are normally quite resilient to heat stress. Even the strong are now struggling to survive.

And their huge, dead bodies can detach from the reef and hurtle around, crushing and destroying other corals in their path.

What we found on the Great Barrier Reef

We were originally tracking multiple sites on One Tree Reef in response to an extreme heatwave. We wanted to understand which coral species were more resistant and which were more sensitive to heat stress.

It was a surprise to see the bleached boulder corals quickly get infected by black band disease.

Black band disease is caused by a group of pathogenic microbes that kill coral tissue. These pathogens naturally occur in the environment but this is the first time such a disease epidemic has been observed on the Great Barrier Reef.

The disease appears as a black band, leaving behind bare skeleton as it destroys the coral tissue and spreads throughout the colony. Around the world, black band disease has been recorded on many different coral species. This disease has wiped out reefs in the Caribbean and fundamentally altered reef structure and function.

A review of coral diseases on the Great Barrier Reef shows that black band disease is mostly found on branching corals. Branching corals are more delicate and tree-like in comparison to sturdy, boulder corals.

Our findings are curious because on One Tree Reef only one particular species, a normally resilient boulder-like coral, was affected.

Black band disease virtually wiped out these corals at the site we were monitoring.

In other words, ordinarily strong and resilient corals are now succumbing to this disease. This is extremely troubling.

Why is this worrying?

This boulder-like coral, specifically from the genus Goniopora, has long, flower-like tentacles that sway with the currents.

A key reef-building coral on the Great Barrier Reef, it is very slow-growing compared to branching corals. Goniopora tends to be more resistant to disturbance and is often found in areas of lower water quality.

Living for hundreds of years, it can form extensively large coral patches supporting a wide range of organisms. These long-lived corals form the backbone structure of reefs providing refuge for a range of invertebrates and fish. Because of their size, they help buffer coastlines from waves.

We found that six months after the 2024 heatwave, the colonies we were tracking had been all but wiped out. At least 75% were dead.

Of the surviving colonies, 64% had experienced partial coral tissue death due to black band disease. While other species of corals showed signs of recovery after the heatwave, we didn’t see any recovery at all for the boulder corals.

Killer bowling balls

One Tree Reef is one of the most protected coral reefs on the Great Barrier Reef.

Previously, outbreaks of black band disease have been linked to coastal stressors such as pollution and high nutrients. Given One Tree Reef is 80 km offshore in open ocean, its isolation protects it from land-based pressures.

This makes the disease prevalence and rapid spread at One Tree Reef particularly concerning.

Once the coral tissue is killed by the disease, the skeleton is quickly covered by algae (and other organisms) that eat away at the skeleton. We noticed the breakdown of the boulder coral skeleton began surprisingly fast after the colony died.

This process usually takes many months to years. By six months, though, we found these boulder corals were unstable and began to detach from the reef.

This is dangerous as they can act like bowling balls if moved by waves and tropical cyclones, destroying surrounding reef.

These large structural corals that have survived for hundreds of years are now lost from this reef, resulting in a potentially permanent change to the ecosystem.

Black band disease is one of the earliest recorded coral diseases, first identified in the Caribbean. There, it has driven high mortality in corals and reshaped entire coral communities. Our results are beginning to echo these devastating disease outbreaks seen in the Caribbean.

With coral disease expected to rise with climate change, our findings reinforce the need for urgent global action and for ambitious climate and reduced emissions targets.

Shawna Foo receives funding from the Australian Research Council, Westpac Scholars Trust and the University of Sydney.

Maria Byrne receives funding from the Australian Research Council and the Reef Trust.

– ref. We watched these coral colonies succumb to black band disease. 6 months later, 75% were dead – https://theconversation.com/we-watched-these-coral-colonies-succumb-to-black-band-disease-6-months-later-75-were-dead-264895

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Lisa M. Given, Professor of Information Sciences & Director, Social Change Enabling Impact Platform, RMIT University

After months of anticipation and debate, Australia’s social media ban is now in force.

Young Australians under 16 must now come to grips with the new reality of being unable to have an account on some social media platforms, including Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.

Only time will tell whether this bold, world-first experiment will succeed. Despite this, many countries are already considering following Australia’s lead.

But there are other jurisdictions that are taking a different approach to try and keep young people safe online.

Here’s what’s happening overseas.

A global movement

In November, the European parliament called for a similar social media ban for under 16s.

The President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, said she has been studying Australia’s restrictions and how they address what she described as “algorithms that prey on children’s vulnerabilities”, leaving parents feeling powerless against “the tsunami of big tech flooding their homes”.

In October, New Zealand announced it would introduce similar legislation to Australia’s, following the work of a parliamentary committee to examine how best to address harm on social media platforms. The committee’s report will be released in early 2026.

Pakistan and India are aiming to reduce children’s exposure to harmful content by introducing rules requiring parental consent and age verification for platform access, alongside content moderation expectations for tech companies.

Malaysia has announced it will ban children under 16 from social media starting in 2026. This follows the country requiring social media and messaging platforms with eight million or more users to obtain licenses to operate, and use age verification and content-safety measures from January 2025.

France is also considering a social media ban for children under 15 and a 10pm to 8am curfew for platform use for 15- to 18-year-olds. These are among 43 recommendations made by a French inquiry in September 2025, which also recommended banning smartphones in schools, and implementing a crime of “digital negligence for parents who fail to protect their children”.

While France introduced a requirement in 2023 that platforms obtain parental consent for children under 15 to create social media accounts, it has yet to be enforced. This is also the case in Germany. There, children aged between 13 and 16 can only access platforms with parental consent, but without formal checks in place.

And, in Spain, the minimum age for social media accounts will rise from 14 to 16, unless parents provide consent.

Norway announced plans in July to restrict access to social media for under 15s. The government explained the law would be “designed in accordance with children’s fundamental rights, including freedom of expression, access to information, and the right to association”.

In November, Denmark announced it would “ban access to social media for anyone under 15”. However, unlike Australia’s legislation, parents can override the rules to enable 13- and 14-year-olds to retain platform access. Yet there is no date for implementation, with lawmakers expected to take months to pass the legislation.

It’s also unclear how Denmark’s ban will be enforced. But the country does have a national digital ID program that may be used.

In July, Denmark was named as part of a pilot program (with Greece, France, Spain, and Italy) to trial an age verification app that could be launched across the European Union for use by adult content sites and other digital providers.

Some pushback

The implementation of similar restrictions is not being taken up everywhere.

For example, South Korea has decided against a social media ban for children. But it will ban the use of mobile phones and other devices in classrooms starting in March 2026.

In the city of Toyoake (south-west of Tokyo, Japan), a very different solution has been proposed. The city’s mayor, Masafumi Koki, issued an ordinance in October, limiting the use of smartphones, tablets, and computers to two hours per day for people of all ages.

Koki is aware of Australia’s social media restrictions. But as he explained:

If adults are not held to the same standards, children will not accept the rules.

While the ordinance has faced backlash, and is non-binding, it prompted 40% of residents to reflect on their behaviour, with 10% reducing their time on smartphones.

In the United States, the opposition to Australia’s social media restrictions has been extremely vocal and significant.

American media and technology companies have urged President Donald Trump to “reprimand” Australia over its legislation. They argue American companies are being unfairly targeted and have lodged formal complaints with the Office of US Trade.

President Trump has stated he would stand up to any countries that “attacked” American technology companies. The US recently called eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman-Grant to testify in front of Congress. US Republican Jim Jordan claimed her enforcement of Australia’s Online Safety Act “imposes obligations on American companies and threatens speech of American citizens”, which Inman-Grant strongly denied.

The world will keep watching

While much of the world seems united in concern about the harmful content and algorithmic features children experience on social media, only one thing is clear – there is no silver bullet for addressing these harms.

There is no agreed set of restrictions, or specific age at which legislators agree children should have unrestricted access to these platforms.

Many countries outside Australia are empowering parents to provide access, if they believe it is right for their children. And many countries are considering how best to enforce restrictions, if they implement similar rules.

As experts point to the technical challenges in enforcing Australia’s restrictions, and as young Australians consider workarounds to maintain their accounts or find new platforms to use, other countries will continue to watch and plan their next moves.

Lisa M. Given receives funding from the Australian Research Council and Australia’s eSafety Commission. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and the Association for Information Science and Technology.

– ref. Australia’s social media ban is now in force. Other countries are closely watching what happens – https://theconversation.com/australias-social-media-ban-is-now-in-force-other-countries-are-closely-watching-what-happens-271407

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Vivian Gerrand, Associate Lecturer, Australian National University; Deakin University

The manosphere is big business today. Once a niche network lurking on the margins of the internet, this diverse community of male supremacist cultures has grown into a transnational profit-making enterprise.

Our new review of the growing body of research on the manosphere reveals how it’s evolved.

It used to be largely special interest men’s rights groups, such as pick-up artists and incels (involuntary celibates). It’s now a widely mainstreamed and commercialised ecosystem, led by high-profile influencers or “manfluencers”.

Here’s how the manosphere has found ways to cash in on the insecurities of men and boys, expand its reach, and how doing so has ensured the movement’s longevity online.

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The manosphere is a dark, but growing part of the internet that’s harming everyone who gets sucked into it. In this three-part series, Mapping the Manosphere, we’ve asked leading global experts how it works, what the dangers are and how this online phenomenon is playing out in real life.

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Grifting their way to glory

Manosphere grift often takes the form of financial, health and relationship advice.

Platforms, driven by recommending similar content to consumers to keep them online longer, then push this content further.

Charged by anti-feminism, social media algorithms push apparent solutions for younger male internet users’ insecurities. This monetises them without providing true support.

The “thought leaders” of the manosphere maintain and grow their audiences by tapping into boys’ concerns about looks, economic futures and ability to attract women.

The solution they present is two-fold: urge viewers to direct their anger and resentment toward women and feminism, and buy the manfluencer’s products.

For example, many manfluencers have their own subscription-based “academies”, which they promote as an alternative to school or college. These can cost thousands of dollars.

Followers can buy one-on-one dating advice or access to networking groups of like-minded men.

There’s also manosphere podcast merchandise, including books.

Some sell supplements, like turmeric capsules, or swear by testosterone injections. Others peddle wellness-adjacent tech, such as water filters.

Many men and boys buying into this content have been raised on neoliberal ideas of winners and losers, hustle culture and individual choice.

In the manosphere, there’s no space for the collective, or discussions of systems and structures that negatively affect most of us. In this worldview, your perceived failings are all your own fault.

And so, manfluencers promise solutions to the isolation, alienation and precarity of existence under capitalism by offering up more of the same.

The rise of the manfluencer

In addition to its overtly anti-women messaging, today’s manosphere often operates through subtler forms of sexism.

Many creators promote gender essentialism: the idea that men and women are born with significant cognitive and personality differences, determined biologically rather than culturally.

This shift towards “alpha” masculinity marks a significant shift in men’s rights politics. It’s helped the movement have more mainstream appeal beyond the smaller corners of the web it used to occupy.

Male supremacists can now use influencer culture to gain substantial personal wealth, while promoting right-wing reactionary politics.

For example, Black manfluencers Myron Gaines and Walter Weekes regularly feature white supremacist guests and debates on their podcast, Fresh and Fit.

At the same time, mainstream platforms such as TikTok and YouTube Shorts have been instrumental for increasing commercialisation.

Experimental studies using sockpuppet accounts have looked at how quickly and how often young male users are being served manosphere content.

In the study conducted by Dublin City University, all of the accounts, whether they sought out the manosphere or not, were fed toxic content within the first 23 minutes of the experiment. Manosphere content appeared within the first 26 minutes.

New ways to monetise grievance

As the manosphere has expanded and shifted, it has also diversified. More users can find self-help advice from people who look like them.

There’s greater visibility of ethnic diversity and non-white actors in the male supremacist ecosystem.

Gaines and Weekes use language to appeal to Black men. They selectively invoke the discourse of social justice while maintaining a misogynist, frequently homophobic and transphobic outlook.

Other manfluencers, such as Andrew Tate and Sneako, say they’ve converted to Islam. This has also broadened the manosphere’s appeal.

It’s clear the movement can shape-shift to reach ever-changing moods and markets. By being agile and adaptable, the manosphere is entrenching itself in the online landscape.

The female equivalent

There’s also a growing presence of anti-feminist “trad” women accounts.

While previously associated exclusively with white women, Black women creators have become big tradwives and “pick-me” girls (a derogatory term for anti-feminist women). They tailor their content strategically for Black manosphere men.

These successful women digital entrepreneurs encourage their followers to reject hustle culture and instead embrace traditional marriage through service to their husbands.

As with most manosphere trends we observed in our review, the phenomenon of pick-mes and tradwives is heavily influenced by socioeconomic conditions. Women in these situations reject the “strong Black woman” stereotype of economic struggle in favour of finding dignity in marriage and homemaking.

In a patriarchal bargain, husbands become “bosses” for these women, to whom they willingly submit.

Ideology meets industry

To fully confront the socioeconomic forces shaping digital gender politics, it’s essential to consider the manosphere as both ideology and industry.

Manfluencers, self-styled gurus and ideological entrepreneurs operate within a digital attention economy that converts human insecurity into capital.

As the manosphere becomes more diverse and ideologically unstable (driven predominantly by the whims of algorithmic capitalism), there is an increasingly urgent need to educate boys and men. They need to know more about gendered disinformation, mental health, gender-based abuse and the mechanics of social media and influencer culture.

By better understanding this monetisation of grievance and equipping boys to respond critically to it, we can build healthier and more gender-equitable online cultures.

Vivian Gerrand receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Josh Roose receives funding from The Australian Research Council and Department of Home Affairs.

Michael Flood receives funding from the Australian Research Council.

Debbie Ging 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. Hustle, muscle and grift: how the manosphere has grown into a money-making machine – https://theconversation.com/hustle-muscle-and-grift-how-the-manosphere-has-grown-into-a-money-making-machine-262432

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Robert Muggah, Richard von Weizsäcker Fellow na Bosch Academy e Co-fundador, Instituto Igarapé; Princeton University

Brazil’s “criminal economy” does not appear on any national balance sheet. Yet the cost of violence, contraband, tax evasion and environmental crime can be measured in the tens of billions of dollars every year and serves as a major drag on Brazil’s economic growth and stability.

Attempts to quantify this burden go back at least a decade. An influential 2017 study by the Inter-American Development Bank estimated that crime and violence consumes roughly 3.4% of gross domestic product across Latin America and the Caribbean, with Brazil among the worst-affected countries. A later assessment by Brazil’s own Institute for Applied Economic Research put the annual cost of violence alone at 5.9% of GDP.

Such figures are usually calculated by looking at the cost of violence and crime on the lost earnings of people killed or incarcerated through crime, the medical costs of dealing with the aftermath of violence, the increased cost of security, and the value of damaged or stolen property.

But headline figures still miss much of what never shows up in ledgers. They rarely capture the welfare cost of a homicide, the long-term earnings lost when a teen drops out of school because his neighborhood is dangerous, or the investment that never materializes because a company fears extortion or theft.

As such, some researchers contend that even a 5.9% estimate should be seen as a lower bound on the cost of violence.

In fact, a recent analysis of official statistics and private surveys suggest that once indirect losses are fully accounted for, crime may be shaving around 11% off Brazil’s annual GDP. I believe the real cost could be even higher.

Beneath these totals lies an enormous underground economy that both feeds and conceals illegality. The Underground Economy Index estimates that unregistered or informal activity accounted for 17.8% of Brazil’s GDP in 2022, or around US$313 billion.

Not all of that is criminal. For many microbusinesses, an informal economy is a survival strategy. But such a vast cash-based economy offers ideal cover for smuggling, tax fraud, counterfeit goods and money laundering, making enforcement vastly more complex.

From contraband to cargo theft

Illicit commerce now mirrors the formal economy in scale and diversity. A recent survey by the National Forum Against Piracy and Illegality found that contraband, falsification and piracy cost Brazil roughly $86 billion in 2024, including $60 billion in lost sales for legitimate companies and $25 billion in unpaid taxes.

Tobacco, clothing, fuel, electronics and pharmaceuticals were among the hardest-hit sectors. Economists caution that such figures, based on self-reported industry losses, are imprecise; however, they do underscore how deeply illegal trade has penetrated mainstream markets.

Brazil’s logistics sector offers a particularly stark illustration of how crime acts as a hidden surcharge on everyday goods. According to data compiled by the National Association of Cargo Transport and Logistics, the national haulage association, Brazil recorded 10,478 cargo thefts in 2024, with estimated losses of $221 million.

When the cost of fuel-related thefts and fraud are added, the annual losses rise to $5.34 billion. These crimes, concentrated along major freight corridors in the southeast of the country, force companies to invest in trackers, armored convoys and route changes – costs that ripple through supply chains and ultimately into final prices.

The new environmental criminal frontier

Brazil’s criminal economy also burrows into its rivers and forests. A landmark study by the Choices Institute, a Brazilian think tank, documented that between 2015 and 2020, the country traded 229 tons of gold with signs of illegality, nearly half of total production over that period.

Much of this “suspect” gold appears to originate from Indigenous territories or environmental protection areas in the Amazon. That volume is worth tens of billions of dollars, providing a ready vehicle for laundering proceeds from other illicit markets while starving the treasury of royalties and taxes.

The environmental ledger may be the most underappreciated of all. The MapBiomas Alerta project confirmed 74,218 deforestation alerts – which give authorities a heads-up on potential logging, fires or land clearance activity – in 2020 across Brazil, covering nearly 5370 square miles (13,900 square kilometers). An analysis of those alerts found that nearly all bore signs of illegality. These trends have not changed.

Deforestation in the Amazon not only eliminates trees, but it also drains the economy. A recent study by the Climate Policy Initiative estimates that Brazil’s Itaipu and Belo Monte hydroelectric plants together lose around 3,700 to 3,800 gigawatt-hours of potential generation each year because deforestation has weakened the “flying rivers” that carry moisture from the forest to the rest of Brazil.

That lost energy, enough to provide power to roughly 1.5 million people, translates into more than $184 million in foregone revenue annually.

Lawlessness is a regressive tax

No single study can capture the entirety of Brazil’s criminal economy. Still, putting together the most conservative official numbers yields a rough balance sheet.

And even a cautious estimate would put the total cost at around $239 billion to $275 billion annually – or 12% to 14% of Brazil’s GDP, by my estimate.

These costs of crime are a hidden regressive tax, falling hardest on poor Brazilians who are more exposed to violence, more dependent on public services and less able to hedge against inflation or instability.

And every dollar lost to corruption, contraband or illegal deforestation is a dollar that cannot be invested in schools, hospitals or clean energy.

Countering crime

There are, however, tentative signs that lawmakers and authorities are beginning to act on this calculus. The Finance Ministry has asked Congress to accelerate a package of bills that sharpen the definition and treatment of companies that bake systematic tax evasion into their business model, and to arm prosecutors and tax authorities with stronger tools to overcome the convoluted financial structures that shield them.

The creation of a permanent unit to fight organized crime within the Justice Ministry, bringing together federal tax authorities, federal police, public prosecutors and state-level task forces, also points to a growing recognition that criminal entities operating within the formal economy can only be reached if fiscal, financial and criminal laws are applied in a coordinated way.

In parallel, national authorities have signaled an intention to negotiate a new cooperation framework with Washington centered on information-sharing around money laundering, arms trafficking and large-scale tax fraud – embedding the fight against organized crime more explicitly in bilateral economic talks.

And recent enforcement actions offer a glimpse of what a more systemic approach looks like in practice. In August 2025, [federal and state police] cracked down on a national criminal network that used a fintech “shadow bank” and at least 40 investment funds to launder illegal transactions involving roughly 1,000 gas stations from 2020 to 2024.

Then, in November, Brazilian authorities executed 126 search and seizure warrants in five states and secured judicial orders to freeze more than $1.8 billion in assets relating to criminal activities.

These measures suggest that Brazil’s institutions – and the lawmakers who shape them – are beginning to treat crime not as an unavoidable backdrop to economic life, but as a macroeconomic distortion that can, and should, be confronted head-on.

This is a translation of an article for The Conversation Brazil. The Portuguese language version can be found here.

Dr. Robert Muggah is affiliated with the Igarapé Institute and SecDev.

– ref. How crime in Brazil drags down the economy and heaps economic pain on the nation’s poor – https://theconversation.com/how-crime-in-brazil-drags-down-the-economy-and-heaps-economic-pain-on-the-nations-poor-271600

Source: The Conversation – Global Perspectives – By Amin Saikal, Emeritus Professor of Middle Eastern Studies, Australian National University; The University of Western Australia; Victoria University

Lebanon faces a grave predicament. Israel wants the Hezbollah militant group based in the country to be disarmed. Hezbollah has refused to give up its arms as long as Israel threatens Lebanon. And the Lebanese government is not strong enough to subdue Hezbollah on its own.

This is a recipe for renewed internal conflict in Lebanon, as well as another round of war between Israel and Hezbollah. The cost could be devastating for both Lebanese and regional stability.

Israel’s two-month war on Hezbollah

Israel and Hezbollah have been at loggerheads since the Lebanese group’s creation, with help from the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the early 1980s.

Successive Israeli leaders have sought to stifle Hezbollah’s growth as a formidable paramilitary force in Lebanese politics and threat to Israel’s national security. Israel invaded Lebanon in 1982 and 2006 to try to destroy the group, without much success.

However, Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza gave it another opportunity to take on Hezbollah when the group joined the conflict in solidarity with Hamas.

After nearly a year of Hezbollah rocket attacks on northern Israel and Israeli retaliation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu opened a “new phase” of the Gaza war in September 2024.

Using unprecedented means, such as remote detonation of the group’s pagers and 2,000-pound (900kg) US-made “bunker buster” bombs, the Israel Defence Forces (IDF) quickly pierced Hezbollah’s defences. It decapitated the group by killing its firebrand and strategic-minded leader, Hassan Nasrallah, and his successor, Hashem Safieddine.

Shaky ceasefire

When a ceasefire took hold after nearly two months of fighting, 3,800 people in Lebanon were killed, many of them civilians. Israel lost more than 80 soldiers and 47 civilians. Some 1.2 million Lebanese people were displaced, along with around 46,000 Israelis.

Israel claimed to have eliminated many of the group’s hideouts and assets, including ammunition depots and infrastructure, especially in Beirut and southern Lebanon. The IDF also pushed most of Hezbollah’s forces back to the Litani River – 29 kilometres north of the Israeli border.

In February of this year, Israel withdrew its troops from most of southern Lebanon, but maintained control of five strategic points inside Lebanon after the deadline to withdraw its troops.

Then, in August, Israel said it would pull back the rest of its forces only when the Lebanese army was able to take over positions currently manned by Hezbollah operatives and the group was totally disarmed.

Under the terms of the ceasefire, brokered by the United States and France in November 2024, the Lebanese army is responsible for disarming Hezbollah. The Trump administration has set a December 31 deadline to disarm the group.

But the reformist Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam’s task has become very difficult, with Israel regularly bombing what it calls Hezbollah targets to ensure the group does not regain its pre-war strength.

Israeli strikes have killed at least 127 Lebanese civilians and wounded dozens since the start of the ceasefire.

Hezbollah has vowed not to disarm. Its new chief, Sheikh Naim Qassem, has warned the Lebanese government against giving in to Israeli and American demands.

He also said if Israel broadens its attacks into another war, Hezbollah’s missiles “would fall” on Israel.

Will war return?

Hezbollah has been weakened as Tehran’s most important pillar of influence in the Middle East. But it still remains well-manned and equipped. It also remains popular among the Shias who form the largest segment of Lebanon’s religiously and politically divided population.

Salam, a Sunni Muslim, has his work cut out for him.

On the one hand, he presides over a “consociational” system of governance, in which different religious and sectarian groups share power in proportion to the size of their communities under the presidency of General Joseph Aoun (a Christian). This does not augur well for long-term national unity.

On the other hand, Salam needs to deal with a shattered economy and finances – and, more importantly, the Israeli demand that Hezbollah be disarmed.

If Salam deploys the Lebanese armed forces, numbering around 60,000 active personnel, to force Hezbollah to disarm, this could trigger a devastating civil war, similar to the one that gripped Lebanon from 1975 to 1990. If he doesn’t, he risks Israel’s wrath and another round of war.

There is no easy way out of this explosive situation. But the key to a viable resolution lies largely with the Trump administration. It needs to restrain Israel from continuing to breach the ceasefire to give time to Salam’s government to find a non-confrontational way to defuse the situation.

Lebanon has endured many tragic episodes in its turbulent history and can survive its current predicament, as well. As the renowned Lebanese-American writer, poet and artist Khalil Gibran (1881–1931) has said:

We are a nation strong in its weakness, majestic in its concealment, speaking while silent and giving while begging, we are the burden of a thicket, while our enemy looks at us from a high place then descends and seizes us with his claws and bites our bodies with his beak, enjoying our taste, but he cannot swallow us and will not be able to swallow us.

Amin Saikal 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. With a deadline looming, Lebanon is under pressure to disarm Hezbollah or risk another war – https://theconversation.com/with-a-deadline-looming-lebanon-is-under-pressure-to-disarm-hezbollah-or-risk-another-war-271523