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Last month, US Republican lawmakers renewed calls to sanction officials of the International Criminal Court (ICC) in retaliation for the arrest warrants it issued against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.

In contrast, Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong reiterated the need to respect the “independence of the ICC and its important role in upholding international law.”

These divergent responses highlight a core problem with Australia’s current approach to sanctions, which is the topic of an ongoing Senate inquiry.

Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister Simon Birmingham initiated the review to seek ways to better align Australia’s sanctions with those of allies like the US. Instead, the review should be an opportunity to reset this flawed principle of alignment in favor of an approach grounded in core principles of international law.

Australia’s history of sanctions

Sanctions are official measures that prohibit trade and economic relations with particular states or individuals for a range of reasons. These can include to pressure a state to change its behavior, enforce international norms or isolate individuals for unlawful behavior.

Australia’s sanctions regime is made up of two categories:

• sanctions that implement decisions of the UN Security Council
• “autonomous” sanctions that Australia applies unilaterally.

Historically, Australian sanctions have, at times, preceded Security Council action. In the mid-1960s, Australia followed the United Kingdom in sanctioning the white supremacist rule in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) before the council adopted sanctions.

Australia also sanctioned apartheid-era South Africa in the mid-1980s in the absence of Security Council action – and in the face of initial opposition from the UK and US.

Since 2011, Australian legislation grants the foreign minister broad discretionary powers to impose unilateral sanctions on other countries. This system has recently been expanded to include sanctions of individuals engaged in corruption and serious abuses of human rights.

Australia now imposes a range of sanctions autonomously, including travel bans and freezing of financial assets. This includes sanctions on the political and military leaders of Myanmar, Zimbabwe and Russia.

In practice, Australia has a policy of aligning its nominally “autonomous” sanctions decision-making with its so-called like-minded partners, such as the US.

For example, Australia has so far decided not to unilaterally impose sanctions on Israel’s political and military leadership. This is despite sustained civil society pressure and a historic ruling of the International Court of Justice.

Foreign Minister Penny Wong defended the decision on the basis that “going it alone gets us nowhere.”

When Australia applies sanctions, we coordinate with partners. That’s what makes them effective.

Dangers of a ‘like-minded partners’ approach

Yet, this rhetorical appeal to alignment with “like-minded partners” fails to recognize the dangers of such an approach.

For one, it risks drawing Australia further into the geostrategic competition between the US and China, in which sanctions are fast becoming a central tool. The US is increasingly using sanctions to punish China (and other adversaries) or stymie their development while blocking attempts to sanction its friends, notably Israel.

The US is overwhelmingly the world’s biggest user of unilateral sanctions. Between 2001-21, it increased its sanctions designations by a stunning 933%.

The proliferation of US sanctions has only intensified since then. In 2023, the US added a total of 2,500 entities and individuals to its “Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons” list. This is a significant increase from its annual average of 815 people in previous years.

Australia lacks the resources to adequately investigate this volume of sanctions designations. In practice, alignment often amounts to simply copying sanctions from the US, UK or European Union.

The commitment to aligning sanctions with those of allies also puts Australia at odds with some of our neighbors. Many Asian countries view US unilateral sanctions as unlawful coercion that infringes on their sovereign rights.

In April, diplomats from 32 states, including China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Vietnam, supported a motion in the UN Human Rights Council that urged states to refrain from imposing unilateral sanctions in ways that are not consistent with international law. It said:

they are contrary to the [UN] Charter and norms and principles governing peaceful relations among states.

The UN General Assembly has also passed numerous resolutions criticizing the imposition of certain unilateral sanctions. This shows the US reliance on sanctions is the global outlier.

This is perhaps clearest regarding the US embargo of Cuba, in place since 1960. Last month, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution renewing its long-standing call for the US to lift the embargo. It got near-unanimous support, with 187 states, including Australia, voting in favor. Only two states, the US and Israel, voted against. One abstained (Moldova).

What Trump is likely to do

While Trump has recently claimed he would like to use sanctions “as little as possible”, this is doubtful given his previous record. The first Trump administration made economic sanctions its “foreign-policy weapon of choice.”

In addition to imposing sanctions against China, Iran and Venezuela (among others), the administration also sanctioned ICC officials for investigating US military personnel for alleged war crimes in Afghanistan.

Trump’s pick to be his new secretary of state, Marco Rubio, is a sanctions hawk. Following the Biden administration’s ending of ICC sanctions, he co-sponsored a bill in Congress to impose new sanctions on ICC employees and their families if they investigated the US or Israel.

Rubio has also made clear his opposition to sanctioning Israeli nationals. When the Biden administration sanctioned an Israeli entity and individual for “extremist settler violence” in the occupied West Bank, Rubio accused Secretary of State Antony Blinken of acting “to undercut our ally, Israel.”

Given this, we can assume the new Trump administration will revoke these sanctions against Israelis. We can also anticipate there will be pressure on Australia to remove the already limited sanctions it has imposed on a handful of Israeli settlers, to realign Australia’s approach with that of the new US administration.

A new approach

We recently co-authored a submission to the Senate inquiry that recalled Australia’s history of supporting anti-apartheid sanctions.

And we recommended that Australian sanctions law and decision-making be reoriented towards recognizing core principles of international law, including the right of all people to self-determination.

This could be done through “a trigger mechanism” that automatically implements sanctions in accordance with decisions of the International Court of Justice concerning serious violations and abuses of human rights.

As the Trump administration potentially gears up to strengthen sanctions against perceived enemies while exempting friends, Australia should consider a different path.

Sara Dehm is senior lecturer, international migration and refugee law, University of Technology Sydney and Jessica Whyte is scientia associate professor of philosophy and ARC Future Fellow, UNSW Sydney

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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This article first appeared on Pacific Forum and is republished with permission. Read the original here.

The incoming Trump administration will face a difficult global geopolitical environment, with the ongoing wars in Europe and the conflict in the Middle East. Looming over the already tense global dynamic is the all-encompassing challenge of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

The United States’ policy “pivot” to Indo-Pacific, which several modern-day American presidents have pursued but none managed to achieve, still remains relevant and consequential to preserving the global order that American power underpins.

If the imbalance is not addressed by the next commander-in-chief, the consequences may yet be even more disastrous. Thus, the new Trump Administration will have to make difficult decisions about the short-term allocation of US military resources among various theaters, while prioritizing the long-term and all-encompassing China Challenge.

What happened? 

The full-scale invasion of Ukraine on February 24, 2022, and the heinous October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas against Israel and the cycle of violence it engendered since have turned America’s weary eyes back to Europe and the Middle East. So much for US National Security Advisor’s Jake Sullivan’s confident affirmation a mere week before the 10/7 attacks that “the Middle East is quieter that it has been for decades.”  

In the meantime, the Indo-Pacific has become a more urgent priority, not a lesser one. After the inauguration of President Lai Ching-te in Taiwan in May, the PRC launched massive live-fire drills in retaliation for the Taiwanese people’s democratic choice. The PRC launched these drills again after President Lai’s Taiwan’s National Day Address.  

Beijing hasn’t limited its malign activities at intimidating Taiwan. In fact, Xi Jinping is on a warpath against the West and its allies. The PRC has significantly ramped up its support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, causing the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to label it as a “decisive enabler” of Russia’s aggression during its last annual summit in Washington.  

The PRC routinely and unceremoniously threatens Filipino military and civilian vessels in the Philippines’ own internationally-recognized territorial waters. The Philippines is a formal US military ally through a longstanding Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT) that also applies to the “contested” islands in the South China Sea where these incidents are occurring.

On a lesser scale, the PRC is continuing to do the same with Japan, another formal US treaty ally. One more spark, and the US can find itself in an unpredictable cycle of major power conflict.  

Then there is the urgent threat of a resurgent Pyongyang, emboldened by overt Russian support and likely with the PRC’s quiet acquiescence. The news that Kim Jong Un is now supplying troops, along with other materiel, to aid in Russia’s war in Ukraine, should come as no surprise. Russia needs more manpower to achieve a strategic breakthrough in Ukraine.

Because of the brutal nature of the regime in Pyongyang, Kim Jong Un considers human beings as dispensable as artillery shells. Russia is now thus a key to the regime’s long-term survival. This is a win-win for both sides – and only underscores that the Ukraine war is now a global conflict, with massive repercussions for Asia’s security.  

So with this brave new world in mind, US policymakers must now ponder: who is to blame and what is to be done? 

Who is to blame? 

The simplest answers are that the war in Ukraine is the logical outome of Vladimir Putin’s neoimperial ambitions, while the recent spike in violence in the Middle East is the fault of the usual suspects: Hamas, Hezbollah, and their affiliates, all backed by the mullahs in Tehran, a regime whose long-standing public goal is the destruction of the state of Israel (“Little Satan”) and the United States (“Great Satan”).

These are longstanding existential concerns that the United States cannot afford to ignore, regardless of what’s happening in the Indo-Pacific. It is even more pressing because Tehran and its proxies are openly targeting not just close US allies like Israel, but US soldiers and civilians, often with deadly consequences.  

The more complicated answer is that it is also a crisis of our own doing. The United States is no longer willing to project power as effectively as it once has, which has emboldened our adversaries. In 2013, US “red lines” in Syria were effectively ignored without any consequence, leaving a vacuum for Russia to explore and intervene in 2015, thus saving the brutal regime of Bashar al-Assad.

In 2014, the US and Europe collectively shrugged their shoulders when Vladimir Putin annexed by force Ukraine’s Crimean peninsula and invaded parts of the Donbas region. In August 2021, the United States ignominiously departed from Afghanistan, leaving in its wake a trail of broken promises to Afghan society and strategic opportunities for our adversaries to explore.  

In February 2022, Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which has by now reverberated in every part of the globe and created a new Beijing-Moscow-Tehran-Pyongyang axis of autocracies. The 10/7 attacks against Israel effectively drew the world’s attention (and more importantly, US resources) away from its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, which Russia effectively exploited.  

This permissive environment did not occur in a vacuum. The strain of US military commitments in the preceding decades, combined with a populist turn in US politics, undoubtedly played a role in our current geopolitical predicaments.

But ultimately, the lack of US resolve to decisively deter our adversaries is what likely emboldened Putin to invade Ukraine, for Hamas to launch its attacks on 10/7, for Iran to openly target Israel, and ultimately, for additional US military assets to be deployed in the Middle East, rather than the Indo-Pacific. 

And as a new administration takes office, these reverberative effects should only demonstrate the need for more assertive US global leadership, not a retrenchment of our commitments. 

What is to be done? 

The short-term answer is that US resources are finite and they need to be quickly and effectively deployed to where the immediate threat to American lives is greatest.

The Middle East – a volatile multi-domain theater with acute threats to key US interests and directly to the US military –  is where some of those highly prized US kinetic assets are needed today, and so that is where they go. 

And if tomorrow Putin launches an attack against a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the United States may quickly find itself in a hot war on the European continent for the first time in 80 years.

The longer answer is the more complex one and involves the primary determinants of US strength, or what we used to call “the arsenal of democracy.”  If the United States wants a real “pivot” to the Indo-Pacific, we need to urgently re-build our industrial defense base, which atrophied after the “peace dividend” of the Cold War.

Importantly, we need to do so in close coordination with our allies, which the recently-announced Partnership for Indo-Pacific Industrial Resilience (PIPIR) envisions. We also have domestic initiatives, such as the authorities provided under the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the Asia Reassurance Initiative Act, which have regrettably been underutilized.  

Most importantly, the United States must prioritize efforts to comprehensively improve the domestic and global elements of US power, which are key to US long-term global strength, whether it is in the Middle East, Europe or the Indo-Pacific.  

Igor Khrestin([email protected]) is the Bradford M. Freeman managing director for Global Policy at the George W. Bush Institute.  

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The United States, like all nations, was created through territorial conquest. Most of its current territory was occupied or frequented by human beings before the US came; the US used force to either displace, subjugate, or kill all of those people. To the extent that land “ownership” existed under the previous inhabitants, the land of the US is stolen land.

This was also true before the US arrived. The forcible theft of the land upon which the US now exists was not the first such theft; the people who lived there before conquered, displaced, or killed someone else in order to take the land.

The land has been stolen and re-stolen again and again. If you somehow destroyed the United States, expelled its current inhabitants, and gave ownership of the land to the last recorded tribe that had occupied it before, you would not be returning it to its original occupants; you would simply be handing it to the next-most-recent conquerors.

If you go back far enough in time, of course, at some point this is no longer true. Humanity didn’t always exist; therefore for every piece of land, there was a first human to lay eyes on it and a first human to say “This land is mine.”

But by what right did this first human claim exclusive ownership of this land? Why does being the first person to see a natural object make you the rightful owner of that object? And why does being the first human to set foot on a piece of land give your blood descendants the right to dispose of that land as they see fit in perpetuity, and to exclude any and all others from that land? What about all the peoples of the world who were never lucky enough the first to lay eyes on any plot of dirt? Are they simply to be dispossessed forever?

I have never seen a satisfactory answer to these questions. Nor have I seen a satisfactory explanation of why ownership of land should be allocated collectively, in terms of racial or ethnic groups. In general, the first people who arrived on a piece of land did so in dribs and drabs, in small family units and tiny micro-tribes that met and married and fought and mixed and formed into larger identities and ethnicities and tribes over long periods of time.

In most cases, the ethnic groups who now claim pieces of land as their own did not even exist when the first humans discovered or settled that land.

But even in those cases when it did exist, why should land ownership be assigned to a race at all? Why should my notional blood relation to the discoverers or the conquerors of a piece of land determine whether I can truly belong on that land? Why should a section of the map be the land of the Franks, or the Russkiy, or the Cherokee, or the Han, or the Ramaytush Ohlone, or the Britons?

Of course, you can assign land ownership this way — it’s called an “ethnostate.” But if you do this, it means that the descendants of immigrants can never truly be full and equal citizens of the land they were born in. If Britain is defined as the land of the Britons, then a Han person whose great-great-great-grandparents moved there from China will exist as a contingent citizen — a perpetual foreigner whose continued life in the land of their birth exists only upon the sufferance of a different race. This is the price of ethnonationalism.

The downsides of ethnonationalism have been exhaustively laid out in the decades since World War 2, and I’m not going to reiterate them all now. Suffice it to say that most nations of the world have moved away from ethnonationalism — there is an informal sense in which some people still think of France as the land of the Franks and so on, but almost all nations define citizenship and belonging through institutions rather than race. Israel, one of the few exceptions to this rule, receives a large amount of international criticism for defining itself as an ethnostate.

And yet these days I am subjected to a constant stream of ethnonationalist claims from progressives in the country of my birth. Here’s one from the ACLU of Nebraska:

And here’s an Instagram post from Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib:

This isn’t just something you see on social media around Thanksgiving. “Land acknowledgments” have become ubiquitous in progressive spaces and institutions — just the other day I saw one at my friend’s community dance recital.

These land acknowledgments are, legally speaking, incorrect — there is no legal sense in which the land on which they are being performed belongs to a Native American tribe. These are moral claims about rightful land ownership. But the moral principle to which they appeal is ethnonationalism — it’s the idea that plots of land are the rightful property of ethnic groups.

There is an obvious moral appeal to these land acknowledgments. They are a way of decrying the brutal, cruel, violent history of conquest and colonization. And they probably feel like a way of standing up for the weak, the marginalized, and the dispossessed.

Yet what should we think of the morality of following the principles behind land acknowledgments to their logical conclusion? “Decolonization” of the land of the U.S. would likely be an act of ethnic cleansing surpassing even the previous conquests — there are 330 million people here now, and almost none of them descend from Native Americans.

An attempt to dispossess 330 million people would inevitably involve violence on a colossal scale. Here was Najma Sharif Alawi’s famous tweet right after the October 7th Hamas attacks on Israel:

Of course, “colonizers” could presumably avoid violent death or second-class citizenhood by voluntarily deporting themselves. But where would they go?

Take me, for example. My ancestors were Lithuanian Jews. I could leave the country of my birth and go “back” to Lithuania — a land I don’t know, whose language I don’t speak. Yet my ancestors were not “indigenous” to Lithuania either; they moved there from somewhere else. What if the ethnic Lithuanians chose not to accept me? Where would I go then? Israel? But the folks who do land acknowledgments would consider me a “colonizer” there as well.1

Would I then wander the Earth, desperately seeking some ethnostate that would allow me and my descendants to live there as a permanently precarious resident aliens?

Once the logic of land acknowledgments and “decolonization” is followed, it leads very quickly to some very dark futures. Assigning each person a homeland based on their ethnic ancestry and then declaring that that homeland is the only place they or their descendants can ever truly belong, would not be an act of justice; it would be a global nightmare made real, surpassing even the horrors of previous centuries.

And in practice, any attempt to create such a world would inevitably lead to violent resistance by the groups in danger of being “decolonized.” The orderly world of nation-states would dissolve into a chaotic free-for-all of competing irredentist claims, backed by genocides and expulsions. Ten thousand October 7th-style attacks would be followed by ten thousand Gaza-style wars.

I do not want that, and you should not want it either. The American people certainly don’t want it, and the insistence of progressives on intoning land acknowledgments has probably tanked the movement’s cachet in wider society. I agree with Wayne Burkett when he says that land acknowledgments have probably hurt the Democratic party:

Americans do not want to see their country destroyed in the name of irredentist ethnonationalism. Nor do I blame them.

So does this mean we should paper over, ignore, or deliberately forget America’s history of violent conquest? Absolutely not. That history ought to be remembered, so that we don’t repeat it in the present day.

The world’s evolution from one based on ethnic cleansing and territorial conquest to one based on fixed borders and institutions is something to celebrate — and something we must fight to preserve. We need to remember what the world used to be like, precisely so we can avoid backsliding. The most recent of conquests, expulsions, and genocides should be the last to ever happen.

And what of the Native Americans who still live in America today? Must they simply be regarded as the unlucky losers of history, and told to either assimilate into broader American society or shut up?

Absolutely not. For one thing, tribal organizations still exist — they may notionally represent ethnic groups, but they are institutions. And they are institutions with which the United States has many agreements and legal obligations that must be honored, which often give the tribes sovereignty over areas of land. Neil Gorsuch has been especially active in pushing the Supreme Court to uphold tribal rights, and I think this is a good thing.

But respect for Native American tribal organizations doesn’t have to stop at ancient obligations. There are ways to incorporate those tribes into the modern American nation that both respects them and their history and helps them prosper in the present.

Vancouver, Canada shows us an example of how this can be done. Part of Vancouver’s downtown urban area is officially under the governance of the Squamish Nation, rather than the city itself. The Squamish Nation, realizing they could do whatever they wanted with that land, decided to build a giant high-rise housing development:

Over the next few years, that skyline will get a very large new addition: Sen̓áḵw, an 11-tower development that will [put] 6,000 apartments onto just over 10 acres of land in the heart of the city. Once complete, this will be the densest neighbourhood in Canada, providing thousands of homes for Vancouverites who have long been squeezed between the country’s priciest real estate and some of its lowest vacancy rates.

Sen̓áḵw is big, ambitious and undeniably urban—and undeniably Indigenous. It’s being built on reserve land owned by the Squamish First Nation, and it’s spearheaded by the Squamish Nation itself, in partnership with the private real estate developer Westbank. Because the project is on First Nations land, not city land, it’s under Squamish authority, free of Vancouver’s zoning rules. And the Nation has chosen to build bigger, denser and taller than any development on city property would be allowed.

Here’s a picture of what it will look like:

An even bigger development called Jericho Lands is now being planned, by a consortium of tribal organizations, on land officially owned by Vancouver.

Hilariously, Vancouver’s NIMBYs are complaining, claiming that the developments are not in keeping with Indigenous tradition. But Canada’s First Nations seem to have little interest in hewing closely to other people’s view of what their traditions are. Modern people do not want to live like premodern farmers. They are not mystical Tolkien elves. They would like to have shiny new apartment buildings and walkable neighborhoods.

This, I believe, is the key to respecting and honoring Native Americans — not to focus on the tragedies of their past, but to give them the right to build a better future. Tribal lands should definitely have the autonomy to do whatever they want with their lands, including building housing or industry. In fact, we’re starting to see a pattern emerge where Native Americans embrace laissez-faire policies toward industry and manage to poach business from their over-regulated neighbors:

Tesla is ramping up efforts to open showrooms on tribal lands where it can sell directly to consumers, circumventing laws in states that bar vehicle manufacturers from also being retailers in favor of the dealership model…

Mohegan Sun, a casino and entertainment complex in Connecticut owned by the federally recognized Mohegan Tribe, announced this week that the California-based electric automaker will open a showroom with a sales and delivery center this fall on its sovereign property where the state’s law doesn’t apply…The news comes after another new Tesla showroom was announced in June, set to open in 2025 on lands of the Oneida Indian Nation in upstate New York.

This sort of thing could lead to a win-win for the US and Native American tribes. American reindustrialization is being held back by a thicket of procedural requirements and local land-use regulations; if tribes were able to use their special legal status to circumvent those barriers, it could end up benefitting everyone.2 The tribes would get both jobs and the ability to tax local industry; America would get to execute an end run around the NIMBYs that are holding it back.

In fact, it’s probably possible for various American cities to turn over parts of their land to tribal jurisdiction, with the assistance of the federal government. This would probably result in dense urban developments like the ones being planned in Vancouver.

But even if it didn’t, it could have other commercial benefits — again, a win-win for the US and for the tribes. That would certainly be a lot more substantive than a bunch of land acknowledgments. And it would likely satisfy many people’s desire for “giving land back” to Native Americans, without embracing dubious moral principles of ethnic land rights and irredentism.

In other words, you’re not living on Indigenous land right now, but you could be in the future — and it might be pretty great.

The general principle here is that instead of a dark world of ethnic cleansing in the name of “decolonization”, we should try to build a bright future where Native Americans and the United States of America exist in harmony and cooperation rather than in conflict. And that principle doesn’t just apply to America, but to the whole world.

The history of land ownership is a violent and terrible one, but that doesn’t mean the future has to be more of the same.

Notes:

1 It is a bitter irony that many of the same people who morally condemn Israel for setting itself up as an ethnostate also justify its destruction using ethnonationalist principles. Personally, I tend to agree with the criticism of Israel’s ethnocentrism, but I don’t think replacing this with Palestinian ethnocentrism would make things better.

2 There’s a lot of historical precedent for this. For example, in the 1960s, Fairchild Semiconductor opened a factory on Navajo land in New Mexico, which was quite beneficial to the economy until an industry downturn and a labor dispute led to its demise in the late 70s.

This article was first published on Noah Smith’s Noahpinion Substack and is republished with kind permission. Become a Noahopinion subscriber here.

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Mark Twain’s quote, “Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction”, highlights our fascination with the unexpected and extraordinary – real-life events that defy logic and reason, pique our curiosity and leave us wanting more.

While fiction explores the unimaginable, mediums like movies help bridge the gap between reality and imagination, offering insight into the unexpected. One of Bollywood’s greatest films in the last two decades, Three Idiots, tells the story of three friends.

The protagonist  Ranchordas is a poor student dismissed by his teachers. Suddenly, things changed. He started getting A+s in all tests and exams. To everyone’s surprise, he cleared the toughest exam and was selected for one of the top prestigious colleges for engineering.

In reality, he was dumb, but on paper, he was a genius. He had the numbers—numbers speak. In the end, his two friends find out the real Ranchordas. Indian politics today is in a similar situation of revelation. 

Maharashtra election: A pivotal moment in election history 

After the 2024 general election, India witnessed a shift as Modi’s BJP lost its majority and public support. Voters rejected Hindutva politics and prioritized instead issues like unemployment, inflation and inequality. BJP’s defeat in its strongholds, including Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh, signaled anti-incumbency sentiment and Modi’s waning popularity.

Soon, they will have to face the litmus test in back-to-back assembly elections in October (Haryana & Jammu and Kashmir ) and November (Maharashtra and Jharkhan ).

In Haryana, strong anti-incumbency sentiment forced the BJP to replace its two-time chief minister just six months before the election. Modi and Amit Shah distanced themselves, addressing only four rallies, and their faces were absent from rally posters.

Observers and pollsters reported widespread public anger, with exit polls unanimously predicting an opposition Congress victory. However, the results shocked everyone. Despite early trends favoring Congress, a dramatic turnaround defied expert assessments, leaving many puzzled by the unexpected outcome.

The BJP achieved a hat-trick in Haryana, winning 48 of 90 Assembly seats with a 40% vote share—its best since 2000. Despite losing 5 of 10 parliamentary seats in the 2024 general election just months earlier and lacking strong state leadership or significant progress on the ground, this turnaround was remarkable. BJP secured over 50% votes on 19 seats (compared to Congress’s 12) and 40-50% votes on 39 seats (Congress: 32), surpassing the majority mark of 46 seats. 

Despite strong anti-incumbency, Modi’s waning popularity, leadership issues, internal conflicts and a lack of a strong narrative, pulling such a feat is exceptional and close to impossible for any party.  In Jammu & Kashmir, strong regional party National Conference won the election in alliance with Congress. 

Post-Haryana election attention now shifts to Maharashtra’s Assembly election in November. In the 2024 general election, Congress’s India Alliance won 30 of 48 seats in Maharashtra, while the BJP-led NDA managed just 17, with a strike rate of 32%.

The BJP’s poor performance in the 2024 general election was seen as a backlash against its alliances with breakaway factions of Shiv Sena and NCP. Experts predicted a tough fight in the Maharashtra Assembly election, with exit polls favoring the BJP’s NDA or Mahayuti over the India alliance for a narrow win.

However, the results were shocking: BJP emerged as the single largest party with 132 seats, its best-ever performance, achieving an 85% strike rate. It routed the Congress-led MVA or India, which had gained momentum in the Lok Sabha polls just six months earlier.

For the first time in Maharashtra’s history, no opposition party secured 10% of the seats required to claim leader of opposition status. BJP’s unprecedented turnaround in such a short time of six months is unprecedented or unheard of in Indian politics. 

There are uncanny similarities between the Haryana and Maharashtra elections which raises some serious questions. Both saw record-high voter turnouts, with Maharashtra’s the highest in three decades—a trend historically favoring anti-incumbency.

More importantly, if it’s a return of “Modi Waves”, then why are BJP’s victories limited to BJP-ruled states. Why didn’t it extend to other states like Jharkhand and Jammu & Kashmir?

If BJP was so sure of winning, then why did BJP leader Vinod Tawde resort to paying voters? Why did the media fail to capture this Modi wave phenomenon ? BJP’s leap from a 32% success rate in the general election to nearly 85% in six months is unprecedented and worthy of a case study by other parties. 

A new trend has emerged in the Haryana and Maharashtra elections: a sharp rise in voting percentages after 5 pm, when polls are near closing. In Maharashtra, turnout jumped from 55% at 5 pm to 68% the next day—a 13% increase.

This raises concerns, as these figures are based on real-time data recorded on Form 17A by the presiding officer, which tracks voter attendance throughout the day. How can the data vary the next day to such an extent? Certainly there are certain loopholes or vulnerabilities in the system, which are being exploited.

EVMs: The Pandora’s Box of India’s Electoral Integrity

Technological devices generally use two types of authentication: Single Factor Authentication (SFA) and Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA).

SFA, like email ID and password, grants access only to those with the password. MFA adds an extra layer of security, such as requiring an OTP sent to a verified number, to ensure only the authorized user can access the system.

Even with access to a password, a malicious user can’t log in without the OTP sent to the authorized person. This two-factor authentication, also used in banking, ensures security.

For example, ATM withdrawals provide both a screen message and a printed slip or SMS as proof. Without this, there would be no proof to report unauthorized transactions, creating a significant vulnerability.

The Indian EVM system currently uses single-factor authentication, making it vulnerable to manipulation. EVMs consist of two units: the control unit, operated by the polling officer, and the balloting unit, used by the voter.

While the VVPAT feature allows voters to verify their vote, only five VVPAT machines per segment are cross-checked with EVM results. Instead, these should be selected based on objections from the top two candidates.

The Election Commission (EC) must address discrepancies transparently to maintain trust, especially since it controls voter data, EVMs and VVPAT slips. On top of that, Chief Election Commissioner was appointed by the Modi government and worked under Modi’s second term as finance secretary . It’s a direct conflict, if not clash, of interest. It’s like a convict choosing his favorite judge.

Given concerns about conflicts of interest, the EC should adopt multi-factor authentication or revert to paper ballots to ensure credibility rather than ignoring it. Otherwise, India’s election will be much like Russia or North Korea, where everyone knows the result before the elections.

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The announcement of a ceasefire deal between Israel and Hezbollah is welcome news for a region torn apart by more than a year of warfare. Hopefully when implemented, the ceasefire will offer some respite for both Lebanese and Israeli civilians.

The deal came into effect at 4 am local time on Wednesday (November 27). However, the previous 24–48 hours had seen a dramatic increase in violence on both sides. This is part of a well-established pattern in warfare in which fighting increases in intensity just before a ceasefire comes into force.

My research has shown that while ceasefires may be the least-worst option we have to reduce violence during wartime, they are certainly not a panacea.

Specifically, I study the terms and power dynamics of ceasefires to better understand some of their less obvious consequences. Here are four questions and concerns I have about the current Israel–Hezbollah ceasefire.

1. What happens after 60 days?

The ceasefire agreement reportedly has 13 points that aim to stop the hostilities between Israel and Hezbollah for 60 days.

This would, in theory, allow for more than a million people displaced from southern Lebanon and more than 60,000 people displaced from northern Israel to return to their homes.

Returning Israelis to their homes in the north has been one of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s explicit war aims. Thousands of Israelis from the north have been housed in hotels across the country for more than a year at great expense to the government, so there is also a large economic incentive to make this deal happen.

However, given the relatively short timeframe and the fragile nature of the ceasefire, it remains to be seen whether civilians on both sides will take the opportunity to return home.

Additionally, the destruction in southern Lebanon is extensive, making it difficult for people to return within the relatively short timeframe of the truce.

While US President Joe Biden and his French counterpart Emmanuel Macron have said the ceasefire will provide the basis for a “lasting calm”, the terms of the ceasefire provide no details on what will happen at the end of the 60-day period.

2. The conflict could expand to Syria

A number of the terms are concerned with limiting Hezbollah’s ability to rearm during the ceasefire. This includes the dismantling of all unauthorized infrastructure and weapons production facilities in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah’s main patron, Iran, channels weapons to Hezbollah through Syria. The terms of the ceasefire raise the possibility that Israel will conduct more airstrikes inside Syria to ensure weapons from Iran do not reach Hezbollah.

While this is not explicitly authorized under the terms of the ceasefire or international law, the deal provides Israel with some justification for taking such action. It can argue it is enforcing the terms of the ceasefire by not allowing Hezbollah to rearm via weapons shipments from Iran.

Already in the wake of the ceasefire announcement, Israel targeted sites on Lebanon’s northern border with Syria for the first time, presumably as a way to curb Iran’s influence.

3. Lack of detail on troop withdrawal

In many ways, the ceasefire is based on UN Security Council resolution 1701, which ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.

It’s ironic the terms of the ceasefire recognize the importance of this resolution when Israel has largely ignored several other UN resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

And arguably, resolution 1701 was never fully implemented by either Israel or Hezbollah.

Another term of the agreement says Israel will gradually withdraw its troops from southern Lebanon over the 60-day period.

During this time, the Lebanese Army and state security forces will become “the only entities authorized to carry weapons or deploy troops” in the area south of the Litani River. Al Jazeera has reported that Israel insists Hezbollah dismantles and leaves southern Lebanon before any Israeli soldier withdraws.

Given the ceasefire provides no specific detail on logistics, it remains to be seen whether and how the Israel Defense Forces will withdraw its troops. Additionally, the Lebanese Army and security forces are generally seen as being hugely underfunded, as well as unable and/or unwilling to challenge Hezbollah’s primacy in Lebanon.

Further, another term of the ceasefire says the US will support indirect negotiations between Israel and Lebanon to achieve an internationally recognized delineation of their border.

The explicit mention of negotiations on the border suggests it may change as a result of the ceasefire. This could mean Israel may seek to retain and hold new territory as a result.

4. What about Gaza?

Netanyahu has said the ceasefire will enable Israel to focus its efforts on Hamas fighters in Gaza and his top security concern, Iran.

Other officials have called the ceasefire “a game-changer” that would show Hamas that the conflicts in Gaza and Lebanon were de–linked.

Hezbollah had previously insisted it would not agree to a ceasefire until the war in Gaza ended. This new deal presumes this condition has been dropped.

Some have suggested a ceasefire with Hezbollah may put additional pressure on Hamas to agree to a deal with Israel regarding the release of the remaining Israeli hostages it holds.

However, this overlooks the fact Hamas has been willing to make a ceasefire deal in the past, while the Israeli government has stymied negotiations by adding new terms at the last minute.

Further, Qatar was frustrated to such a degree by an “unwillingness to engage” and “lack of good faith” from both sides, it recently withdrew as a mediator between the parties.

The ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah should not take attention away from the fighting in Gaza, nor the horrific and dire humanitarian situation there.

It remains to be seen how the war in Gaza will play out. Will Israel move forward with a more formal occupation of parts of the enclave, as some have suggested? Or will the ceasefire with Hezbollah serve to isolate Hamas to the extent it feels it has even less to lose than it – and the Palestinians – already have?

Marika Sosnowski is postdoctoral research fellow, The University of Melbourne

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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