A North Korean ICBM Test: Would Kim Jong-un Really Open Pandora's Box? Could Kim Jong-un be prepping for an ICBM launch? The answer is yes, anything is possible. But it would also be the most extreme option the North Korean leader could take to send Washington a message. by Daniel R. DePetris

South Korean President Moon Jae-in is going through a not-so-good, very-bad week.

On June 4, Kim Yo-jong released a blistering statement warning the Blue House that its prized inter-Korean peace initiative was at imminent risk if South Korean authorities didn’t crackdown on the “mongrel dogs” and “human scum”  launching anti-Pyongyang leaflets into North Korea.

Days later, the North proceeded with its threat and cut off all inter-Korean phone lines to Seoul. When South Korean officials dialed up their counterparts across the DMZ, nobody picked up. Then, when the Moon government took action against the two North Korean defector groups by withdrawing their licenses and filing a criminal complaint, Human Rights Watch sharply condemned Seoul’s decision and called it "a blatant violation of freedom of association”—a sentiment shared widely by Korea watchers.

And now, as if Moon needed anything else on his plate this week, a South Korean newspaper reported that U.S. intelligence officials spotted as many as six ICBM’s atop transporter erector launchers at a missile base in South Pyeongan Province.

Normally, when a story about a North Korean ICBM hits the press, pundits and journalists covering the Koreas assume Kim Jong-un is either thinking about a launch or preparing for one. Last December comes to mind. Frustrated at being on the receiving end of what it viewed as old denuclearization proposals, North Korean officials talked about an ominous “Christmas gift” for the Trump administration if the U.S. position didn’t change. The general consensus at the time was that this so-called gift could be an ICBM, a poignant and bold demonstration of the regime’s displeasure. As we now know, no such gift was forthcoming. Christmas came and went, and no ICBM test was conducted. 

As former senior State Department official and North Korea expert Bob Carlin frequently reminds us, many U.S. analysts tend to have preconceived notions the North as inherently duplicitous, averse to diplomacy and compromise, hardline to the core, and uninterested in being anything but provocative. The latest ICBM missile movements are likely to result in the predictable storm of hot takes about how a North Korean ICBM test is only a matter of time and how the days of “fire and fury”—a period when the White House was callously debating a "bloody-nose strike” on Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program and military facilities—could make an ugly return by the fall.     

Could Kim Jong-un be prepping for an ICBM launch?

The answer is yes, anything is possible. But it would also be the most extreme option the North Korean leader could take to send Washington a message. While one hopes that President Trump wouldn’t react to such a hypothetical test foolishly or emotionally, one can’t be entirely sure given the nature of this particular commander-in-chief. Kim cannot be fully confident how Trump would react, especially if he proceeds with a test at the same time Trump is in the middle of a live-or-death struggle for his political future. While there are a few voices of reason in this administration (Deputy Secretary of State Stephen Biegun, for instance), Trump is likely to perceive an ICBM test as the gravest insult to him personally, a purposeful punch to the gut, and the elimination of the only concrete accomplishment he could plausibly cite for his top-level diplomacy with Kim—a suspension of long-range missile tests. 

All of which is to say that Kim will tread carefully. He may look funny, wear the same gray-suit every day and smoke like a chimney, but Kim isn’t going to recklessly authorizing a launch of such magnitude. He understands that to send a Hwasong-14 or Hwasong-15 into the sky would very likely put the kibosh on an already floundering U.S.-North Korea dialogue, which means any small notion of U.S. or U.N. Security Council sanctions relief is shut down. Kim also knows he isn’t going to get a better deal from a potential President Joe Biden, a man who supported a military strike against North Korea as a senator and who stated during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary that he wouldn’t even dream of meeting Kim unconditionally. 

Is the latest report of ICBM movement a prelude to the first long-range missile test in over 3 years? We don’t know. Could it be? Yes, it could. But none of us should assume this scenario is a fait-accompli. For Kim to go forward would be like him opening the lid of a Pandora’s Box. It would also make the jobs of those in the U.S. counseling for a formal diplomatic relationship more challenging than it already is.

Know This: Face Masks May Prevent Second Wave of the Coronavirus That and washing your hands. by Ethen Kim Lieser

For months now, many Americans have been directed to wear face masks when out in public—all in an effort to curb the spread of the coronavirus.

Although there is still some confusion over how effective masks are, one recent study from the University of Cambridge and University of Greenwich says that if 100% of people wore masks all the time in public, in addition to lockdown measures, that should be enough to stave off a second wave of COVID-19.

“Our analyses support the immediate and universal adoption of face masks by the public,” Richard Stutt, who co-led the study at the University of Cambridge, said in a release.

“If widespread face mask use by the public is combined with physical distancing and some lockdown, it may offer an acceptable way of managing the pandemic and re-opening economic activity long before there is a working vaccine.”

The study, which was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society A, hinted that even if only 50% of people wore masks in public, that could still be of huge benefit.

“We have little to lose from the widespread adoption of face masks, but the gains could be significant,” the study’s co-author Renata Retkute said in a release.

The World Health Organization has also jumped on board, as it said last week that it now recommends that everyone wear fabric face masks in public to try to stop the contagion’s spread.

Despite knowing about the potential protections that masks could offer, Americans are generally far from compliant.

According to a Gallup poll that was conducted in April, only 36% said that they always wore a mask while out in public. 32% replied sometimes and 31% said never.

Surveys have also shown that certain states are more compliant than others. For example, according to a YouGov poll of 89,347 American adults, 52% of people in New York said that they wore masks while outside the home. In Wisconsin, that percentage only sat at 31%.

“There is a common perception that wearing a face mask means you consider others a danger,” the study’s co-author John Colvin, a professor at the University of Greenwich, said in a release.

“In fact, by wearing a mask you are primarily protecting others from yourself. Cultural and even political issues may stop people wearing face masks, so the message needs to be clear: my mask protects you, your mask protects me.”

Could Donald Trump’s War Against Huawei Trigger a Real War With China? As relations between the United States and China worsen over the months ahead, could Beijing decide to try to make Taiwan the solution to its advanced semiconductor problem? by Graham Allison

The centerpiece of the Trump administration’s “tech war” with China is the campaign to prevent its national champion Huawei from becoming the dominant supplier of 5G systems to the world. The Administration’s objective, as a former Trump NSC staffer described it, is to “kill Huawei.” And China has heard that message. As Huawei’s legendary CEO Ren Zhengfei told the leadership of the company in February, “the company has entered a state of war.”

After months of diplomatic efforts to dissuade other nations from buying their 5G infrastructure from Huawei, the administration delivered what one official called a “death blow.” On May 15, the Commerce Department banned all sales of advanced semiconductors from American suppliers to Huawei. It also prohibited all sales of equipment to design and produce advanced semiconductors by foreign companies that use U.S. technology or intellectual property.

In the five months between now and the election, could the U.S. attempt to enforce that ban become a twenty-first-century equivalent of the oil embargo the United States imposed on Japan in August 1941? While many people may not remember what happened, and while it was certainly not what the United States intended or anticipated, that action precipitated Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor four months later—and America’s entry into World War II. 

The thought that the United States and China could find themselves in a real, hot, bloody war will strike many readers as inconceivable. But we should remember that when we say something is inconceivable, this is not a claim about what is possible in the world, but rather about what our minds can conceive. In the summer of 1941, the possibility that a nation less than one-quarter the size of the United States would launch a bolt from the blue against the most powerful nation in the world was beyond Washington’s imagination.

To punish Japan for its military aggression against its neighbors in the late 1930s, the United States had initially imposed sanctions, and later an embargo on exports of high-grade scrap iron and aviation fuel to Japan. When these failed to stop its expansion, Washington ratcheted up the pressure by including essential raw materials such as iron, brass, and copper. Finally, on August 1, 1941, Franklin D. Roosevelt announced that the United States would embargo all oil shipments to Japan.

Eighty percent of Japan’s oil came from the United States, and Japan’s military forces required that oil to operate at home as well as across the Greater Co-prosperity Area in Northeast Asia. Facing what it saw as a choice between slow but sure strangulation, on the one hand, and taking an extreme chance that offered hope of survival, on the other, the government chose to take its chance with what it hoped would be a “knockout blow”—a bold preemptive attack aimed to destroy the U.S. Pacific Navy stationed at Pearl Harbor. As the designer of the attack, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, told the emperor: “In the first six months to a year of war against the U.S. and England, I will run wild, and I will show you an uninterrupted succession of victories.” But he went on to warn: “Should the war be prolonged for two or three years, I have no confidence in our ultimate victory.”

After a Black Swan spring, what else could happen in the fall of 2020?

Let us imagine that the Trump administration actually implements the ban on all sales of advanced semiconductors and equipment to manufacture semiconductors to China. Imagine further that Huawei’s Chairman really believes what he said after the ban was announced that this forces Huawei “to seek survival.” If President Xi Jinping concludes that this is a matter of life and death for his champion advanced technology company that is the poster child for his signature program promising Chinese technological leadership by 2025 and 2030, then what options does China have? 

The leading producer of advanced semiconductors for Huawei is the Taiwanese company TSMC. Its factories that supply Huawei and other leading Chinese technology companies are located ninety miles off the shore of the Chinese mainland. While operationally, Taiwan is semi-autonomous with its own market economy and democracy, according to Beijing, Taiwan is a “renegade province” that China’s leaders have repeatedly affirmed will be reintegrated fully under the control of Beijing. While previous Chinese leaders had followed a strategy that envisioned the magnetic pull of its rapidly-growing economy drawing Taiwan into the motherland, Xi Jinping’s government has concluded that this approach failed. As Xi’s Party-led autocracy has tightened controls against political opposition or criticism, Taiwanese, like Hong Kong residents, have become increasingly resistant to the prospect of being ruled by Beijing. In the twists and turns of this story, observers of the recent National People’s Congress in Beijing will have noticed that Premier Li Keqiang’s speech dropped the term “peaceful” from Beijing’s standard call for the reunification of Taiwan. One of China’s senior military leaders, Gen. Li Zuocheng, gave a rousing speech to the Congress assuring them that “If the possibility for peaceful reunification is lost, then the People’s armed forces will, with the whole of the nation, including the people of Taiwan, take all necessary steps to resolutely smash any separatist plots or actions.”

As relations between the United States and China worsen over the months ahead, could Beijing decide to try to make Taiwan the solution to its advanced semiconductor problem? American defense planners have analyzed an array of scenarios that they suspect Chinese planners have considered. These being with cutting off Taiwan’s lifeline of oil, food, and other essential supplies that arrive daily by ship—in essence, a twenty-first-century version of the coercive measures it employed in 1996 to intimidate Taiwan. A second option would be for China’s cyber warriors to shut down Taiwan’s electrical grid and the web as initial steps up a ladder that could then include covert or overt attacks on Taiwanese military bases to persuade its government to meet its demands. A third option foresees Chinese agents and sympathizers on the island, perhaps assisted by a Chinese version of Russia’s “little green men” who seized Crimea in 2014, taking over airports, ports, communication centers, and even key factories and headquarters including TSMC.

If Chinese forces seized TSMC factories and laboratories, then would this solve Huawei’s and other Chinese technologies leader’s advanced semiconductor problems? While views differ, having consulted with a number of those at leading U.S. and UK companies in this industry, my best judgment is that this could buy China critical time—one to two years— to advance its own initiatives. Of course, industry leaders like Qualcomm and ARM are continuously improving their designs and their manufacturing processes. But since Huawei and a number of other Chinese firms have been hard at work in developing indigenous capabilities, even if they should be a year behind, given their other advantages in 5G, this could still allow China to sustain its leadership in this critical new technology.

Before choosing military action against Taiwan, China would consider American reactions. In 1996, when Beijing began an analogous effort, it was forced to back down when President Bill Clinton ordered two U.S. aircraft carriers to support Taiwan. But that dramatic humiliation steeled Chinese leaders’ determination to build up their own military capabilities to ensure that this could never happen again. As has been widely reported, including in the new best-seller by Chris Brose, The Kill Chain, the local military balance of power has shifted dramatically since then. In the last eighteen Pentagon war games in which the United States and China fought a hot war over Taiwan, the score is China: eighteen, the United States: zero.

Is such a scenario likely? I think not. I’m betting that U.S. declarations about an embargo on all semiconductors are more bark than bite. That is also the way the market is assessing this standoff—the stock prices of the major suppliers of semiconductors to Huawei and to China—TSCM, Intel, Qualcomm, and Broadcom—having increased since the announced ban.

Nonetheless, the critical question is whether such a scenario is possible. And the answer to that question is most certainly yes. Those who find this too fanciful should review carefully what President Xi’s Party-led autocracy has done in the past several weeks in Hong Kong. Recognizing that a crisis would be a terrible thing to waste, Beijing has taken advantage of the distraction and disarray caused by the pandemic to tighten the noose to stop that city-state’s slide toward greater autonomy. The past two years of ineffective efforts by the local authorities to prevent disruptive weekly demonstrations demanding greater autonomy has been an embarrassment to Xi. Colleagues and critics have asked how a government that has asserted its authority so effectively on the mainland can have been thwarted by unruly kids. Beijing is thus moving step by step to impose a new national security law on Hong Kong that will outlaw four sins: session, sedition, treason, and foreign subversion. This law will allow Beijing’s state security forces to operate publicly to arrest violators. Under the cover of coronavirus limits on social gatherings and requirements for social distancing, Beijing has already arrested a number of the leaders of the protest and democracy movement and has been strengthening its surveillance system. While some Hong Kong residents have gone back to the streets in protest, even the leaders of these efforts have expressed their sense that the outcome is “inevitable.” 

As Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu warned two weeks ago: “If Hong Kong falls, we don’t know what’s going to be next. It might be Taiwan.” The U.S. government has condemned Beijing’s actions loudly, with Secretary of State Pompeo calling them a “death knell for Hong Kong’s autonomy.” It is currently preparing to respond with sanctions and even considering denial of Hong Kong’s special status for trade and finance, despite the fact that this would do more damage to Hong Kong than to Beijing. And many members of Congress are howling for more.

All this is certain to become ammunition in the most vicious war going on today—which is the war within the United States. Trump is fighting for reelection to ensure what he sees as his own personal survival and the future of his vision of America, against Joe Biden and the Democrats who are fighting for what they believe is the survival of American democracy.

In sum, as I wrote in Destined for War? (which was published on Memorial Day three years ago), we should expect things to get worse before they get worse. As the United States increasingly demonizes a rising China that is threatening to displace us from our position of leadership in every arena, and China pushes back to ensure that it can achieve its China Dream, both should be acutely aware that Thucydidean rivalries most often end in real wars. Moreover, the major risk of war in these rivalries comes not from either the rising or ruling power deciding that it wants war with the other. Instead, actions that have unintended effects, third-party provocations, or even accidents that would otherwise be inconsequential or readily managed often trigger a vicious spiral of reactions that drag the principal protagonists to what both know would be a catastrophe.

In sum: the remainder of 2020 could pose as severe a test for the United States and China as the final five months of 1941 did for the United States and Japan. 

China Carries Out Large-Scale Drills in Latest Showdown With India The latest saber-rattling in the region was meant to demonstrate China’s capability to quickly reinforce its border defenses. by Peter Suciu

This week China and India agreed to “peacefully resolve” their border tensions in the Himalayas through diplomatic and military channels. This came after Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) carried out a large-scale drill to check preparedness at its border with India. During the maneuver operation, thousands of PLA paratroopers along with armored vehicles conducted drills in the high-altitude northwestern region of Central China’s Hubei Province. 

The process was completed in just a few hours but it was the latest saber-rattling in the region and was meant to demonstrate China’s capability to quickly reinforce its border defenses. Footage of the troops boarding civilian planes and trains in advance of the exercises was aired on state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday, the same day top generals from China and India held talks in Moldo, on the Chinese side of the unmarked boundary that is known as the Line of Actual Control (LAC).

According to a release from the Indian Ministry of External Affairs both sides have maintained communications and the meeting took place in a cordial and positive atmosphere. 

“Both sides agreed to peacefully resolve the situation in the border areas in accordance with various bilateral agreements and keeping in view the agreement between the leaders that peace and tranquility in the India-China border regions is essential for the overall development of bilateral relations,” the statement noted.

This year marks the seventieth anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries, and while both sides have pledged to continue the military and diplomatic engagements things haven’t always been so cordial. Tensions have been growing along what is one of the world’s longest land borders and both New Delhi and Beijing have accused the other of overstepping the LAC.

Indian strategic affairs analyst Shishir Gupta, in a piece for the Hindustan Times, suggested the PLA’s maneuvers were part of a “pys-ops” campaign that could lead to disillusionment among the public. He added, “It is quite evident that the resolution of the current stand-off in eastern Ladakh will require a series of engagements with small incremental steps each time, if at all. Given the heavy deployment on both sides, each side would look for concessions from the other before the status quo ante is restored.” 

China has been increasingly broadcasting such displays of power.  

Groups of tanks and other armored vehicles attached to the 76th Group Army under the PLA Western Theater Command had previously conducted a long-distance maneuver on May 14.  

Thousands of soldiers from both China and India have been locked in a standoff for the better part of a month. Among the ongoing issues is the strategic road through the Galwan Valley in Ladkh that India has been building – a move opposed by China.  

While the Western media often portrays the Kashmir dispute as just one between India and Pakistan, China also controls some 17 percent of the territory. The LAC has existed since 1962 when the world’s two most populous countries went to war in a pair of remote, mountainous border regions. In less than a month, China dealt India a devastating defeat, which drove back Indian forces on all fronts.

The legacy of the 1962 resonates in both countries to this day.

India has fallen far behind China’s military, but today both countries share the outsized ambition to be a “great power” in Asia—if not the most powerful. China and India have, respectively, the largest and second-largest militaries on the continent and the highest and second-highest defense budgets. Both have huge domestic defense industries as well.

For now cooler heads have prevailed, but just as India and Pakistan continue to face one another in the region, so too will India and China. While such a future conflict could be disastrous for New Delhi, it could be equally devastating for Beijing—one that the world would be best to ensure it is avoided. 

Why the George Floyd Protests Are Unprecedented and Historic The uprisings join a long river of struggle in America. by Matthew Countryman

The river was the metaphor that best captured “the long, continuous movement” of the black freedom struggle for theologian, historian and civil rights activist Vincent Harding. Harding, who had served as a speechwriter for Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., wrote in his groundbreaking 1981 study of African-American history, “There is a River: The Black Struggle for Freedom in America” that the freedom struggle was “sometimes powerful, tumultuous, roiling with life; at other times meandering and turgid.”

When I think of the sudden, explosion of anti-racist protest that has overwhelmed the nation’s cities over the past two weeks, it is Harding’s metaphor of the river that comes to mind.

It is as if the dam has broken, and the many currents of the American protest tradition — not just the anti-racist tradition, but the anti-corporate and anti-war protest traditions; women’s, LGBTQ and student movements; movements for workers’ rights and economic justice — have all come together in a massive river of outrage and sorrow, exhilaration and hope.

This past weekend, tens of thousands of protesters joined the river in massive demonstrations in hundreds of cities across the country, from New York City to Jackson, Michigan, from Washington D.C. to Louisville, from Philadelphia to Seattle.

The River of Protest

Numerous commentators have compared the events of the past few days to the urban uprisings that shook 125 cities in the aftermath of the April 4, 1968, assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.

But as an historian of black social movements, my view is that as widespread and destructive as the 1968 rebellions were, neither their size nor the challenge they posed to the American political system approached what the U.S. has seen over the past two weeks. According to USA Today, as of June 4 there have been protests in 700 cities and towns since the death of George Floyd in police custody.

This remains true even if we consider the protests and police violence that shook the Chicago Democratic Convention in August 1968. Similarly, the scope and scale of the 2020 protests dwarf the student strikes that shut down hundreds of college campuses in the aftermath of the shootings of student protesters at Kent State and Jackson State in May 1970; the six days of protest and looting that shook Los Angeles in the aftermath of the 1992 Rodney King trial; the 1999 “Battle of Seattle,” during which protesters used a mix of nonviolent and more militant tactics to disrupt a World Trade Organization conference and the 650 cities that hosted Women’s Marches in January, 2017.

More than the number and size of the protests, though, what makes the 2020 uprisings unprecedented are the ways that they have pulled together multiple currents within the U.S. protest tradition into a mighty river of demand for fundamental change in American society.

Wanton disregard for black life

The spark, of course, was the horrifying video of yet another police killing of an unarmed African-American, George Floyd.

The nation was confronted with incontrovertible evidence, played out over 8 minutes and 46 seconds of video, not only of wanton disregard for black life but also of the ongoing failure of political institutions to solve the problem of racist police violence.

On top of the disproportionate death rates and economic devastation that COVID-19 has wrought on communities of color, a harsh light has been shone on the structural racism rampant in American society.

But while the murder of George Floyd was the spark, the fuel for the uprisings comes from many sources: the worst public health and economic crisis in generations, three and a half years of a divisive and chaotic presidential administration, a burgeoning white nationalist movement and decades upon decades of growing economic inequality amid an increasingly threadbare social safety net.

The focus of the protests has been on police violence and the nation’s unfinished racial justice agenda. But the diversity of protesters and the use of protest tactics —- from nonviolent marches and rallies to civil disobedience, rock throwing and looting —- drawn from the traditions of youth, labor and anti-corporate protest make it clear that even more is at play in the uprising.

The point is not, as others have argued, that it is the level of involvement of whites in the protests that distinguishes them from previous high points of anti-racist protest. There is in fact a long history of white support for, and participation in, black protest movements.

What is unprecedented is the way that protesters of all races and ethnicities have focused their ire on upscale business districts and national retail chains (as opposed to neighborhood businesses), while others have called for the redirecting of public spending from the police, prisons and other elements of the criminal justice system to health and social welfare programs.

Despite, or perhaps because of the protests’ decentralized and leaderless nature, they have managed to put on the table the broadest and most comprehensive set of social and economic reforms since the Poor People’s campaign that followed on the heels of Martin Luther King’s assassination in 1968.

From calls to shift funding from police budgets to programs for the poor to proposals for renewed public investment in minority businesses and urban neighborhoods, the uprisings are likely to reshape public policy debates for months and even years to come.

It is impossible to know whether the protests can or will be transformed into sustained campaigns to reform the criminal justice system or reinvigorate government programs for the poor and economically downtrodden. To achieve that level of structural change will require the rapid development of new forms of leadership and new organizational structures for the protest movement.

But as unlikely as that may seem, remember that no one could have predicted that the U.S. was on the verge of this level of mass mobilization of anti-racist protest two short weeks ago.

Neuroscience Explains Why You Might be Having Trouble Concentration During the Coronavirus Pandemic Students cite all sorts of reasons for opposing distance learning. What does science say? by Béatrice Pudelko

Fear, anxiety, worry, lack of motivation and difficulty concentrating — students cite all sorts of reasons for opposing distance learning. But are these excuses or real concerns? What does science say?

At the beginning of the pandemic, when universities and CEGEPs, Québec’s junior colleges, were putting in place scenarios to continue teaching at a distance, students expressed their opposition by noting that the context was “not conducive to learning.”

Teachers also felt that the students were “simply not willing to continue learning in such conditions.” A variety of negative emotions were reported in opinion columns, letters and surveys. A petition was even circulated calling for a suspension of the winter session, which Education Minister Jean-François Roberge refused.

Students are not the only ones who have difficulty concentrating on intellectual tasks. In a column published in La Presse, Chantal Guy says that like many of her colleagues, she can’t devote herself to in-depth reading.

“After a few pages, my mind wanders and just wants to go check out Dr. Arruda’s damn curve,” Guy wrote, referring to Horacio Arruda, the province’s public health director. In short: “It’s not the time that’s lacking in reading, it’s the concentration,” she said. “People don’t have the head for that.”

Why do students feel they don’t have the ability for studies? Recent advances in cognitive science provide insights into the links between negative emotions and cognition in tasks that require sustained intellectual investment.

A question of the amygdala

“The heart has its reasons which reason knows not.” This sentence from 17th-century philosopher Blaise Pascal sums up well the way in which western science has long separated the emotions of the “hot” universe from those of the “cold” universe in human rationality.

Walter Cannon’s physiological research has provided a first explanation of how emotions, especially negative emotions, take over our minds. He showed that emotion is a physiological warning system in the body, activating several structures below the cerebral cortex.

One of these structures, the amygdala, is now proving to be particularly important. The amygdala is rapidly activated in the face of threatening stimuli and allows us to learn to be wary of them. Faced with what could be a snake hidden among the branches, an animal will awaken its senses, alert its muscles and react quickly, without having the luxury of analyzing whether the slender shape is a snake or a stick.

In humans, the amygdala activates quickly and automatically in response to social stimuli loaded with negative emotions. Neuroscience research shows that people are not only highly sensitive to the emotional charge of their perceptions but they are also unable to ignore it.

For example, the emotions aroused by the sight of a snake in the grass or an untrustworthy political figure can capture our attention in spite of ourselves.

Attention: A limited resource

One might object that for many people, fortunately, COVID-19 does not pose the same kind of threat as a snake encountered in the undergrowth. Our social systems provide us with protections that are previously unimaginable and we are much better prepared to deal with crisis situations.

And, learning situations established by educational institutions — whether in-person classes or online classes — always require that students focus their attention and consciously control their thoughts. As teachers know from experience, a great challenge while leading any lesson is keeping the attention of all students by ensuring that they remain focused on the activity at hand.

The cognitive psychologist Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner in 2002, was among the first to propose that attention is a limited cognitive resource and that some cognitive processes require more attention than others. This is particularly the case for activities involving the conscious control of cognitive processes (such as reading or writing academic papers), involving what Kahneman calls “System 2” thinking. That requires attention and mental energy.

Limited attention capacity is also at the heart of the theories proposing that conscious and controlled cognitive processes are carried out in working memory, which is compared to a mental space capable of processing a limited amount of new information.

In working memory, attention acts as a supervisor of cognitive resource allocation and a controller of action execution. The brain circuits associated with working memory and executive functions are those of the prefrontal cortex.

When emotion eats at attention

Researchers have long believed that the processing of emotions through the amygdala does not depend on the attention resources of working memory. However, evidence is accumulating in favour of the opposite hypothesis, indicating that the circuits connecting the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex play an important role in discriminating between relevant and irrelevant information for the current activity.

For example, emotional stimuli were found to interfere with the performance of a working memory task especially since they were not very relevant to the task. Furthermore, as the cognitive load associated with the task increased (for example, when the task required more cognitive resources), the interference of emotional stimuli not relevant to the task also increased. Thus, it would appear that the more a task requires cognitive effort and concentration, the more easily we are distracted.

Much of the extensive research on anxiety by psychologist Michael Eysenck and colleagues supports this view. They show that people who are anxious prefer to focus their attention on stimuli associated with the threat, unrelated to the task at hand. These stimuli may be internal (worrisome thoughts) or external (images perceived as threatening).

This is also the case with worry as the repeated experience of seemingly uncontrollable thoughts about possible negative events. Both anxiety and worry eat up the attention and cognitive resources of working memory, resulting in decreased cognitive performance, especially for complex tasks.

Other research indicates that feelings of mental fatigue increase when performing a task while trying not to respond to outside demands. It has been suggested that mental fatigue is a particular emotion that tells us that our mental resources are being depleted.

Overall, this research suggests that we are depleting our attention resources to avoid paying attention to irrelevant, but emotionally charged information! It is now better understood why it is so difficult — and exhausting — to avoid checking one’s email while reading a scientific text, to switch from email to Facebook and from Facebook to COVID-19 news coverage, when we are concerned about the curve or death toll in seniors’ homes.

Emotion and cognition are inseparable

Research in cognitive sciences today confirms what we know intuitively: studying requires attention, time and availability of mind. This research shows that cognitive and emotional processes are so intertwined in the brain that, for some researchers, such as Antonio Damasio, no thought is possible without emotion.

Not surprisingly, then, in a context full of messages about the dangers of the pandemic, students find it difficult to focus sustainably on their studies and most seem to lack quality time for reading or writing.

Why Coronavirus Reparations From China Are Just a Distraction In the case of coronavirus, there is unlikely to be a strong legal basis to claim reparations from China under international law. by Luke Moffett

There have been increasing demands for reparations from China for the harm caused by COVID-19. President Donald Trump called for compensation from China for the economic costs of the virus. Some reports suggest US officials are also discussing whether families of victims could sue China. Obiageli Ezekwesili, a former World Bank vice president, has called on China to pay reparations to African countries.

In one case in the US state of Missouri, the attorney general, Eric Schmitt, filed a legal claim in federal court in April seeking cash compensation from China. The civil claim alleges that China responded slowly to the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, which led to billions of dollars of damages to the economy. Mississippi announced plans to bring a similar claim. China has dismissed these out of hand as “absurd”.

Reparations have long been a means to remedy wrongdoing in international law. The 1919 Treaty of Versailles after the first world war is a common example, but in the past century reparations have been used for a range of violations of international and domestic law. These include for Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, payments to Holocaust victims, to indigenous communities who lost their land, and pay outs by churches for institutional abuse.

In the US, longstanding claims by African Americans for reparations for slavery and racism have become more pronounced following the killing of George Floyd. This has been best argued by the writer Ta-Nehisi Coates who explains how historical injustices continue to manifest themselves in everyday racism and structural inequalities. The claim for reparations for African Americans is the claim for victims to be recognised as human beings and to be treated as citizens with equal rights and dignity.

Reparations are now understood to go beyond just compensation or money, and also include restitution of property, rehabilitation, memorials, apologies and institutional reform.

No legal basis

In the case of coronavirus, there is unlikely to be a strong legal basis to claim reparations from China under international law. Despite calls by US politicians for victims to sue China, the chances of claiming reparations in the courts of other countries is generally not allowed under the international legal rules of sovereign state immunity.

And even if there were a legal basis or political reason to do so, reparations could be difficult to implement. Compensation for the financial loss or the deaths of now hundreds of thousands of people would likely put the sum in the trillions of dollars. Some countries have suggested a payment for those who have died from the virus, prioritising healthcare workers, particularly ethnic minorities who have a disproportionately higher death toll. But this will be a matter for domestic governments and courts, rather than international arbitration.

Deflecting attention

Reparations are often used as a means of making claims about the past. In one way this is a means for those making the claims to lay blame at the feet of those seen as responsible for their suffering. A good example are reparations claims made by Colombian victims against the company Chiquita after it admitted funding paramilitary and guerrilla groups, who killed local civilians, so that it could protect its banana plantations. Some of the legal claims are still ongoing.

But claiming reparations against a particular organisation and not others can also be a cynical way to deflect attention from the responsibility of those making the claim. A good example are the claims by white nationalists that Irish emigrants to America were also slaves, so as to undermine claims for reparations by African Americans for centuries of systemic racism and marginalisation.

In the case of the US, its slow response to the pandemic in light of warnings from its own intelligence services about the risks of the virus and alerts by the World Health Organization, have aggravated the impact of the virus – as have the government’s own mixed messages about the seriousness of COVID-19.

Yet by claiming reparations from China, the US is laying the blame for all the harm that has been caused by coronavirus at China’s door – with some dangerous consequences. Framing blame for the pandemic on China has also seen increasing attacks on Chinese people in the US and other countries, fuelling xenophobia and nationalism.

Only so far

Reparations only get us so far. They cannot solve all suffering or structural inequalities. They can provide a set of values for claiming accountability in the face of injustices of the past. However, other social movements, protests and cultural shifts such as the Black Lives Matter protests may be a more effective means of social transformation through resistance and the awakening of public consciousness to tackle institutional and social racism as well as health inequalities.

Blaming one country for the virus is a distraction from more fundamental shifts happening around the world, such as increasing right-wing populism, excessive use of draconian powers and the degradation of the environment that threaten to undermine human rights today and for generations to come.

All of humanity is affected. Rather than states turning against each other, we should rethink how we can rebuild, together, in the aftermath of this virus.