Lobbying in Washington

(Link on Daily Trust)

To put it simply, lobbying is a deliberate effort to influence the process of government policymaking or legislative enactment in favour of particular business, political or other interests. 

Lobbying thrives not only in the corridors of power; it’s equally used to influence public perceptions on particular issues by way of lobbying influential public relations firms and media organizations.

In fact, even highly reputable research institutions including scientific research centres aren’t completely invulnerable to lobbying, after all. Many supposedly objective pieces of research and findings on various issues including scientific findings by many reputable institutions and centres are somehow influenced by underlying interests of various lobbyists’ clients. 

Though lobbying business flourishes more in the capitals of the particularly capitalist Euro-American axis e.g. London, Brussels, Paris, and, of course, Washington, it’s also quite common in other major capitals like Beijing and Moscow. It’s, however, particularly established in the United States being the world’s strongest military power and largest economy. 

In Washington, well-connected persons many of whom have held various legislative offices in the US Congress, or important political or bureaucratic positions in the White House transform into lobbyists to leverage their respective connections in lobbying on behalf of big corporations, foreign governments, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and other interest groups.

Though lobbying is supposedly regulated by relevant laws to ensure transparency by enabling hired professionals to make a case for proposals on behalf of their respective clients, that isn’t always the case in reality.

In typical lobbying, the quality of a proposal argument per se doesn’t necessarily guarantee its acceptability. It’s an open secret that many a time, Congressmen, policymakers and high-ranking White House officials are influenced by way of inducement and/or tacit blackmail or both.

The amount of resources that corporations, foreign governments, cartels, NGOs, and interest groups invest in lobbying in the United States far exceeds the official figures, which only reflect reasonable payments for services rendered within the legal scope of lobbying. Whereas, in reality, much more than that is spent under the table in inducements. 

Lobbying is the real manifestation of capitalism (jari-hujja) or “iya kudinka, iya shagalinka”. It’s is effectively a “legalized” form of corruption. In the US, for example, various industries e.g. Banking, Manufacturing, Energy, Real Estate, Food, Insurance, pharmaceutical, Hollywood, etc. maintain high-paid lobbyists lobbying on their behalf for legislation and government policies advantageous to their collective interests. 

In the meantime, there is an equally fierce struggle within each industry with each corporation and cartel maintaining its own lobbyists in its struggle for advantageous regulatory measures at the expense of the others. 

Usually, an industry, cartel or corporation has its way depending on the amount of its lobbying budget and the effectiveness of the blackmailing tools at the disposal of its hired lobbyists.

Regulators induced in lobbying turn a blind eye to cases of cutting corners, exploitation and other unethical practices regardless of their implications on public health, safety and other interests. 

Scandalous practices of such nature are occasionally exposed either accidentally or as a result of discreet investigations some of which are secretly sponsored by rival corporations and cartels, which have lost out in lobbying struggle.

Foreign governments equally maintain lobby firms in Washington; they invest hugely in lobbying not only to influence US foreign policy on particular issues but also to secure US active or tacit support on specific issues involving the interests of other countries. 

Lobbyists in Washington can get a US administration to literally do the bidding of their respective foreign clients by way of inducing and/or blackmailing members of the US House of Representatives, the Senate, and appropriately influential officials in the White House.  

Foreign governments with the highest spending on lobbying in Washington include Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, the United Arab Emirates, Canada, Qatar, South Korea etc. Interestingly, even some supposedly non-US allies e.g. China, Iran and Russia equally spend hugely on lobbying in Washington.    

Also, though Israel maintains the most influential lobby in Washington, its case is particularly interesting, because, ironically, its influence isn’t linked to its spending on lobbying, if at all it spends. Its influence over the US political establishment, media and entertainment industries is so deep-rooted that no one can afford to be rightly or wrongly linked to anti-Israel sentiment, for it may simply mean the end of his political career. In the US political circle, everyone, including the president, is easily blackmailable when it comes to Israeli interests.

Non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and other interest groups equally maintain lobbyists in Washington. Groups and organizations hell-bent on promoting moral decadence and undermining ethical values are particularly active in lobbying for legislation and/or government policies favourable to their causes. 

After all, the rate at which they are having their ways not just in Washington but other capitals across the world suggests the sheer influence of their backers. For instance, the so-called LGBTQ rights groups have grown so influential that criticizing their mission of promoting absolute rebellion against moral standards is now considered a form of primitive intolerance. 

Sub-Saharan Africa in global politics

(Link on Daily Trust)

The United States Secretary of State Antony Blinken is on a diplomatic tour in Sub-Saharan Africa visiting Kenya, Nigeria, and Senegal. As expected, the officially stated mission of his tour revolves around the US commitment to partnering with the countries and the region at large in tackling various challenges bedevilling them. 

Tours by leaders and high-ranking officials from major international players and ambitious developing countries in Sub-Saharan African countries often prompt curiosity not only about the obvious absence of the countries’ influence in global affairs but also practically the absence of their uninfluenced influence in their own affairs, for that matter. 

It’s a tradition in Washington that once a new US administration is done settling down and rolling out its foreign policies on major issues e.g. relations with Russia and China, the Middle East issues, relations with US major European and Asian allies, and regional powers in various continents, it then attends to Sub-Saharan African countries. 

Usually, the Secretary of State would embark on a tour covering a number of countries to reiterate the US “commitment” to helping them tackle poverty, insecurity, corruption, among other things. Also, at some point, the President may equally embark on a similar tour. 

Secretary Blinken’s ongoing tour in Sub-Saharan Africa simply comes in the context of that tradition, for, in reality, the countries command no respect on the global stage due to the sheer failure of their power elites. This is not necessarily because they do things that their counterparts elsewhere don’t do after all, but largely because of how they do theirs. For instance, their penchant for reckless misappropriation of public resources in grossly unsophisticated hence effortlessly exposable processes is particularly peculiar. 

Besides, though they are extremely greedy, their ironically very limited ambition explains why they always end up with peanuts compared to what they cost their respective governments. This is quite clear especially in their dealings with ruthlessly ambitious and fast-growing countries like India and China that owe a great deal of their success to Sub-Saharan African natural resources and raw materials, which they acquire under largely questionable deals, to say the least. 

Likewise, Euro-American countries, which had literally plundered Sub-Saharan African countries' natural resources and raw materials, and exploited their people for a very long time until only six decades ago use subtle but systematic blackmail on account of their governments’ real or alleged human rights abuse, undermining democracy, and lack of transparency to extort huge concessions from them in favour of their (Euro-American) corporations.  

Consequently, while Sub-Saharan African countries remain grossly deficient in the strategic infrastructure necessary for sustainable industrialization, which is indispensable for sustainable economic development, their massive consumer markets continue to rely on imported products and critical services provided by foreign corporations. 

Also, the characteristic deficiency in dynamic creativity that Sub-Saharan African countries’ elites betray has further made it easier for such developed and developing countries and their corporations to manipulate them.  

Though corruption and other challenges persist in all countries, they never frustrate development as it’s obtained in Sub-Saharan African countries. While power elites elsewhere are creative enough to come up with and pursue strategic development policies according to their peculiar challenges, their Sub-Saharan African counterparts are largely too literal in their understanding of the standard textbook ideas they have imbibed, which were written in and for environments with absolutely different socio-political, economic, cultural, environmental and attitudinal challenges.  

One easily observable thing about every ambitious developing county is the flexible creativity of its elite. China, for example, is basically a communist country with a single party system, yet thanks to its ability to creatively add appropriate capitalist touches to its economic system, it has been able to dominate global industrialization and overtake Japan as the world’s second-largest economy after the United States.  

It’s the same thing with the likes of India, Turkey, Malaysia, Indonesia etc. Even the relatively less industrialized countries in, say, the Middle East owe their success to the creativity of their respective power elites. The particularly remarkable success of the Gulf countries, in particular, says it all in this regard. 

Whereas, in Sub-Saharan Africa, even the supposedly more enlightened intellectuals are largely intellectually confined within the limits of literal meanings of either liberal capitalist or Marxist theories. In a typical Sub-Saharan African country, proposing solutions to common challenges in the light of either unrealistic Marxist populist rhetoric or inconsiderate elitist capitalist ideas, mere fluency in, say, the English or French languages, and tendency to determine the worth of things on the bases of Euro-American standards, are all that it takes for one to be recognized as intellectual and progressive.  

That explains why even after six decades of independence, power elites in Sub-Saharan Africa still betray an inferiority complex towards particularly their Euro-American counterparts; they behave as though they are still under colonial rule. In Nigeria, for instance, there have been instances where some rightly or wrongly aggrieved individuals among the political elite blatantly reached out to the US ambassador, the UK high commissioner, and the EU office in Abuja literally begging for their intervention in their favour in purely local affairs. 

Now, though I may have digressed too far, it’s only intended to shed some light on why the Sub-Saharan African countries are practically worth nothing in global politics, and indeed why racists and other chauvinists assume that Sub-Saharan Africans are inherently inferior to other human races.     

Migrants as blackmailing tools

(Link on Daily Trust)

Over the past few months, there has been an upsurge in the number of migrants stranded on the Belarus-Polish border desperate to cross over into the European Union (EU). Poland is an EU member-state but the richer EU countries like Germany are their targeted destinations. 

Migrants, both those with genuine reasons and those with pretences, prefer the richer EU countries due to their particularly attractive provision for migrants and enabling migration policies. However, since the number of migrants always outweighs the resources budgeted for those provisions, the screening is quite strict. Consequently, only a tiny fraction eventually makes it, which explains why thousands of migrants go to the extent of endangering their lives in their desperate attempts to migrate to those countries and other wealthy nations elsewhere. Some of them somehow manage to make it to their respective destinations while many die in the sea, desert and other terrains, or end up stuck in exploitative conditions.  

It’s in this context that thousands of migrants mostly from Syria, Iraq and other war-torn and unstable Middle Eastern, Asian and African countries are currently on the Belarus-Polish border kept off Polish territory by a barbed-wire fence and Polish security personnel. Belarus isn’t allowing them back either. They have been piling up there amid deteriorating conditions. In a video call with the BBC, an Iraqi migrant lamented that "There's no way to escape; Poland won't let us in. Every night they fly helicopters. They don't let us sleep. We are so hungry. There's no water or food here. There are little children, old men and women, and families." Also, out of desperation, there have been repeated but failed attempts by the migrants to force their way through. 

Now, while on the surface this situation may look like any typical migrant issue, it’s actually an orchestrated blackmail attempt. 

Belarus President, Alexander Lukashenko rose to power in 1994. The country was part of the Soviet Union that had collapsed in 1991. However, President Lukashenko has maintained an underlying Soviet communist tone in his style, which has kept him at loggerheads with the EU countries and their US ally. 

Also, since the rise of Vladimir Putin to power in Russia, President Lukashenko found a reliable ally in him for his obsession with reviving and exercising as much former Soviet influence as possible. 

President Putin supports but also manipulates Belarus in countering the expansion of the EU-dominated North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) towards where he believes should be Russia’s exclusive sphere of influence. 

The EU imposed sanctions on Belarus last, which, in turn, decided to, among other things, manipulate the migrant card to blackmail it (EU) into lifting it. Belarus began facilitating the exodus of migrants into its territory for onward illegal crossing over into the EU via the Polish border. Hundreds of migrants were flown into Belarus capital, Minsk, on direct flights from Baghdad and other cities only to be systematically escorted by the Belarus security personnel to the border with Poland to cross over. The aim is to create migrant crises in some countries in the EU zone and expose their governments to unnecessary legal and economic dilemmas associated with handling the migrants, which may have serious economic and political repercussions on the governments.    

President Lukashenko is perhaps inspired by the success of some leaders in manipulating migrants as blackmailing tools, e.g. his Turkish counterpart, Tayyip Erdoğan. As an opportunistic politician par excellence, President Erdoğan has fetched Turkey tremendous economic benefits and political concessions from the EU, by manipulating migrants as blackmailing tools.

Since the escalation of the Syrian crisis that triggered waves of migration from the country and other countries towards Turkey for onward crossing over into the EU zone, the Turkish government has managed to extort billions of Euros and significant concessions from the zone in return for controlling the exodus of the migrants into it. For instance, a five-year agreement reached between Turkey and the EU in 2006 in this regard saw the former reaping 6 billion Euros. Under the agreement, the EU also reluctantly agreed to simplify the Schengen visa process for Turkish citizens and to reactivate talks over Turkish ambition to join the zone. 

Yet, as negotiations continue over the renewal of the agreement, which expired earlier this year, President Erdoğan had already threatened to let the migrants into the zone in a tactical move to extort commitments for more funds and more concessions on other issues especially considering the fact that the EU hasn’t delivered on its commitments regarding the Schengen visa and Turkish EU ambition.     

Similarly, in 2010, former Libyan leader, Gaddafi equally managed to blackmail the EU into considering paying Libya billions of Euros in return for preventing the exodus of African migrants into the zone through the Libyan Mediterranean coast. He had warned the EU governments that the zone would turn “black”, as he put it, in view of the sheer number of African migrants desperate to migrate there unless it (EU) agreed to pay Libya at least 5 billion Euros a year to stop them. The arrangement was, however, overtaken by the 2011 uprising in the country that ended his life. 

Seeds of water war

 (Link on Daily Trust)

There have been persistent tensions between Egypt, Sudan, on the one hand, and Ethiopia, on the other, which observers warn may escalate into skirmishes and even full-scale war. 

The countries have been locked in disputes over the Nile River since Ethiopia began the construction of its almost five billion-dollar gigantic Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) on its part of the river. After a decade of construction, the dam is 80 per cent done, and the process of filling it with water has already begun.   

The Nile River flows across northeastern Africa through many countries flowing from Ethiopia into Sudan, then Egypt. Its freshwater constitutes a significant percentage of the already extremely scarce natural freshwater in the world. 

Interestingly, though water makes up about seventy per cent of the Earth’s surface, natural freshwater is less than three per cent; more than ninety-seven per cent is salty hence basically unsuitable for human consumption, agricultural and most industrial purposes. 

Anyway, all along, Egypt and Sudan kicked against the GERD project arguing that it would hugely obstruct the flow of the Nile water into them. 

Egypt, in particular, almost entirely depends on the Nile River water, which covers more than 90 per cent of its agricultural, industrial and, of course, consumption needs of its more than 100 million people. It, therefore, considers the dam an existential threat to it. It’s also worried that it may end up at the mercy of Ethiopia and indeed vulnerable to blackmail not only at its hands only but other countries with influence over it, as well.  

For over a decade, Egypt had tried, albeit unsuccessfully, to foil the construction of the dam; and since its completion, it has engaged various global, continental and regional bodies, and various countries to impede its commissioning. It has equally maintained a threatening rhetoric warning of its readiness to go to the extent of taking military measures against Ethiopia. 

On its part, Ethiopia has insisted that it needs the dam to improve its poor electricity generation among other developmental purposes for its almost one hundred and twenty million people. It has, therefore, resisted Egypt’s moves to frustrate the dam project while equally reiterating its readiness to engage militarily. 

Though militarily speaking, Egypt is by far stronger than Ethiopia, realistically speaking, military measures cannot stop the dam operation. Also, though Egypt could, at some point, and out of sheer frustration, disrupt the dam operation by military attacks on it, which would certainly trigger Ethiopia’s retaliation hence war, it’s not likely to change the situation in the long run anyway.  

Besides, now that Ethiopia has already begun filling the dam with water, attacking the dam may cause devastating floods in the surrounding areas within both countries, Sudan and perhaps beyond, which would expose Egypt to an international backlash among other measures.  

Furthermore, the involvement of other countries in the underlying politics of the dam construction and its operation further complicates the situation. For instance, for its own strategic and geopolitical interests, Israel has been deeply involved in ensuring the success of the project; it has already installed advanced air defence systems all around the dam in anticipation of possible attacks by Egypt to blow it up. 

Interestingly, though Israel and Egypt are supposedly friends since the end of the war era between them and the start of their diplomatic relations in 1979, yet, they have been locked in a geopolitical struggle. 

As it has planned all along, and thanks to its sheer financial, diplomatic and strategic investment in the dam project, Israel is now literally in a position to influence, if not dictate, the amount of Nile water that would be released into Egypt. It’s indeed a highly effective blackmailing tool against Egypt, which Israel can manipulate to blackmail it into concessions on many issues including the Palestinian issue.  

After all, some developments suggest that the strategy seems to have already begun to prove its effectiveness. For example, Israel that has for decades yearned for access to the Nile freshwater for which it necessarily needs Egypt’s cooperation due to geographical constraints, appears to be finally getting its way. After decades of successive Egyptian governments’ refusal to cooperate, Egypt is now reportedly building six gigantic underground tunnels to channel the Nile water into Israel. 

The obvious explanation of this development is that having come to terms with the reality about the Ethiopian dam, Egypt is, apparently, reluctantly pursuing a compromise with Ethiopia to secure the inflow of the maximum possible share of the Nile water. And considering the influence that Israel has over Ethiopia, Israel’s interests apparently influence Ethiopia’s terms. 

Anyway, Turkey equally supports Ethiopia against Egypt to spite the latter in the context of the Cairo-Ankara geopolitical face-off. Turkish particular interest in Ethiopia is partly informed by its desire to equally be in a position to likewise blackmail Egypt over the Nile water-sharing arrangement. After all, with the recently signed defence agreement between it and Ethiopia, it may support it militarily in the event of a military confrontation between it and Egypt.