Pact unpacked: wobbly Brexit talks

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Hello and welcome to the Intelligence on Economist Radio. I'm your host Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world. Among the thousands of satellites in Earth orbit are some involved in defense. But what about satellites that actually attack each other? It turns out that the law is quite fuzzy on that kind of space war, and the risk of one is rising. And Lebanese citizens are furious following an explosion that tore through Beirut last month. But they're also a resilient people with a deliciously dark sense of humor. We take a look at a new card game that skewers the country's dysfunct. But first, this week, the eighth round of Brexit negotiations is due to start in Brussels. Back in June, Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson promised to put a bit of oomph into trade talks, aiming for an agreement in July that didn't happen by August. The frustration of the European Union's chief negotiator, Michel Barnier, was clear, given the.

Short time left today. At this stage, an agreement between UK and the European Union seems unlikely. I simply do not understand why we are wasting valuable time.

Britain formally left the union in January with a transition period until the end of the year to hammer out the logistics and legalities of life after the divorce. That is proving as sticky as it was to finalize the terms of the exit back in January. And the sticking points are familiar. About the rights to fisheries, about subsidies to industries that will trade with Europe, and most of all, about what happens at the border with Northern Ireland. More familiar still, Britain's refrain that leaving without a deal on all of it would be just fine.

We must make sure that people understand that at the end of the year, whatever happens, we are leaving the eu.

So this week's negotiations were already going to be tense. But over the weekend, hints emerged of a British plan that would essentially rewrite parts of the international treaty that outlined Britain's exit in January.

The Brexit negotiations have made very little progress in the past few months.

John Peat is our Brexit editor.

That is almost certain now because overnight the British government has said it's going to introduce a new legislation as a backup plan, which would have the effect of undoing some of the withdrawal agreement it reached last year, particularly in relation to Northern Ireland. And that will certainly make the mood worse and the expectation that we end up with no deal greater.

And what's the nature of that legislation?

It's a bill about the UK's internal market. And in that bill, the government is planning to take provision, if necessary, if it wants to, to override the requirement in the withdrawal treaty it signed last year that there should be customs controls between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, because Northern Ireland was going to be carved out of the United Kingdom and come under a special regime within the EU in order to avoid border controls between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic. That carving out was not popular in Northern Ireland or in London. And now the government is saying, because we think we may be heading for no deal with the eu, we want to have the provision to override it. But overriding that is quite a controversial step because it's contained in the withdrawal agreement, which has the status of an international treaty.

And that clearly is going to have an effect on negotiations this week.

Well, part of these negotiations, I mean, they haven't made much progress because they're bogged down on rules for fisheries and for state aid. But part of the negotiations was also predicated on the assumption that the withdrawal treaty would be implemented in full. That was the international treaty agreed and ratified earlier this year. The British government is now saying if there's no trade deal, they want to have provision to override part of that international treaty. To do that is very provocative. To Brussels. Brussels will say you signed a treaty and now you're preparing to override that treaty. That is Not a good way of reaching an agreement. The British government appears to think that by threatening to do this, they may increase the pressure on Brussels to give ground for a trade agreement. I don't think that's going to work. And I think Brussels is more likely to say, if you're really going to upset the withdrawal agreement, then you can't expect us to sign a trade agreement with you either.

Well, exactly. This is what's the point of making a deal if you renege on the deal at each new stage of negotiations?

That's exactly right. And I think if you're preparing to take provision to override an international treaty that you signed and ratified earlier this year, that could upset not just the European Union, but other potential trade partners, including, most notably, the United States. The American Congress has already said that if provisions to protect the Good Friday Agreement in Northern Ireland and make sure that that is not damaged by Brexit, if that is in any way undermined, the United States Congress will say, in that case, we're not going to sign a free trade deal with the uk. So you have to be quite careful if you're threatening to breach international treaties, that you then send a message to the world, don't trust the British.

And in any case, these negotiations were going to be fraught this week, even before the Northern Ireland question was raised.

Once again, there was no sign of progress at the last two negotiating rounds, and the expectation was that there wouldn't be much progress at this round. The negotiations seem particularly stuck on the question of whether European Union vessels will be allowed to catch fish in British waters after Brexit is fully implemented at the end of the year. And over an even more controversial question, which is that the European Union wants the British to observe rules in relation to competition to make sure that they don't undercut European companies. The particular rule is how much you're allowed to subsidize your companies. The British government wants to have absolute freedom to subsidise as it chooses. The European Union is saying, if you do that and we can't stop you doing that, then you won't get access to our single market. There is no sign of a sort of halfway compromise in that argument right now.

It feels like I've asked you this question several times before, but does that put Britain in the position once again of leaving the EU without a deal?

I would say, judging by the mood music over the weekend and the comments of Boris Johnson today about how no deal will be just fine for the uk, that the likelihood, likelihood of no Deal is rising each week. There is a deadline here. Mr. Johnson has said we need an agreement by October 15th and if we don't get one, then we should just agree that there should be no trade deal. That's not very long in trade negotiating terms. And at the moment there's so little progress and now we have the extra threat of the British to undermine the withdrawal agreement that I think the odds on no deal are rising very, very fast. It's not guaranteed there'll be no deal because there could be political negotiation in the next few weeks. But at the moment it looks pretty gloomy.

And as these negotiations resume this week, what should we look out for in terms of potential solutions to this?

I think we would need to see some sign that the UK is willing to accept some constraints on state subsidies to industry, that the UK is willing to agree some concessions on access to its fishing waters. If the UK refuses to move on either of those, then I don't think the EU will move either. And the negotiators are quite likely to say at the end of the week we've made no further progress. The fact that the UK seems now to be prepared to undermine the withdrawal agreement is an additional difficulty. Unless there is political intervention at the highest level from Germany, France and others, we are heading towards no deal. And I think that would be the conclusion that will be reached at the end of this week.

John, thank you very much for joining us.

Thank you.

First it was the bleeping Sputnik launched by the Soviet Union. Soon after, it was Sputnik 2 carrying a stray dog who didn't make it back. And then Vostok one with Yuri Gagarin.

Who did when the Russians pushed a man across the threshold, he was Yuri Gagarin, the astronaut the Russians lionized as.

The first to orbit the Earth.

The space race gave a sense of derring do to the Cold War. And soon satellites were being launched left and right, many of them dedicated to influencing war on the ground. Decades later. And now a new arms race is brewing in orbit.

Last year, in November, Russia launched a satellite. Very normal. It's done hundreds of those. It was called Kosmos 2542. Then in December, Kosmos 2542 spat out another satellite like a Russian nesting doll, and that was Kosmos 2543.

Shashank Joshi is the Economist's defense editor.

What's even more remarkable is in July, Months later on, Kosmos 2543 itself releases an unknown object that zooms away at high speed and leaves everyone scratching their head. Russia says it was only a small space vehicle to inspect other satellites, perfectly harmless. And the Americans say, no, that was a projectile and it was essentially a weapon to signal Russia's ability to destroy other satellites. And I think what it shows you is how space weapons are becoming increasingly significant, but also how murky the entire.

Area is and sort of sets up a new battlefront here. Space warfare, yes.

In that sense, it's nothing new. Of course, in the Cold War itself, ever since Sputnik was launched, satellites have been important to waging war on the ground. And so they've been targets themselves. The US and the Soviet Union developed myriad ways to blow up, ram dazzle, even nuke each other's satellites. They conducted about two dozen anti satellite tests between them. During the Cold War, they blew up satellites on 10 occasions using so called kinetic tests. But what's happened in recent years is that as modern warfare has relied even more on satellites for communications, for imagery, for intelligence, all kinds of things. And as new countries have come into the game, particularly China, but also India and others, the significance of conflict in space has grown. The importance of being able to disable your adversary satellites and therefore the ability to defend against those attacks has, has become progressively more important over the past decade.

So what kind of new risks then come with this new theater of warfare?

Well, you know, if you blow something up on the ground, it's very bad. You can kill people, but the debris stays where it is. In space, the debris effectively goes into orbit and can circle the earth for a long time. Now that's a problem, not just because there are very important civilian assets in space, things we depend upon every day for navigation, communications, entertainment, all kinds of things. You can destroy other satellites that way, but also because the more debris you have, the greater the likelihood of accidental collisions with other satellites that can generate more debris in turn. And you can get a chain reaction, something called the Kessler Syndrome, which can render entire bits of orbit completely unusable for decades. So if you look at China's anti satellite test in 2007, where they blew up one of their own satellites, some of the debris from that is still going to be in space at the turn of the next century. If you look at an Indian anti satellite test they did last spring 2019, it was done in a much more responsible way. More of the debris burned up back into orbit. But even then it put the International Space Station with human astronauts inside it, at heightened risk. So in other words, blowing up stuff in space isn't just a isolated act that Stays where it is. It circles the earth and causes problems for decades, perhaps for a century or more.

But are there not customs laws of warfare that govern this stuff?

Well, there's a whole body of law called the law of armed conflict or international humanitarian law, effectively the laws of war as you and I would understand them, and we understand how they apply on Earth. A military officer cannot shoot a civilian. That's a war crime. The really challenging question is how do these laws of conflict apply in space? And it's a really tricky question to answer. You know, I mentioned GPS satellites earlier on. Well, GPS satellites, you and I depend on them. Civilians depend on them. But they are run by the American armed forces. They are Pentagon assets. So what counts as a civilian asset? What counts as a military asset? You have civilian satellites that have military sensors on them. Are they legitimate targets for attack? What even is an attack? If you jam a civilian satellite using radio frequency, is that an attack in the way that blowing up a building on the ground is, or is that something else? And then even if you have a purely military target, if you blow it up and cause huge amounts of debris like the Chinese did in 2007, that could constitute an indiscriminate and therefore illegal attack if you could have disabled it by other means. All of those questions are really, really complicated ones that haven't been settled just yet.

So until those laws are made clear, agreed upon internationally, what are states doing to reduce the tension that's clearly building?

Russia and China have long said that what they want is a formal treaty that would ban all weapons in space. And part of the reason they want that is because they want to stop America from deploying space based anti missile systems that might threaten their own nuclear forces. America and many of its allies say that is not going to happen. For a start, they argue it's impossible to define what a weapon in space is. Anything that can maneuver, anything that has thrusters can ram into another satellite. And therefore, you know, not only can you not define a space weapon, it would be easy for Russia and China to cheat while America and its allies are restrained. So what the Europeans have said is, okay, we're not going to have a binding treaty. Maybe we could have a voluntary code of conduct. It could govern things like how close can one satellite get to another satellite before it's menacing or threatening. Those talks about norms and rules of the road in space have been going on for years and they are dragging on at the United nations between the Americans and the Russians and the Chinese. The UK has just proposed another initiative at the UN to discuss the rules of the road in space. But of course, anyone who's been following international politics in the last year or so will know that arms control on the ground is collapsing everywhere, particularly between the US and Russia. But all kinds of arms control is falling apart. So the prospect of getting an entirely new agreement that covers space. And at a time like this, when international trust is low, the US and China are at loggerheads. It seems pretty forlorn that the idea you'll get anything useful.

Thanks very much for joining us. Shashank.

Thanks Jason.

For a lot more analysis like this, subscribe to the Economist to find the best introductory offer wherever you are, just go to economist.com intelligenceoffer Last month's explosion in the port of Beirut was a dramatic display of the Lebanese government's incompetence and an indirect reminder of the corruption that permeates Lebanon's echelons of power. It had already been a trying summer with soaring food prices and widespread power cuts before the dysfunction led to outright tragedy. At the port, the country's citizens had found a playful way of poking fun at the message.

The Lebanese are known for having a dark sense of humour that gets them through tough times, and a new card game called Wasta is carrying on that tradition.

India Stoughton writes about culture for the Economist.

The game was inspired by widespread anti government protests that began last October when tens of thousands of young Lebanese took to the streets to protest against government corruption. And this game, Wasta, satirizes the entrenched cronyism and nepotism that have led Lebanon into a situation where it's experiencing a financial collapse and political paralysis.

Okay, what is Wasta about?

Wasta is an Arabic word which means influence, so it's how much nepotistic sway somebody has based on who they know and can leverage for favors. So Wasta can be used for everything from acquiring a building permit or finding a job to getting out of a traffic fine or speeding up the installation of an Internet connection. The sway that Wasta holds over almost every level of life in Lebanon was not lost on Eli Kesroani, who runs a boardgame cafe in Beirut. He built a card game called Wasta to satirize Lebanon's internal politics and dysfunction.

I always noticed that if you want to spread an idea, it's better if you spread it through either a story that is fictive or something that has to do with having fun and laughter. Humor is a very witty tool. The moment you use it, people think that it's just Having fun. They're not even on their defenses. And when an idea slips in and it goes into their subconscious mind, in the long term, it does affect them.

To create the cards, he teamed up with a popular political cartoonist in Lebanon, Bernard Hajj, who shares his dark sense of humour.

For me, it's definitely like the DNA of the Lebanese humor. I mean, I always go back to this one example and this is how I got introduced to Lebanese humor. Actually, I was 19 years old. It was 2008. During this year, there were lots of car bombings happening at the time. And I walked next to a car and I saw a note on this car that said, I just bought this car and I'm still paying the bank in installments. If you're planning to bomb, please do not bomb next to my car. And the guy was super serious, but, like, it was hilarious.

So how exactly is the game played?

The object of the game is to be the first to win three tarbushes, which is a kind of Lebanese hat that looks like the fez. The cards mimic different aspects of Lebanese society. So you have characters like the judge, the nosy neighbour, the policeman, the sectarian thug. They often poke fun at the way that Lebanese society works and the ingrained corruption and nepotism. One of the most powerful cards is the mum card.

When I made the judge, I gave him 6.5 power. The mom was 7. Because the judge is scarier than the bank, but not as scary as your mom.

This was inspired by a real event in Beirut last November, when sectarian clashes between young Muslim and Christian men were halted by hundreds of older women who came down to the streets to do a Mother's March, warning against a return to civil war violence.

So essentially, it's a great deal of fun inspired by a great deal of frustration.

Yes, the situation in Lebanon is obviously very serious. The game finds a way to promote discussion but also encourage laughter. The game does have a serious underlying motive, because by forcing players to discuss and confront some of Lebanon's issues, it's designed to stimulate discussion and to get players to reflect on what needs to change.

And so how's it selling? Is it easy to get your hands on a deck of these things?

Elie says he was surprised by the speed of the sales of the game. He sold out of his first batch in under two weeks and has had orders from all over the world from the Lebanese diaspora. So he says he's currently working on an English translation of the game and he's also planning an expansion.

Right now, I do have some very wicked cards that would probably send me to jail if I don't do them well, so I have to be very careful.

And have you played it? Are you any good at it?

Well, as the game sold out so quickly, I haven't been able to get hold of a copy. But as living in Lebanon for many years has taught me, the problem with Worcester is that in the end, nobody really wins.

India, thanks very much for your time.

Thank you, Jason.

That's all for this episode of the Intelligence. If you like us, give us a rating on Apple Podcasts and see you back here tomorrow. Sam.