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President Joe Biden addresses the nation about his decision to step back from the 2024 presidential race on July 24, 2024.
Civil Wars and Civil Exits
For a moment last night, America lived up to its best ideals. It often does in the dark hours.
President Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office to explain his reluctant decision to step away from the 2024 campaign — a campaign he was forced to accept, in a humiliating but necessary way, that he could not win — in a rare moment of sacrifice over ego, service over ambition.
Though age has severely diminished Biden’s capacities, it has not diminished his dignity or character.
Character is not something we talk about a lot in politics these days. But as Biden raspily and haltingly defended his presidential record, his vision for the future, and his 50 years of service, he showed genuine character.
Character is more than just toughness, grit, and fortitude amid a fight, though surely it can encompass those qualities. Character is more than just grace in loss, and Biden knows more about that than most, having lost his wife Neilia and his 1-year-old daughter Naomi to a car accident in 1972, and then his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015. Character is what happens after those moments. It’s what you do with the time left, how you reassemble the pieces and build something with purpose. It’s reflected in the ideas you hold and the people you serve, even if those ideas fail and people turn on you. Character is the story your life tells when you might no longer have the strength to tell it yourself.
“Nearly all men can withstand adversity,” President Abraham Lincoln once said, “but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” You don’t have to agree with what Biden fought for, you don’t have to like his record, and you don’t have to support his party, but last night, President Joseph R. Biden, who still has more power than anyone on earth, passed the character test. And he asked a riven country to try to do the same.
Now let’s turn to the campaign, which, as ever, is a testing ground of character.
Campaign rallies are not known for their subtle rhetoric, so when a local politician is trying to juggle the twin duties of whipping up a partisan crowd while simultaneously kissing their candidate’s butt, it’s usually not surprising they get a little sloppy.
But it’s worth paying attention to what Ohio Sen. George Lang said to a crowd as he introduced former President Donald Trump and JD Vance the other day. Arriving at the podium chanting Trump’s now-famous epizeuxis “fight, fight, fight,” Lang warned of an upcoming civil war if Democrats win the election. “I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County’s JD Vance are the last chance to save our country politically,” Lang said, sweating with enthusiasm in the summer sun. “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.” And then, he added a little boost for those prepping for battle. “If we come down to a civil war, I’m glad we got people like Bikers for Trump on our side.”
No one followed Lang on stage and pushed back or suggested it was horrendously dangerous rhetoric. It wasn’t until much later when the recklessness of the comments began to circulate more widely that Lang was forced to apologize.
“Remarks I made earlier today at a rally in Middletown do not accurately reflect my view,” Lang said, as if somehow his mouth had gone rogue from his brain. “I regret the divisive remarks I made in the excitement of the moment on stage. Especially in light of the assassination attempt on President Trump last week, we should all be mindful of what is said at political events, myself included."
Amen to that.
Still, fears of a second civil war permeate the campaign, and while I don’t normally hyperventilate over these hypothetical, partisan-stoked fears because the institutions in the US have mostly proven to be resilient, the horrific assassination attempt on Trump and the events of Jan. 6, 2021, have made the descent in political violence a genuine scenario that demands attention. Stable democracies, like bankruptcy, end in two ways: gradually, and then suddenly.
People in the US are getting used to this sort of rhetoric by now — though normalizing it is one of the most dangerous signs of decline — but people outside the US, especially in the country’s closest allies, are deeply apprehensive. Is the US really inching toward a civil war?
To find out, we partnered on a poll with David Coletto, CEO and chair of Abacus Data, and the results are unsettling. Thirty-nine percent of Canadians say it is likely that the United States will descend into civil war, while another 23% believe it is somewhat likely. 39%? Yes. The numbers are starker among young people, with 48% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 saying a civil war is likely.
“Canadians are watching the increasing polarization and political violence in the US, and many of them are not shutting the door to that division escalating into full-scale civil war,” Coletto says. “Younger Canadians, in particular, are inclined to think that the very worst outcome is at least a possibility.”
While the polling figures are accurate, let’s hope the sentiments are wrong.
Abacus also asked about mandatory retirement ages for politicians in the wake of Biden’s agonizing decision to step aside and, again, most Canadians heartily agree that he is too old to lead. Seventy-three percent believe there should be a maximum age for a president or prime minister. What age? 28% say 71-plus while 48% say somewhere between 61 and 70, which is surprising.
“The whole Joe Biden saga put into clear perspective the effect aging can have on leaders charged with the most important executive functions in the world,” Coletto says. “Most Canadians think political leaders have a best-before date, and the average age of a president or prime minister is around the usual age of retirement, which is 65.”
You can see the full poll results and Coletto’s comments about it here. GZERO will continue to work with Abacus Data, a well-respected Canadian polling firm, to explore how Canadians and Americans feel about their relationship, the US election, and more in the coming 100 days. Check out their work here.
Myanmar military troops take part in a military exercise at Ayeyarwaddy delta region in Myanmar, February 3, 2018.
Myanmar’s military moves into Rakhine villages
Myanmar’s military has begun expelling residents from villages surrounding Rakhine’s state capital Sittwe in response to threats from the rebel Arakan Army. The junta is reportedly moving into these villages, planting landmines, and bombing roads that lead into the city to inhibit the AA’s advances as it takes an increasingly defensive stance in its three-year-old civil war. The military has also been accused of murdering 76 people and burning down villages on the outskirts of Sittwe, allegations it denies.
Rakhine is home to the overwhelmingly Buddhist country’s largest Muslim population, which has been subjected to ethnic cleansing in recent years, and the state has once again become a hotbed for escalating ethno-religious violence. The AA, a largely Buddhist rebel group, launched a major offensive seven months ago and has allied itself with other ethnic militias nationwide. They’ve made great advances, capturing nine of the 17 Rakhine townships.
What we’re watching: Will the military be able to hold on against the AA? The capture of Sittwe would be a devastating loss for the junta – it would be the first state capital to come under rebel control, representing a major morale victory for the embattled rebels.
The military seems scared of the prospect.They’ve recently been entering refugee camps across the Bangladesh border to forcefully recruit Rohingya Muslims, a group they once massacred, in a desperate bid to augment their bruised military.Women and children wait for food distribution from the United Nations World Food Programme in Thonyor, Leer state, South Sudan, back in 2017.
South Sudan customs dispute taxes a long-suffering population
Even as three-quarters of South Sudan’s people face starvation, a squabble between the government and the UN over import taxes is leaving vital aid trucks stuck at the border.
The background: South Sudan’s trade ministry ordered this week that all goods trucks entering the East African country must pay a $300 tax. The measure was meant to ensure that the government got its share of revenue from imports that are often underbilled or misrepresented. There was supposed to be a carveout for UN aid vehicles, but if so, officials at the Ugandan border didn’t get the memo – at least not yet.
The bigger background: South Sudan is one of the world’s newest countries – and one of its poorest. After coming into existence in 2011 following years of war with the Sudanese government, it fell into its own civil war, which killed or displaced hundreds of thousands of people.
The legacy of that conflict – along with frequent natural disasters – persists: Seven million of the country’s 12 million people are facing hunger in the coming months. The harrowing civil war in Sudan, which just entered its second year, has exacerbated things, driving an estimated 500,000 people across the border into South Sudan, straining the country’s resources further.
Demis Hassabis, CEO of DeepMind Technologies and developer of AlphaGO, attends the AI Safety Summit in Bletchley Park, near Milton Keynes, Britain, November 2, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Google’s spending spree, Going corporate, Let’s see a movie, Court-ordered AI ban, Energy demands
100 billion: AI is a priority for many of Silicon Valley’s top companies — and it’s a costly one. Google DeepMind chief Demis Hassabis said that the tech giant plans to spend more than $100 billion developing artificial intelligence. That’s the same amount that rival Microsoft is expected to spend in building an AI-powered supercomputer, nicknamed Stargate.
72.5: The free market is dominating the AI game: Of the foundation models released between 2019 and 2023, 72.5% of them originated from private industry, according to a new Staford report. 108 models were released by companies, as opposed to 28 from academia, nine from an industry-academia collaboration, and four from government. None at all were released through a collaboration between government and industry.
5: The A24 film Civil War has garnered considerable controversy for its content, but its promotion is under scrutiny as well. Five posters for the film were created using artificial intelligence and depict scenes that never occur in the narrative. That’s kicked off a debate about the ethics of using AI in film marketing as well as questions of whether this is false advertising for the movie itself.
1,000: A sex offender in the UK who was found to have created 1,000 indecent images of children was banned from using any “AI creating tools” for five years by a British court. It’s not clear if he was actually using AI to create the illegal images in question, or if the order is peremptory, but it could serve as a model for future punishment in UK cases in the future. Meanwhile, on April 23, a group of AI companies including Google, Meta, and OpenAI, pledged to better prevent their tools from creating sexualized images of children and other exploitative material.
4.5: Salesforce is calling on AI companies to disclose the energy efficiency and carbon footprint of their models, and asking legislators to pass new laws aimed at demanding transparency and reducing the total energy consumption of AI. Salesforce’s best estimates put the total power generation demands of global data centers at 1.5% but warn that that figure could increase to 4.5% in the coming years absent intervention.A police officer patrols near the police headquarters as Haiti continues in a state of emergency, in Port-au-Prince, Haiti March 6, 2024.
Haiti’s gangs threaten civil war
Prime Minister Ariel Henry is refusing calls to resign and remains stranded outside Haiti while the leader of the country’s largest gang alliance, Jimmy Chérizier, threatens civil war.
Henry visited Nairobi last week in an attempt to secure a Kenyan-led intervention force to help bring peace to Haiti. But heavily armed gangs took advantage of his absence and launched assaults against Haiti’s two largest prisons and the international airport in Port-au-Prince, paralyzing the country. Henry has since tried but failed to return to Haiti.
Washington responded to the chaos on Wednesday, calling for an “urgent” political transition, and the UN Security Council met behind closed doors to discuss next steps. Henry’s predecessor, Claude Joseph, told CNN that political groups within Haiti are discussing a plan for a three-member transitional council that will select an interim president to organize elections.
Why the power vacuum? Haiti has not held polls since 2016, has no elected officials in office, and Henry and his government are widely seen as illegitimate. He came to power unelected after President Jovenal Moïse was assassinated in 2021 but has been unable to prevent men like Chérizier from seizing 80% of the capital and unleashing intense physical and sexual violence on ordinary Haitians.
Two names to watch: Guy Philippe and Chérizier. Philippe played a leading role in the 2004 coup and is pressing for a council of his choice to put him in power. Chérizier, however, is the man with the most firepower.
Danny Shaw, a Haiti expert at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs, says Haitians don’t see Chérizier, aka Barbecue, as a panacea.
“Overwhelmingly within Haiti – besides Barbecue's own base down in Delmas – they say he's an opportunist. They say he's not trustworthy,” says Shaw.
During his recent visits, Shaw also hasn’t seen much enthusiasm for the long-awaited Kenyan-led police mission, which is again in doubt. Despite Washington’s efforts to stay at arm's length, Shaw says many Haitians fear the deployment will amount to a “US invasion and occupation in blackface” that will fail to resolve the nation’s crises.The beach, Red Sea State, Port Sudan, Sudan.
Sudan’s lost sea access worsens humanitarian disaster
Since fighting between rival military factions in Sudan erupted last April, nearly 8 million people have been displaced, and 24 million require urgent food aid. But the crisis now may begin to beggar description as the country loses access to its Red Sea coast and migrants stream across its borders.
Refugee influx. Over 400,000 Sudanese refugees have fled to Libya, where they face long waits for registration, leading many to turn to smugglers to attempt dangerous Europe-bound sea crossings. Their first destination is Italy, with nearly 6,000 Sudanese refugees arriving there in 2023.
Numbers are expected to soar this year, prompting Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni to urge support for investments designed to disincentivize migration. Meloni unveiled a plan last month to enhance energy cooperation with African states and assist them in areas including health and education, at a cost of 3 million euros annually for four years.
Impact of Houthi attacks. Houthi attacks in the Red Sea have cut off Sudanese ports and are disrupting aid shipments, forcing humanitarian agencies to reroute deliveries at significantly higher costs. Some shipments are delayed, others are stuck altogether, and still more face exorbitant air-freight costs. Aid workers describe the situation as "catastrophic" and fear mass starvation is imminent.Women from the city of Al-Junina (West Darfur) cry after receiving the news about the death of their relatives as they waited for them in Chad, November 7, 2023.
Sudan’s civil war rages through Darfur
Sudan’s civil war reached a grim turning point this week as Rapid Support Forces paramilitaries solidified their control over the Darfur region in Western Sudan. The RSF has been accused of war crimes there as part of its conflict with the Sudanese government.
The background: Back in 2019, the Sudanese military and the RSF cooperated to topple long-serving dictator Omar Bashir, but they fell out over how to work together thereafter. In April of this year, clashes between them erupted into a full-blown war that has left thousands dead and driven more than 5.7 million people from their homes. More than a million have fled to neighboring Chad, one of Africa’s poorest countries.
In Darfur specifically, the RSF and allied Arab militias have been accused in recent months of targeted massacres of the Masalit, a local Black African ethnic group that is a minority within the wider Arab-dominated Sudanese state. RSF fighters have also been accused of systematically abducting and raping women and girls in Darfur.
Flashback: Twenty years ago, Darfur was the scene of gruesome atrocities in which the Sudanese government and local Arab militias (including the fearsome janjaweed horsemen) slaughtered more than 170,000 Masalit in response to a rebellion against the central government. The US government labeled that campaign a “genocide” in 2004.
Peace talks have failed. There are various cross-cutting initiatives led by the African Union, Egypt, the US and Saudi Arabia, and South Sudan. Several ceasefires have fallen apart already. Meanwhile, Sudan’s civilians continue to pay the price.
The UN warned on Tuesday that the deepening war had “turned homes into cemeteries.”
A young Darfuri girl carries her sleeping brother at Zam Zam camp in Sudan's North Darfur state
Sudan’s Darfur region faces repeat of genocidal history
This week, Sudan passed the 100-day mark of brutal fighting between its army and the Rapid Support Forces, a powerful paramilitary group. As the fighting rages on, it is becoming clear to the international community that the RSF has returned to the Darfur region to complete the genocide it began 20 years ago against non-Arabs.
The warring factions are led by Sudan’s de facto leader Gen. Abdel Fattah Burhan and his former ally and junta deputy Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (aka Hemedti), with Burhan leading the armed forces and Hemedti leading the RSF. Their power struggle has brought the country to the brink of civil war and a potential state collapse.
The two sides came to the negotiating table in Togo this week, a critical step after months of failed peace talks and broken cease-fires. But there is little evidence that these talks will go differently than in the past, especially since major stakeholders, specifically the Arab militias that have joined the RSF in Darfur, have boycotted the meetings.
A civil war would mean more tribal militias being drawn into the conflict, escalating violence and instability. At the beginning of the war, tribal militias denounced the power struggle. But as it progresses, more and more militias are choosing sides. In Darfur, Arab-tribal militias are joining the RSF and are accused of looting as well as raping and killing non-Arab people in the region.
The ethnic violence in Darfur is historically rooted in water disputes between Arab and non-Arab communities. The 2003 civil war became known as the world’s “first climate change war,” spurred by the former president, Omar al-Bashi, who stayed in power by exploiting the tensions over resources to recruit and arm Arab militias. These fighters would become the Janjaweed and eventually the RSF.
While civilians across Sudan are suffering, non-Arab communities in Darfur are at acute risk. Since the conflict broke out in April, more than 10,000 people have been killed in West Darfur. The governor was abducted and killed in June after publicly blaming the RSF for the deaths. Satellite imagery from Yale University’s Conflict Observatory has identified mass graves and entire neighborhoods that have been burned to the ground.
Some 200,000 non-Arab people died in Darfur between 2003 and 2005 in what would later be categorized as genocide. Today, the same population is at risk of mass atrocities at the hands of the RSF.
The historical context in Darfur matters, because it reveals why the situation in Sudan is not an easy one to solve. Since 2003, international intervention in Darfur – and Sudan writ large – has largely been a failure. Revelations of the Darfur genocide led to cries of “never again” and passionate movements to “Save Darfur,” and a brief moment in 2019 when the US‘ hopes of establishing a democracy looked possible. But these efforts, whether peacekeeping, humanitarian, or governmental, have largely failed because of the complexity of Sudan’s political environment.
These historic challenges remain today. International efforts to protect people in Darfur from the RSF must also avoid empowering the Sudanese armed forces, who are committing mass atrocities against civilians as well. Ethnic violence over resources will also be an escalating problem – fighting has already stopped farmers from planting crops, and climate change will only make matters worse in the drought-prone region.
Time is of the essence when it comes to peace talks. No recent conflict in Sudan has ended because of a military triumph. Instead, as the military stalemate wages on, violence and instability will only increase as more militias join the fighting. Civilians are already suffering as humanitarian and food aid is seized by the government’s army, and more than three million people have been displaced.
Critically, Sudan also borders seven other countries, so there is a strong likelihood that civil war could have a domino effect across the already troubled Chad Basin and the Sahel.
Has the world turned its back on Sudan? Ian Bremmer sat down with the US Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield to find out. Watch to hear what the US intends to do when it takes over as head of the UN’s Security Council in August.