Can Russia back down in Ukraine?

“Russia presented the United States with its demands last month. It requested “legally binding security guarantees,” including a stop to eastward NATO expansion, which would exclude Ukraine from ever joining, and that NATO would not deploy troops or conduct military activities in countries that joined the alliance after 1997, which includes Poland and former Soviet states in the Baltics.

Kyiv and NATO have grown closer over the last decade-plus, and actively cooperate. But Ukraine is nowhere close to officially joining NATO, something the US openly admits, and something Russia also knows. Still, NATO says Ukrainian future membership is a possibility because of its open-door policy, which says each country can freely choose its own security arrangements. To bar Ukrainian ascension would effectively give Russia a veto on NATO membership and cooperation. Removing NATO’s military presence on the alliance’s eastern flank would restore Russia’s influence over European security, remaking it into something a bit more Cold War-esque.

Russia almost certainly knew that the US and NATO would never go for this. The question is what Putin thought he had to gain by making an impossible opening bid. Some see it as a way to justify invasion, blaming the United States for the implosion of any talks. “This is a tried-and-true Russian tactic of using diplomacy to say that they’re the good guys, in spite of their maximalist demands, that [they’re] able to go to their people and say, ‘look, we tried everything. The West is a security threat, and so this is why we’re taking these actions,’” said David Salvo, deputy director of the Alliance for Securing Democracy and a senior fellow at the German Marshall Fund.”

“Russia might not like the responses on NATO, but there are spaces where the US and NATO could offer concessions, such as greater transparency about military maneuvers and exercises, or more discussions on arms control, including reviving a version of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, or even scaling back some US naval exercises in places like the Black Sea, which Russia sees as a provocation. “There is still potentially room on those fronts,” said Alyssa Demus, senior policy analyst at the Rand Corporation. “That’s entirely possible that the US and Russia or NATO and Russia could negotiate on those — and then maybe table the other issues for a later date.”

But if the US and NATO extend those olive branches or others, that might not be enough for Putin. Neither of these will resolve Putin’s fundamental sticking point. He has repeatedly framed the US and NATO as a major security threat to Russia for his domestic audience, including spreading disinformation about the West being behind the real chaos in Ukraine. “Having built up this formidable force, and issued all manner of ominous warnings, he’s got to come back with something tangible,” said Rajan Menon, director of the grand strategy program at Defense Priorities.”

“really, Ukraine is already at war. In 2014, Russia illegally annexed Crimea, and exploited protests in the Donbas region, in eastern Ukraine, backing and arming pro-Russian separatists. Russia denied its direct involvement, but military units of “little green men” — soldiers in uniform but without insignia — moved into the region with equipment. More than 14,000 people have died in the conflict, which ebbs and flows, though Moscow has fueled the unrest since. Russia has also continued to destabilize and undermine Ukraine, including by launching cyberattacks on critical infrastructure and conducting disinformation campaigns.

It is possible that Moscow takes aggressive steps — escalating its proxy war, launching sweeping disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks, and applying pressure in all sorts of ways that don’t involve moving Russian troops across the border and won’t invite the most crushing consequences.

But this route looks a lot like what Russia has already been doing, and it hasn’t gotten Moscow closer to its objectives. “How much more can you destabilize? It doesn’t seem to have had a massive damaging impact on Ukraine’s pursuit of democracy, or even its tilt toward the west,” said Margarita Konaev, associate director of analysis and research fellow at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology (CSET).

And that might prompt Moscow to see force as the solution.”

How a Simple Twist of Fate Could End Democrats’ Control of the Senate

“States have a range of laws about replacing a departed senator, but the large majority — 37 — call on the governor to pick a successor. Of those, only seven require the governor to pick someone in the same party. So there are 30 states where the governor can pick whatever new senator he or she wants.

What that adds up to, in practical terms, is that in nine states (as of Jan. 15), a Republican governor has the authority to replace either one or two Democratic senators. If a single Democratic senator in any of those states had to leave office, the Republican governor of that state could appoint a GOP replacement that would immediately give the party a 51-49 Senate majority.”

Lithuania wins microchip windfall from Taiwan in China clash

“Because of the warming diplomatic ties between Lithuania and Taiwan, China has unleashed a strict embargo against the Baltic nation — boycotting not only its exports but even goods from other EU countries made with Lithuanian components.

To help ease the pain for its most dogged European ally, Taiwan has announced a $200 million investment plan. And that raises the prospect of co-operation on chips.

Taiwan’s investment plans in Lithuania are not yet finalized, pending studies to be conducted by a team of Taiwanese experts within the next few months. But in an interview with POLITICO, the top Taiwanese diplomat in Vilnius said nothing was off the table, and that Lithuania could act as an inroad to the rest of the European semiconductor market.”

““Taiwan is playing its economic cards smartly,” Mathieu Duchâtel, director of the Asia Program at the Paris-based Institut Montaigne said. “Clearly, Taiwan has something concrete to offer to strengthen the European semiconductor ecosystem, and the message is that this is linked to deepening Taiwan’s international space — so this is a form of economic statecraft.””

Rep. Jim Jordan says he won’t cooperate with Jan. 6 committee’s interview request

“The committee recently revealed a text message from Jordan to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows on Jan. 5 in which he forwarded a strategy for blocking Joe Biden’s election. According to Jordan, he was passing along a plan sent to him by a former Pentagon inspector general. His aides have declined to say whether he supported that strategy or why he decided to send it to Meadows.

Jordan has frequently insisted he has “nothing to hide” when asked if he would cooperate with the Jan. 6 select committee, and he has expressed uncertainty about whether he had one or multiple conversations with Trump on Jan. 6 — both before and after the riot.”

‘Why Is Child Marriage Still Legal?’: A Young Lawmaker Tackles a Hidden Problem

“In 2017, all 50 states allowed minors to marry in some cases. Since 2018, six states have banned all marriages before 18: Delaware and New Jersey in 2018, Pennsylvania and Minnesota in 2020, Rhode Island and New York in 2021. Other states have recently tightened permissive child marriage laws, raising ages and adding some safeguards. But most states still allow teens to marry at 16 or 17 if parents and a judge consent. Some allow 14- or 15-year-olds to marry. Nine states still have no minimum marriage age at all, including liberal states such as California — where opponents of ending child marriage include civil libertarians on the left as well as family-first conservatives.

Though fewer minors marry in the U.S. than in the past, child marriage still happens here. The U.S. Census’ American Community Survey estimated that there were nearly 88,000 married teens ages 15 to 17 nationwide in 2019. An April 2021 study by the activist group Unchained At Last, funded by the Gates Foundation, estimated that 297,000 minors were married in the U.S. between 2000 and 2018, and that 60,000 of them were under their state’s age of sexual consent.”

“Levesque and other anti-child-marriage activists argue that too many parents and grooms coerce girls into marriage, for reasons ranging from patriarchal cultural traditions to exploitation. The typical American child marriage isn’t a Romeo-and-Juliet story of teenagers in love, they say; more than 80 percent involve a girl under 18 marrying an adult, often someone several years older. Child marriage, they warn, undermines rape laws. Once child brides are trapped in a coercive marriage, it’s hard for them to escape; minors often find it hard to obtain a divorce, advocates say, and often can’t get into women’s shelters.”

Jan. 6 panel ramps up investigation into Trump’s state-level pressure

“As Trump’s team pushed its discredited voter fraud narrative, the National Archives received forged certificates of ascertainment declaring him and then-Vice President Mike Pence the winners of both Michigan and Arizona and their electors after the 2020 election. Public records requests show the secretaries of state for those states sent those certificates to the Jan. 6 panel, along with correspondence between the National Archives and state officials about the documents.”

“Arizona then took legal action against at least one of the groups who sent in the fake documents, sending a cease and desist letter to a pro-Trump “sovereign citizen” group telling them to stop using the state seal and referring the matter to the state attorney general.
“By affixing the state seal to documents containing false and misleading information about the results of Arizona’s November 3, 2020 General Election, you undermine the confidence in our democratic institutions,” Hobbs wrote to one of the pro-Trump groups.

That group’s leader, Lori Osiecki, had told the Arizona Republic in December 2020 that she decided to send in the certificates after taking part in post-election rallies and after attending a daylong meeting in Phoenix that had included Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani.

The group that forged the Michigan certification had not used the state seal, and it appears state officials there took no further action after the Archives rejected it.”

How humans could live two years longer

“A recent study on the mortality cost of climate change found that every 4,434 metric tons of carbon dioxide emitted — about the combined lifetime emissions of 3.5 Americans, the study estimates — will cause a heat-related death this century.

But the situation is even worse than that number suggests. Danny Bressler, the environmental economist who authored the paper, notes his estimate leaves out some other potential climate-related deaths, like those from flooding and reduced food supply. He’s just estimating what higher temperatures alone will do, writing that he “does not consider likely mortality co-benefits of stricter climate policies, such as decreases in particulate matter pollution.”

That’s a technical way of putting it. Here’s a simpler way: When we burn fossil fuels, not all the resulting pollution goes up high into the atmosphere. Some of it accumulates in the air that we breathe every day.

And it kills us. A lot of us. The Global Burden of Disease study, a common benchmark for public health work, estimates that 3.4 million people die prematurely every year due to air pollution. More recent research puts the total even higher, at 10 million a year. A recent paper suggested that 90 percent of the world’s population lives in areas with air pollution higher than World Health Organization guidelines (guidelines that the organization itself is toughening).

The particles in question here are invisible to the naked eye — but their effects are anything but.”

Can US investment really ease Central America’s migrant crisis?

“The US’s latest investments aim to address economic hardship in the region in three ways: By bringing more workers into the formal economy, by setting higher wage and labor standards, and by using corporate influence to fight corruption.

That won’t happen overnight. But there is reason to hope that US companies could meaningfully improve living conditions over time and give people a reason to stay.”

“The region needs sustained investment before its residents will see any meaningful improvement in quality of life that might dissuade them from making the choice to migrate. In the past, US government aid has proved an unreliable source of that kind of investment. Former President Donald Trump decided to slash US aid to the region by a third, turning the clock back on the Obama administration’s efforts. Honduras saw homicides surge thereafter, and funding for social welfare programs ranging from job training for at-risk youths to grants for women entrepreneurs was cut.

The Biden administration hopes that because private companies are behind these latest investments, profit might motivate them to continue investing in the region, regardless of how US policy evolves, creating a more reliable stream of funding for Northern Triangle residents. The danger of this approach, of course, is that these companies could also suddenly pull their investments if they’re found to hurt the bottom line.”

“At the moment, governments in the region have so far been unable to provide a significant social safety net because they haven’t had the money to do so. In part, that’s because countries in the Northern Triangle have among the lowest effective tax rates in the world. Workers with informal jobs don’t typically pay taxes and local corporations often try to evade them.

Guatemala’s 2019 tax revenue, for instance, was just 13.1 percent of its GDP — the lowest among Latin America and Caribbean countries, which brought in nearly 23 percent of their GDP on average. For comparison, taxation brings in an average of about a third of GDP across high-income countries that are members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).

In Honduras, that has resulted in a sparse welfare system. There are no government-provided unemployment benefits. Though it has a social security program, only formal workers can pay into it and benefit from it. Public health care services are for the most part only available in large cities, leaving people in rural areas without access to physicians. That lack of support, coupled with pervasive violence and corruption, has left many migrants with no choice but to seek safety and opportunity elsewhere.”

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22836881/biden-central-america-investment-honduras-salvador-guatemala

Where have all the truck drivers gone?

“Long-haul driving, in particular, can be grueling, with lengthy wait times that aren’t compensated and other costs to being out on a route for stretches at a time. “Why do people not want to become truck drivers? That’s the situation, or the root of the issue. And the reason for that is it’s a shitty job,” said Hanno Friedrich, associate professor of freight transportation at Kühne Logistics University.”

“The first thing to know about the truck driver shortage, experts said, is that it’s not exactly a shortage. “It’s a recruitment and retention problem,” said Michael Belzer, a trucking industry expert at Wayne State University.
In the US, “there are in fact millions of truck drivers — people who have commercial driver’s licenses — who are not driving trucks and are not using those commercial driving licenses, more than we would even need,” Belzer said. “That’s because people have gotten recruited into this job, maybe paid to get trained in this job, and realize, ‘This is not for me. This is not adequate for what I’m doing.’”

When it comes to recruitment, it’s hard to get people into the business, especially young people. There’s often a gap between when people leave school (say, age 18) and when they can legally drive a truck across state lines (typically age 21), which means those folks may have already found jobs and aren’t going to be wooed away to become truckers.

There are other barriers to entry, like schooling (the costs of which can vary) and the ability to obtain a special class of driver’s license. Around the world, training and testing for truck drivers stalled because of Covid-19 lockdowns. The industry also struggles to attract women into the workforce because of safety concerns and inadequate accommodations along routes and at rest stops.

But truck driving also isn’t the job it used to be. In the United States, for example, deregulation of the industry, which accelerated in the 1980s, alongside the decline of unions, means trucker wages have been shrinking for years. But the work itself hasn’t really changed. It involves long hours, and a lot of that can be time spent uncompensated. “You could spend all day or a day and a night waiting around to get a load at a port site offloaded and loaded up, and you’re not getting paid for any of that time,” said Matthew Hockenberry, a professor at Fordham University who studies the media of global production.

This feeds not just into the recruitment problem, but also the retention problem. Truck drivers are burned out. Long-haul drivers, especially — that is, those who are moving cargo long distances or across states — typically get paid for the trips they take, and they have to go where the cargo needs to go, with little control over when and where. “The route is the route,” as Weaver put it.”

“The toughness of being a truck driver — the long hours, the treks, the waiting at ports or warehouses to get the goods — isn’t an accident. It’s mostly a consequence of being caught up in the demands of the modern supply chain, the one that is under so much pressure now.

Experts told me that even as wages for truckers have declined, shipping and logistics companies are increasing their rates. But that hasn’t really trickled down to the truck drivers’ pockets. “The trucking companies fight over the scraps. And the drivers fight over the scraps left over after the trucking companies fight over it. All of this cascades down, and the most powerful party here is always the one to win,” Belzer said.

And, he added, when it came to truckers: “Because of where they stand in the power relations throughout the supply chain, they’re the least powerful people.”

Experts and those involved in the trucking industry said wages for truckers have ticked up because of the labor demand in this stage of the pandemic, just as they have in other parts of the labor market in the US. There may be good signing bonuses to be had, too. But truckers don’t have a say in the routes they drive, or how long it takes for their cargo to be offloaded at a port. The job remains difficult, and it might not be enough.”