Denna dag har det skrivits historia, om än mörk och mycket bekymmersam sådan. Afghanistans president Ghani har lämnat landet, talibanerna rycker in i Kabul och helikoptrar har evakuerat den amerikanska ambassaden. […]

När historien skrivs kommer det nog att sägas att Sovjetunionen på sin tid skötte sitt uttåg ur Afghanistan bättre än vad USA gjorde. Läs artikel

Two countries of the 15-member United Nations Security Council are mulling a formal statement to condemn the Taliban as the insurgent group makes major inroads in Afghanistan.

According to a copy of the draft viewed by Reuters, Norway and Estonia have put together a statement. The U.N. body needs to agree on it before it can be issued, the wire service reported.

”The Security Council condemns in the strongest terms possible the armed attacks by Taliban forces on cities and towns across Afghanistan, resulting in high numbers of civilian casualties,” the drafted statement said, according to Reuters.

NATO Allies met in the North Atlantic Council today to consult on the situation in Afghanistan.

NATO Secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said in a statement ” We continue to assess the developments on the ground, and we are in constant contact with the Afghan authorities and the rest of the international community.”

Our aim remains to support the Afghan government and security forces as much as possible. The security of our personnel is paramount. NATO will maintain our diplomatic presence in Kabul, and continue to adjust as necessary. He added.

NATO Allies are deeply concerned about the high levels of violence caused by the Taliban’s offensive, including attacks on civilians, targeted killings, and reports of other serious human rights abuses. He mentioned

Stoltenberg said : “The Taliban need to understand that they will not be recognized by the international community if they take the country by force. We remain committed to supporting a political solution to the conflict.”Läs artikel

Renaud Girard is an American-born French journalist, the author of several books on world affairs, especially the Middle East. In this trenchant commentary on the Afghan debacle, he recognizes the defeat for what it is, bluntly invoking the collapse of the imperial German army at the end of the First World War. […]

We can also anticipate that America’s allies will lose trust. Girard’s chilling comment “If I were Taiwanese, I would be very worried” cuts to the bone. Smaller, dependent states that count on America for security but that are now forced to doubt the reliability of their protector can either invest aggressively in their own security capacity—and thereby gain a degree of autonomy for independent operations—or they can hedge their bets and explore limited accommodation with the powers that threaten them. In other words, the result of the perceived weakening of the American security umbrella, which is the only conclusion one can draw from Afghanistan, may lead vulnerable states to rebalance their strategies between the United States and adversarial powers. This kind of “bet hedging” will hardly enhance American influence—such is the implication of Girard’s sober estimation of the costs of neoconservative overreach.

His concluding remark, however, is the one that poses the most significant challenge to American security strategy. “Europe would do well to prepare itself.” So beyond any speculations as to the meaning of the Afghanistan events for the confrontation with Islamism, Girard points to the repercussions of the American withdrawal for Europe’s own defense policies. It is not however the withdrawal itself but the abrupt and unilateral character of the decision, without attention to contingencies, that could lead Europeans to ask whether this Central Asian episode sheds light on the reliability of American security commitments in Europe: the Afghan outcome therefore poses the NATO question and may well reopen deliberations on a strategic autonomy for Europe. That is a discussion that will play out especially in Paris. Meanwhile, for Washington, any step forward from Afghanistan will have to involve efforts to reestablish the credibility of American protective capacity, coupled with a realistic recognition of the limits of American influence. Läs artikel

The preliminary hearing of the US government’s appeal against the decision not to extradite journalist Julian Assange started on 11 August at the High Court in London. The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) reiterates its call for the politically motivated charges to be dropped and for his immediate release. […]

IFJ General Secretary Anthony Bellanger said: “President Joe Biden must end the years of politically motivated prosecution of Julian Assange by finally dropping the charges against him. The criminalisation of whistleblowers and investigative journalists has no place in a democracy. Condemning Assange would not only endanger his life but also fundamental principles of press freedom.” Läs artikel

Following the United States’ unilateral withdrawal from the agreement between the five permanent UN Security Council members, the European
Union, Germany, and Iran, that intends to stop Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, the United States has re-imposed and tightened its sanctions against Iran. The United States’ renunciation of the agreement, despite the agreement’s UN Security Council approval and verified Iranian compliance, arguably violated international law.
Nevertheless, the United States is attempting to compel the other state parties (and others) to follow its policy on Iran by threatening those states’ companies and business executives with economic or even criminal sanctions to force them to cut commercial ties with Iran. […]

U.S. sanctions laws and their consequences for third states are incompatible with public international law. By assuming jurisdiction and enforcing its domestic legislation in cases with no relevant connection to the United States, the United States violates customary international law on jurisdiction and other States’ sovereignty, which includes the right to govern to the exclusion of other States. By intimidating foreign businesses and citizens so that they do not enter into commercial transactions that may violate the United States’ sanctions laws, the United States imposes its foreign policy on other States. The United States is thus unlawfully intervening in matters, which, as the ICJ pointed out, every state is entitled to “decide freely.” 200 By utilizing its economic strength in order to impose its will on third states, the United States also disregards the principle of sovereign equality. As one observer commented more than 20 years ago, United States’ sanctions policy “does little to reassure those who think that many members of the United States’ Congress do not understand international law at all, but see the world as one great federal state with the United States filling the role of the federal government.” 201 This corresponds with Austen Parrish’s conclusion that the United States views “the use of national law, applied extraterritorially, as a way to displace international law.” Läs artikel

Many people around the world are being denied the right to development – both their countries’ economic improvement and their own personal development – because of unilateral coercive measures, independent experts appointed by the Human Rights Council said today.

The experts called on countries that impose unilateral sanctions to withdraw or at least to minimize them to guarantee that the rule of law and human rights, including the right to development, are not affected.

“The precautionary principle should be applied by States when unilateral sanctions are taken to avoid any negative humanitarian impact on the whole scope of human rights, including the right to development,” the experts said. “The punishment of innocent civilians must end.

“The General Assembly has declared the right to development to be an inalienable human right, and it is recognized as such by the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, the Arab Charter on Human Rights and a range of multilateral human rights declarations.”

Extraterritorial application of sanctions, secondary sanctions, national civil and criminal penalties aimed at implementing unilateral sanctions which result in over-compliance, exacerbate and expand their impact to every individual or company in targeted societies, third country nationals and companies, humanitarian organizations, donors and beneficiaries of humanitarian aid, the experts said.

“Sanctions hold countries back from development, they hold back people as well, and in a globalizing world, that hurts everyone,” the experts said. Läs artikel

On July 6, a British carrier strike group passed through the Suez Canal, heading to the South China Sea and the Western Pacific Ocean for the first time since 1997. The last carrier deployment to the region marked a decline in British Indo-Pacific presence, as the task group visited Hong Kong prior to the handover of the former colony to the People’s Republic of China. This deployment, led by the new aircraft carrier, HMS Queen Elizabeth, marks a renewed determination to wield British maritime power and influence “east of Suez.” […]

The answers to these questions are far from trivial. The British media has heavily criticized this deployment. The Observer categorically judged that “sailing into imperial delusions is no way to run foreign policy.” The Financial Times went to great lengths to present remarks by U.S. Secretary of Defense Austin so as to suggest that Britain would be “more helpful” closer to home — presumably in Europe — only to subsequently update the story to better reflect his rather “positive remarks.”

This comes as no surprise. Since its first appearance in a speech Theresa May delivered in 2016, the idea of a “Global Britain” has often attracted criticism from those who view it as a “lonely fiction.” Specifically, pundits have regarded the recalibration, or “tilt,” toward the Indo-Pacific — and the carrier deployment — as a post-Brexit “theatrical exercise.” The prism of Brexit has tinted much of these critiques, with the majority of skeptics viewing plans for the Indo-Pacific as a distraction from the loss of a close relationship with the European Union and, as a result, of relevance to the United States. Informed observers, on the other hand, have raised questions about Britain’s need to sustain its engagement for British intentions to be taken seriously within the region. Similarly, some academics have noted that the logistics of sustaining activities would inevitably stretch British military resources too thinly, like “butter scraped over too much bread.” Harsher critics have gone as far as considering British ambitions in the Indo-Pacific through the prism of “imperial nostalgia,” with the government’s rhetoric being “miles distant from reality.” Läs artikel