War and Peace

On the 1st of February, Amnesty International, a human rights organization, released its report on Israel, which accuses Israel of practicing apartheid. Apartheid, which is a crime against humanity, can be defined as a “system of legalized racial segregation in which one racial group is deprived of political and civil rights.” The practice of apartheid is typically associated with South African policies of legal segregation toward its own non-whites inhabitants from 1948 to the early 1990s. The report, however, is filled with problems that lead toward a distorted factual and legal analysis. This article principally does four things: (1) it argues that Israel cannot be an apartheid state by the definition provided above, (2) it provides a non-exhaustive disputation of certain claims made in the report, (3) it displays the consequences of Amnesty’s standard of practicing apartheid if applied to other countries, and (4) it questions the inhumane remedies that Amnesty recommends the international community support and Israel adopt.

Israel is demonstrably not an apartheid state. Within Israel itself, Arabs are citizens of the state with the same individual rights as Jews. They have the opportunity to be represented in every aspect of Israeli society from the judiciary, politics (where one can even run in and vote for an anti-Zionist party), to the military. Israel also has an education system that allows for Arabs to transmit their cultural and historical heritage to their own community. When Ehud Olmert, a former Israeli prime minister, was on trial for corruption, there was an Arab Supreme Court judge who oversaw his trial. At this moment in Israel, there is an independent Arab party that is part of the government. The head of this Arab party has rejected Amnesty’s labeling of Israel as an apartheid state. During the apartheid era in South Africa such things as a black becoming a member of the highest court and sitting in judgement over a trial of a white politician would be unthinkable. Such things as having blacks being able to join the government and participate in politics under the color of their own parties would also be unimaginable. Blacks in South Africa only got the vote in 1994 while Israeli Arabs could vote for whoever they wanted since Israel’s first election in 1949.

Even Amnesty itself in the very report that it labels Israel an apartheid state admits that Israel has constitutional laws that provides protections to the minority and upholds the principle of equality (see page 64 in the English version). One can point to the Israeli Supreme Court expressly forbidding the allocation of state land on the basis of Jewish versus non-Jewish identity as seen for instance in the 2000 Katzir/Ka'adan ruling (which incidentally rejected the notion of basing a legal system on the principle of separate but equal) as an important example of Israel's protection of the rights of its Arab citizens. This refutes a central tenet of apartheid, which is enforced segregation, because Israeli Arabs are free to live wherever they want. While this ruling is briefly mentioned in the report (see pages 130-131), it is among the things that Amnesty distorts and unduly dismisses. In Israel today there exists some form of affirmative action programs for employment in the civil service which Arabs are qualified to receive. There was even such a case that was ruled favorably on by the Israeli Supreme Court in 2001 on this issue. All of the abovementioned Israeli laws and benefits for its Arab citizens are contrary to the workings of an actual apartheid regime such as South Africa. To that end, Amnesty readily admits in its report that Israeli apartheid is not the same or analogous to South African apartheid (see pages 13-14). What Amnesty seeks to argue in the case of Israeli Arab citizens is that their national rights have inferior status compared to Israeli Jews. This is a topic that I will return to later.

The condition of Arabs who live in the West Bank and Gaza since the 1990s Oslo Accords is that the vast majority (90 percent according to Amnesty) of Palestinians live under varying degrees of autonomous rule. These Arabs are citizens of another political entity- that of the Palestinian Authority (or Hamas) which is in a violent dispute with Israel. This autonomous entity has been offered full independence a number of times by Israel and it has rejected all these offers. It therefore makes little sense to describe Israel's regulation of its borders and its decision whether or not to allow non-Israelis (that in the case of Palestinians, may also be hostile) into Israel, as apartheid. By Amnesty’s logic, any border policy that any country has would be a policy of apartheid. Such an understanding of apartheid would conflict with long-standing international law which gives states a clear mandate to safeguard their territorial integrity.

Amnesty’s report is full of problems with its analysis. Here I will deal with two claims it makes in its opening pages. The very first thing that the report opens with is a narrative about a dispute over various properties in Sheikh Jarrah, the demonstrations by Arabs over this dispute, and the response by the Israeli police. Amnesty claims that Israel wanted to illegally transfer Jewish settlers to these properties by evicting its Arab inhabitants and that Israel responded to peaceful protests through using excessive force (see pages 11, 133-134). The reality is that the properties in question belonged to Jews since the 19th century and that when the properties fell under Jordanian occupation they did not transfer these properties to another private party as they did with other Jewish property that came under their control from 1949 to 1967. The private legal dispute is between Jewish landlords, their Arab tenants whose leases have expired, and some Arab squatters.

As for Amnesty’s depiction that Israel used excessive force on peaceful protestors, the Palestinians did more than just launch a social media campaign for international attention and gather peaceably. They rioted repeatedly including on the Temple Mount (the Al-Aqsa Mosque compound) itself and there were incidents where Israeli civilians were attacked. The mob chanted violent slogans in addition to throwing stones, bottles, and fireworks at the police. Such rioting wounded 17 officers in one night! In the face of rioting, the police are lawfully permitted to use crowd-dispersing methods and arrest rioters. In terms of the riot on the Temple Mount, there is video evidence of a rather coordinated attack on the Israeli police as various incendiary objects are hurled in their direction with protesters appearing to shine lights from green lasers to disorient the police. Such objects en masse being the possession of persons would even suggest that this riot was pre-planned rather than a spontaneous occurrence. Somehow this information concerning the Temple Mount riot, attacks on police, and Israeli civilians are glossed over in Amnesty’s analysis.

The second claim that Amnesty repeatedly makes is that prior to the creation of Israel, that Jews only owned 6.5 percent of the land while the Palestinian Arabs, who comprised around 70 percent of the population, owned 90 percent of private property in the British Mandate of Palestine and now the situation has been turned on its head (see pages 15, 22, 74, and 113). Why does Amnesty frame things in this manner? One statistic (dealing with the Jews) relates to the total percentage of land in the Mandate itself that was owned by a group while the other statistic deals with the percentage of total private property owned by a group. This is comparing apples to oranges. Assuming that figure of 90 percent that Amnesty gave is true, one should bear in mind that during the British Mandatory period land purchases of Arab land by Jews were restricted by the British. This policy existed despite the charter for the Mandate promising that Britain would encourage Jewish settlement and land purchase. Zooming out to see the general situation of land allotment prior to Israel’s creation and after would give us a fuller picture of who owned what. Prior to the State of Israel, the state controlled between 44.1 percent to over 70 percent of all lands in the Mandate. This variance depends on whether one accounted purely for state owned land or state owned but leased land.

A breakdown of ownership of the land can be seen as follows: Jews owned 7.4 percent of the total land in Palestine, Palestinian Arabs owned 11.6 percent of the land, and foreign owners controlled about 6.9 percent of the total land. The primary documents which break down figures of land ownership in the Mandate are the 1946 Palestine Survey (see pages 243-245 for Jewish ownership and pages 255-258 for state lands) and the 1947 General Assembly Ad Hoc Committee's Minority Report. As for the situation being turned on its head; using Amnesty's phrasing, Jews today in Israel, who comprise a little over 70 percent (or over 80 percent if you use the 1995 data) of the population, hold about 50 percent of private property (with non-Jews holding the other share of private property). The Israeli state directly owns 80.4 percent of the land which is leased to Jew and Arab alike, the Jewish National Fund owns 13.4 percent of land in Israel, with the remaining 6.5 percent being purely private property. Amnesty itself provides some figures about land allotment in modern Israel which roughly conforms to these numbers (see page 128). What all this means is that the Jews disproportionately own less private property then the Arabs in either era. Yet, according to Amnesty the situation has turned on its head because of an ongoing 70-year Israeli policy of seizing control of resources for Jews.

These two highlights of claims should not be seen as the only problematic issues with the Amnesty report. There are far more errors and distortions in that report. For instance, some of Amnesty’s sources in its own report directly refute what Amnesty is arguing. Amnesty also makes conflicting claims like how Palestinians in East Jerusalem are not able to participate in political life while literally one sentence later noting that they boycott Israeli municipal elections (see page 21). There are also more instances of Amnesty clearly not giving basic context for its claims (because that context would be damning to what their narrative is). None of these types of problems are new with regard to the past quality of Amnesty’s reporting on Israel. The quality of reporting should not be especially surprising given that one of Amnesty’s own researchers on Israel has been caught venerating terrorists.

Amnesty’s standards for what constitutes apartheid would be absurd if adopted internationally. While Amnesty says that it respects the Jewish people’s right of self-determination (see page 38), it seeks to fundamentally argue that in the case of Israel any attempt to establish a state that defines itself as the nation state for the Jewish people is practicing apartheid (see for instance their comments on the Nation State Law on pages 65-67). This begs the question, is Israel unique in its assertion of national rights or in how it goes about asserting these rights? The answer is emphatically no. Israel’s right of citizenship laws, which Amnesty takes umbrage with, is far from unique. Rights of citizenship through descent are commonplace in the world at large, with many democracies having such laws. Many states, democracies included, have constitutions that enshrine their national characteristics. Unlike Israel, many states, democracies included, have a national religion.

By Amnesty’s logic the constitution of Palestine is discriminatory and grounds for apartheid as it proclaims a national religion (Islam), states that the principles of Sharia law (religious law) shall be the basis of legislation, establishes a national/ethnic identity (Arab), a national language (Arabic), and a national flag. Yet somehow Palestine does not merit being called an apartheid state by Amnesty. In Palestine’s case though there are blatantly discriminatory and inhumane laws that in practice prohibit the selling of land to Jews. Nor is Palestine unique as the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan too has such a law on the books. Amnesty has detailed in their International Report 2020/2021 systematic discrimination against Palestinians in Lebanon that prohibits them from “owning or inheriting property, accessing public education and health services and from working in at least 36 professions” (see page 226 in the English report), yet it does not call Lebanon an apartheid state. Right now, Amnesty only has proclaimed two countries in the world as practicing apartheid - Israel and Myanmar. Yet, when they tweet out slogans like on February 3rd demanding the end of apartheid they only provide a link about “Israeli apartheid” and not about Myanmar as well. An interview with officials from Amnesty International revealed that they chose to focus on Israel due to it being a nebulous “subject of a growing debate” and that they might eventually look at whether other countries fall into their definition of apartheid. In effect, they admitted that this was not an exhaustive survey of states that qualify as apartheid, which might have made their work more objective, but special investigations of certain states.

Given that Amnesty International is known as a human rights organization, one might think that their recommendations about what to do with the Jewish State would be humane. They are not. For while Amnesty has accused Israel of engaging in the illegal practice of ethnic cleansing, what it demands Israel do in part to remedy its supposed apartheid is to ethnically cleanse Judea and Samaria (the West Bank) of Jews. Amnesty International proclaims that this is the proper remedy which international law requires for people who illegally settle land (see page 274 of their report). Amnesty makes no difference on whether the Jews there live on their own private property, or on state land, nor do they consider whether that property belonged to Jews prior to 1948, since in theory it would exempt them from being forced off the land. Like the case regarding the Sheikh Jarrah properties, Amnesty does not seem to recognize any right of Jews to live in these places regardless of the circumstances of Jewish ownership. I do wonder, however, if Amnesty would also advocate that Israeli Arabs also be expelled (or have their property taken away) from these same territories under this decree given that as much as 20 percent of Israeli Arabs have (or lease) property in the West Bank. This stance over Jewish settlements is all the more curious given that in the same report Amnesty demands Israel recognize illegally built Bedouin settlements in the Negev (see page 273).

Amnesty may respond that even if the sentence of expulsion of Jewish settlers is harsh and insensitive, Amnesty is merely following what international law requires in such circumstances of an occupation. But is this indeed what international law prescribes? According to Eugene Kontorovitch, an authority on international law, it is not even if the laws of occupation apply. Kontorovitch conducted a study where he examined how international law (especially the famed Article 49(6) of the 4th Geneva Convention, which prohibits state deportation or transference of its own population into occupied territories) was applied in similar contexts and scenarios to Israel around the world. What he finds is that in situations of prolonged occupation it is normal to see large scale-settlement of occupied land, there has never been a case where the occupying power has prevented such migration, that, outside the case of Israel, such migration is not seen by the international community as violating Article 49(6), and furthermore, outside the case of Israel, the international community has not claimed that there is an obligation of the occupying power to remove their settlers. A “law” that is applied to Israel but not to other powers engaged in similar activities cannot earnestly be said to be international law at all but just an unfair double standard.

It should now be clear that what Amnesty seeks to do is make, encourage, and implement “international law” that is selective about what it enforces. It has singled out one state, the world’s only Jewish state, to it and is constructing an international regime that systematically segregates and discriminates against this one state on the basis of ethnic/religious/national lines. To use Amnesty’s verbiage, it is demanding apartheid against Israel. In doing so it makes a mockery of what human rights are supposed to be about, which is the achievement of equality before the law, and what apartheid was. As such the language of human rights has been weaponized by Amnesty. To identify and assess discriminatory regimes, you need clear and objective standards to do so and this report by Amnesty does not create a clear or meaningful objective standard. Until Amnesty retracts this sham report and actually starts to earnestly engage with human rights, its biased reporting and recommendations on Israel should be called out and no organization or government should give serious weight to Amnesty's reporting on Israel.

Nine Democrats and 7 Republicans are competing to fill the seat in the newly created 6th congressional district where I happen to live in Oregon. Following the primaries of May 17th, 2022, the field will narrow and in November voters will be asked to choose from a slate that will include one Republican. one Democrat, and likely some smaller party candidates by selecting one as is required by plurality voting, by far the most commonly used method in the United States and in many countries around the world. Given the unequaled importance of elections in a functioning democracy, does this winner take all method serve us well or does it contribute to the polarization and alienation of the electorate? Is there a better method of voting that will allow voters to more completely express themselves and yield an outcome that best expresses the preferences of the people?

In his book Chaotic Elections! A Mathematician Looks at Voting, Prof. Donald Saari of the University of California, Irvine, draws the analogy between ways of determining class ranking and voting methods. He notes: “In this comparison, ‘students’ represent ‘candidates’ and the instructor of each course represents a ‘voter.’” (p. 20) He points out that plurality voting in which only a voter’s first choice is counted is tantamount to deciding class rankings “solely on the number of A’s a student receives.” (p. 20). The absurdity of considering only the number of the highest grade while ignoring the distribution of other grades to select a valedictorian is so clear that no school uses it. Instead, a student’s class ranking is determined by his or her grade point which is calculated from the numbers of B’s, C’s, D’s, and F’s, as well as A’s. There is one positional voting method that asks voters to rank each candidate from first to last. That is the electoral analog to using grade point average to place a student in a class. However, the current favorite of electoral reformers now used in several places in the United States, Ranked Choice Voting (RCV), is not it.

The idea that a candidate who wins over 50% of the votes must be declared the winner is so ingrained in our political psyche that when RCV is proposed as an alternative to plurality voting, it too must somehow preserve majority rule. In an Op-Ed piece in the Boston Globe on 20 September 2020, Jeff Jacoby quotes Evan Falchuk who headed the group that unsuccessfully advocated the adoption of RCV in Massachusetts: “Democracy is supposed to be majority rules. We should have a system where the majority wins.”

A growing number of cities and states, including New York City, Maine, and Alaska, adopted RCV. While this move toward positional voting is laudable, it does not eliminate many problems. Most seriously, RCV immediately devolves into an altered form of plurality voting and thus inherits many of its shortcomings. One fundamental problem with plurality voting is that, like determining class ranking by only considering the number of A’s, it ignores the complete information a voter who ranks all the candidates provides. If a candidate does not receive over 50% of the first-place votes, a convoluted process of eliminating the candidate with the lowest number of first-place votes and reallocating his or her votes to second-place candidates kicks in. This continues until a candidate emerges with at least 50% of the reassigned votes, so multiple passes may be required before a winner emerges. A voter who only ranked a candidate who is eliminated becomes disenfranchised. Using the analogy to determine class ranking, RCV inflates the grades of some students after others are expelled from school to arrive at a winner. Since the “majority” is artificially created by cannibalizing the individual rankings, RCV can be viewed as the bastard child of majority rule and positional voting.

There is, however, a positional voting method that uses all the information voters provide, disenfranchises no one, uniquely satisfies several rational properties, and selects a winner in a single pass. Named for Jean-Charles de Borda, an eighteenth-century French mathematician, the Borda Count is the exact analog to determining class ranking by grade point average, the universally recognized fairest method for doing so. With the Borda Count, the top- ranked candidate of each voter gets a Borda Score equal to one less than the total number of candidates, the second-ranked gets two less, and so on down to the candidate ranked last who gets 0. So, for 4 candidates, the Borda Scores are 3, 2, 1, 0 for the highest through lowest ranked candidates. Candidates that are tied each get the average of the total of the scores for the positions they occupy. The societal outcome is the ranking of candidates based on the totals of each candidate’s Borda Scores. The Borda Winner is the candidate with the largest total. The total Borda Score for each candidate represents his or her strength of preference which is a more complete representation of the voters’ assessment than the percent of first place votes.

But what if some or all the candidates are unacceptable to a voter? Certainly, one may refuse to vote, but then his or her voice is not heard. Recently, John Neatrour and I published a paper in the peer-reviewed open source online journal, SAGE Open, that offers a remedy. “The Power of None” introduces Borda with None (BwN), a marriage of two ideas, the Borda Count and None of these candidates (N) as a binding option. It is almost the same as a method recommended by C. L. Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll) in 1873 (see pages 279-286 in Classics of Social Choice for a description of Carroll’s method) differing only in the way ties are scored.

Let’s see how BwN would work for a hypothetical election involving four candidates: Alice, Brent, Carla, and Derek, compared to plurality voting and RCV. Adding N, voters have 5 alternatives to rank. The table below shows the rankings of 6400 voters. Notice that for 2200 voters, all four candidates are ranked equally below first placed N, so each gets the average of the rankings: (2+3+4+5)/4=3.5.

With plurality voting, N wins with 2200 first place votes or 34.38% of the vote, followed by Derek with 1200 (18.75%), Alice with 1100 (17.19%), Carla with 1000 (15.63%), and Brent with 900 (14.06%). So even though the other 4200 voters find all or some of the slate acceptable, a minority would overrule their preferences. This is equivalent to picking N as the valedictorian since it has the plurality of A’s despite the fact that it has 1500 D’s and 2700 F’s.

Converting the rankings to Borda Scores by subtracting the rank from 5, then multiplying the scores by the number of voters and summing the results for each candidate gives the following societal outcome: Brent is the Borda Winner with a total Borda Score of 15600 followed by Alice (14900), Carla (13600), N (10300) and Derek (9600). Using the Borda Count without N yields the same ranking of the four candidates, but this will not always be the case.

In this example, the Borda Winner, Brent, differs from the plurality winner, N. This, too, will not always be the case. For instance, if we use Borda without None, Brent is both the Borda and plurality winner. But here, Brent’s total Borda Score or strength of preference, based on the complete rankings of all the candidates by all the voters, is over 50% greater than N’s, so it better reflects the will of the voters.

Since no candidate ranked in first place with over 50% of the vote, the RCV method requires that we first eliminate Brent, the Borda Winner, who had the fewest first place votes, and allocate them to Carla who was ranked second by the 900 voters who ranked Brent first. Continuing, we next must eliminate Alice and give her 1100 first place votes to Carla. Since this still doesn’t give any of the remaining candidates over 50%, we eliminate Derek and give his 1200 first place votes to Carla. This leaves Carla, who ranked third using BwN and fourth in plurality voting, the RCV winner with 4200 votes (65.62%) and N with 2200 votes (34.38%). So, Carla benefited from having her grades inflated to A’s from B’s and C’s when 3 of her classmates were expelled. Unlike BwN which produces a societal outcome using all information provided by voters, RCV alters voter preferences in order to attain its desired target of “majority rule.” If voters provide a complete ranking of candidates, why not use Borda or BwN which only requires a single tally of the ballots?

Since the three methods yielded three different societal outcomes, how can we decide how to decide the winner of an election? Clearly, the analogy to obtaining the fairest and most representative class ranking has not been sufficient to do away with plurality voting or make RCV less attractive. Taking a mathematical approach, we identify four properties that a method should satisfy. The first two, Universal Domain and Complete Transitive Outcome, describe permissible votes and rational outcomes. Universal Domain means that all possible transitive rankings are permitted. A transitive ranking is one that doesn’t chase its tail. For example, if Abby is ranked higher than Bruce who is ranked higher than Carl, then neither Abby nor Bruce is ranked lower than Carl, and Bruce is not ranked above Abby. (An example of a nontransitive outcome is when Team A beats Team B which beats Team C which beats Team A.) If all voters’ rankings are transitive, the method that yields a transitive outcome satisfies Complete Transitive Outcome.

The two other properties address the consistency of the method, requiring that the societal outcome follows reasonably from the collection of voter preferences called a profile. The Pareto condition states that if each of the voters prefers Abby to Bruce then the societal outcome ranks Abby ahead of Bruce. Intensity of Binary Independence (IBI) also known as Intensity form of Independence of Irrelevant Alternatives (IIIA) addresses what to expect of the societal outcomes of two profiles that are similar but not identical.

Saari explains that a voting method “which ranks alternatives satisfies … IBI if society’s relative ranking of any two alternatives is determined only by each voter’s relative ranking of the pair and the intensity of that ranking. That is, for any pair of alternatives…, if each voter’s relative ranking and intensity ranking is the same for two profiles p1 and p2, then society’s ranking of this pair is the same for both profiles” (pp. 189-190). Let’s illustrate what this means with an example. Consider two profiles, Profile 1 which comprises the rankings for 5 candidates, Erica, Frank, Greta, Hal, and Izzy, and Profile 2 which contains the rankings of the remaining 4 candidates if Izzy pulls out after the voting is complete so that none of the relative rankings change. The tables below compare the two.

Notice that in both profiles 10 voters prefer Erica to Frank with no one in between. In other words, the intensity of the preference measured by the number of intervening candidates is 0. Another 10 prefer Erica to Frank with an intensity of 1. Also, 15 voters prefer Frank to Erica with an intensity of 0. In Profile 1, 25 voters prefer Greta to Hal with an intensity of 0 and 10 prefer Hal to Greta with an intensity of 2. In Profile 2, 25 voters prefer Greta to Hal with an intensity of 0 but now the remaining 10 prefer Hal to Greta with an intensity of 1. Using the Borda Count, the societal outcome for Profile 1 is Erica (with a Borda Score of 80), Hal (75), Greta (70), Frank (65) and Izzy (60) while Profile 2 yields Erica (60), Greta (55), Hal (50) and Frank (45). Since the relative ranking and intensity of Erica and Frank for each of the voters is the same in both profiles, the relative ranking of this pair in the societal outcome for each is the same. On the other hand, since the relative ranking and intensity of Greta and Hal are not the same for each voter in both profiles, it is not guaranteed that the relative rankings will be the same. In this case, they are not. With the intensity of preference of Hal over Greta weakened in Profile 2 compared to Profile 1, the relative rankings are reversed, and Greta moves ahead of Hal. If this were an election to choose the top three candidates to fill three city council seats, the two profiles would yield different outcomes. While in this example the first-place winner, Erica, is the same for both profiles, this may not always be the case.

Saari has proved that the Borda Count uniquely satisfies the four rational properties. What this means is that the Borda Count, unlike plurality voting, RCV, or any other positional voting method, best expresses voters’ preferences. Furthermore, BwN is constructed to ensure that no voter has a disproportionate influence on the outcome, especially in the case of ties, something that is not required of Borda per se. Thus, BwN uniquely satisfies a fifth property called anonymity, in addition to the four properties that Borda does. Our paper shows how BwN can be used to ensure that the impact on the societal outcome is the same for a voter who ranks a few but not all of the candidates as a voter who ranks all.

So, what happens if N does come in first? Our paper considers various options that depend on what’s at stake in an election. Though each has issues, we believe that giving individual voters the ability to veto all or part of a slate outweighs the potential problems. We also expect that if BwN is adopted, the acceptability of candidates and slates will increase because of the power of none wielded by the electorate.

As a society, we look beyond the number of “A’s” a student has and determine class ranking on the basis of all grades. While allowing positional voting, RCV seems to have become a favorite among those seeking an alternative to plurality voting but are still more focused on preserving “majority rule” at all costs. In contrast, adopting Borda or BwN will ensure that each voter’s complete ranking is used without reallocation to select candidates who are the most acceptable to the electorate thus enhancing the chance for greater voter satisfaction and participation. Unfortunately, neither will be an option in Oregon or anywhere else, for that matter, anytime soon.

The State of the Union Address (SOTU) by President Joe Biden on March 1st, 2022, was the last in a centennial series of addresses, which has become customary, since Woodrow Wilson, for the President of the United States to appear before a joint session of Congress, and expound on the domestic and foreign issues of the country, and how it is fairing during the given administration. That custom stems from Article II, Section 3, of the Constitution which states “he [the president] shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient; he may, on extraordinary Occasions, convene both Houses, or either of them, and in Case of Disagreement between them, with Respect to the Time of Adjournment, he may adjourn them to such Time as he shall think proper; he shall receive Ambassadors and other public Ministers; he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed, and shall Commission all the Officers of the United States.”

As I started doing the necessary research to analyze the current State of the Union, not only through President Biden’s eyes, but through an all-encompassing outlook, I realized how incapable I am to write upon the matter, for much context is needed to understand how the United States got here, through all of its incremental changes threaded by both parties throughout the decades, and it is very difficult to pin-point all the reasons to its current state, whether one likes it or not. Before one is able to make such an analysis, one needs, in my opinion, to understand the socio-economics, anthropology, religion of the United States and its demographics, psychological state, the natural environment and its resources. Indeed, the very background of all members of the Congress and the executive branch, and how they interact become relevant items to analyze. So too are foreign issues, education, and so on. These are macro issues, which everyone seems to have an opinion on, but there are micro issues, which almost no one pays attention to. These are the nitty gritty work of state or municipality legislature for example, and in the face of such complexity, one should be careful to give brash answers, and instead look for the answers in more practical ways, from inside out, because more often than not, they [answers] can be very subtle, and they could very well start within the microcosm, and not the macrocosm.

The executive scope of Washington is much more glamorous than local or state politics, but much harder to achieve results, according to Barack Obama’s early career advice when he started to work in Illinois’ politics. Such scope deals with the entirety of the picture, putting together municipalities, states, and foreign affairs. Therefore, if the houses of the municipality and state are not functioning well, with the passing of laws that upholds justice, how can the United States work within itself and with other countries? Now the question may be ‘what is justice’? It might be the very heart of the matter in the chaos of all levels of politics. But here I would only like to instigate the readers to really go look for themselves what justice is, with humility and an open ear.

As I watched the SOTU Address of 2022, 2020, 2012, 2008, and 1965, I noticed an odd amount of cheering in between almost every sentence or so, and not to my surprise, there is a story behind this as well. Dueling standing ovations, often triggered by the mos t banal comment, started way back in the 80s, during Reagan’s administration. One could make the argument that the glamor of Washington grew even more so then, and America’s thirst for entertainment in everything, including the sacredness of the country’s leadership. However, this is still way too superficial of an argument to make. I am not trying to blame Reagan for the partisanship wars and drama. I am only trying to warn about how very small details such as this, that could have influenced the way politics are made, and once time accumulates all such details, one can forget why one is at the current state of being to begin with. Each person therefore should be responsible to take a step back from the grandeur and glamor of the big stage, and look into the small pieces that make up all that is around us, starting with oneself, and people around you. It is very difficult to talk about certain values, religion, and politics, but it is much more doable on a small and respectful scale, where one is not caught up by the much bigger winds of doctrine.

Administrations come and go, and they at times work towards preserving their legacies, instead of the very foundations of the country’s government. It is understandable, it is difficult to start afresh and take a leap of faith to fix things, and rather cling to the status-quo. Therefore, the responsibility lies with each and everyone of us, and if one is able to do all they can within their reach, in a manner which is not destructive, the State of the Union would incrementally shift to a more unified reality.

On February 24th, 2022, Vladimir Putin finally gave the order to invade Ukraine, announcing the attack as a "special operation" to "de-nazify" neighboring Ukraine. Although the original Russian rationale given was that the Russian troops were being sent to act as "peacekeepers" between Ukrainian forces and pro-Russian separatists in the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, the Russian offensive has entered into mainland Ukraine, with heavy fighting being reported around Kyiv and around the country.

It's no secret that Ukraine was and is outnumbered and outgunned compared to the size of Russia's military (although not its invasion force in Ukraine). While estimates of Ukraine and Russia's military capabilities (at the start of the invasion) differ depending on the media source, all estimates agree Ukraine’s air force is well under 200 combat aircraft and many estimates place that number at around 120. In contrast Russian air force strength is estimated to vastly exceed those numbers, exceeding 1,000 aircraft. Additionally Russia has around six times as many tanks and artillery, four times as many active military personnel and around twice as many reserve troops. On paper, these numbers painted a bleak picture of the Ukrainian chances for success in repelling Russian troops and safeguarding their sovereignty and democratic values. However, outcomes in military conflicts aren't only decided by looking at which side has the biggest army and the Ukrainians have some strong advantages that suggest they will succeed and be able to effectively defend themselves.

The first major advantage for Ukraine's military is that of morale. Even before the strength of Ukrainian resistance became apparent in the first week of the invasion, the Russians were already at a strong disadvantage in this area. Reports have surfaced of Russian troops being unaware they were going to enter Ukraine until the night before or expecting to be welcomed as heroes, only to find themselves in the midst of a bloody conflict. On the other hand, the Ukrainians have not only been aware of the dangers they've been facing, they have ironclad motivations for facing them- a desire to defend their homeland and protect their homeland, their fellow countrymen and families.

Additionally, Ukrainian morale has received a strong boost from President Vlodmyr Zelensky’s leadership. Zelensky’s rejection of President Biden’s offer to evacuate and his purported response “I need ammunition, not a ride”, was an important paragon of Ukrainian defiance that showed Zelensky’s belief in Ukraine’s ability to hold off Russian advances around Kyiv. Ukraine’s president responded to rumors that he was hiding (following three attempts on his life), by posting a video message to Russia giving the address of his offices and saying he was not hiding or afraid. He has also consistently, urgently and dramatically pleaded and at times demanded Western aid and has successfully advocated to the West that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is not only a Ukrainian problem but a Western one as well and his pleas in Western capitals have been an important factor in helping to expedite and increase Western military and humanitarian aid to Ukraine.

Another major advantage the Ukrainians have had in this conflict is the support of the West. Since the start of the Russian invasion, the EU, US, UK, South Korea, New Zealand, Japan, Canada and Australia are some, but not all, of the countries that have all leveled a series of sanctions against Russia. Dozens of large multinational corporations such as Samsung, Coca Cola, Disney, H&M, Netflix and Spotify, have paused sales or closed their branches in Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine. Russia was also stripped of its privilege to host the 2022 champions league final in May and the US, EU and UK (along with some other countries) have closed their airspace to Russian air traffic. These are a list of a few of the extensive economic measures taken by the US and its allies to penalize Russia over its invasion of Ukraine.

In addition to the severe economic penalties the West has used to target the Russian economy, it has also sent large shipments of military aid to Ukraine. The UK has sent over thousands of NLAW anti-tank weapons and starstreak anti-aircraft missiles. Germany has sent over hundreds of Stinger and Strela anti-aircraft missiles, along with thousands of anti-tank missiles. The US also announced on March 16th that it would be giving Ukraine an additional 800 million in military aid, in addition to the 1.2 billion dollars the US has already given Ukraine since the start of the Biden administration. These 3 countries are only some of the Western nations that have sent large shipments of military aid to Ukraine since the conflict started.

It’s still an open question what Putin’s goals are regarding Ukraine. Does he hope to annex the entire Ukraine and replace the current Ukrainian government with officials that are more sympathetic to Russian interests? Any regime change and puppet government installed by Russia would likely face a heavy insurgency and prove unstable and likely unsustainable long-term. Furthermore, if Putin wanted to get rid of Zelensky, invading Ukraine was an extremely foolish attempt to do so, given the fact that before the invasion Zelensky’s approval ratings were regressing, in a way, the Russian invasion saved President Zelensky’s political career. While Putin himself has denied he is seeking regime change he also was saying this during the numerous attempts on Zelesnky’s life.

Perhaps he hopes to annex just the Donbas (the Donetsk and Luhansk regions)? If so, one has to consider that he invaded the entirety of Ukraine, not just the Donbas. One could attempt to argue that dealing a knockout blow to Ukraine’s military by attacking Kyiv and decapitating its political and military leadership would effectively reduce the Ukrainian military’s will to fight for the Donbas, but if this were Putin’s motivation behind invading the entire Ukraine, then he miscalculated badly. Or perhaps he simply can’t afford to allow Ukraine to join NATO and hopes to send a strong message to the West that Russia will never tolerate this happening? After all, it is said Putin has strong feelings of resentment about Western and NATO encroachment into neighboring states that have traditionally fallen under Russia’s sphere of influence. However, it is hard to view Ukraine’s application to join NATO as the sole cause driving Putin to order Russian troops into Ukraine, because Zelensky has reportedly agreed during (recent ongoing peace negotiations with Russia) to drop Ukraine’s request to gain NATO membership, a request that had been around for years but had yet to be accepted.

Regardless of Putin’s motivations, after over a month of conflict, Russia has experienced a number of setbacks in Ukraine. 4 of its major generals have been reported as killed in action and thousands of its troops are dead, with NATO estimates being between 7-15,000 Russian combat deaths. As its military losses continue to rise and western sanctions continue to wreck damage on its economy, it will find that is has less troops, equipment and less money to fight an enemy that has been receiving larger and larger amounts of external military aid from the West and has been growing increasingly confident of their ability to defeat Russia’s invading force. Putin should take Zelensky’s gracious offer to withdraw his country’s NATO application as a chance to save face and portray his decision to invade as necessary and intelligent. Instead, the war continues as his country continues its slide into an economic abyss, with Russia heading for its worst economic crisis since the end of the Cold War in 1991.