The personal data of up to 3.3 million users of several Hello Kitty websites has been exposed in a database breach.

Researcher Chris Vickery discovered the details of 3.3 million accounts associated with sanriotown.com over the weekend, which is the official web portal for Hello Kitty and other characters owned by parent company Sanrio. The site offers fans access to forums, mini-games, videos, blogs and other Hello Kitty content.

Details included in the records, which were first known to have been published on November 22, 2015, are the first and last names, email addresses, home countries and the sexes of users, as well password hints and their corresponding answers. Unsalted SHA-1 password hashes, which are easily reversed to allow access to original passwords, were also uncovered.

Hello Kitty is a brand popular around the world among both children and adults. A number of websites associated with the brand are affected by the leak: hellokitty.com, hellokitty.com.sg, hellokitty.com.my, hellokitty.in.th and mymelody.com. Two servers containing mirrors of this data were also discovered.

After discovering the database of information, Vickery passed on the details to technology website CSO and DataBreaches.net.

As accounts set up by children are likely to be involved in the leak, a journalist with CSO, Steve Regan, has described the leak as being “worse” than if it had just been adults affected.

“If someone managed to compromise a child’s identity, the fraud might not be detected for years, because most parents don’t monitor their child’s credit record,” Regan stated.

By Oded Brosh*

The Belfer Center’s The Iran Nuclear Deal: A Definitive Guide^[1] is a commendable discourse on one side of the coin of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) regarding Iran’s nuclear program – namely, the side which focuses on what Iran will do to forego, or postpone, its nuclear weapons breakout options.  However, much of the JCPOA -– about half -– is devoted to the other side of the coin, which focuses on what Iran will gain from complying with its provisions.  Supporters and critics alike of the Vienna agreement are overlooking the probability that Iran’s negotiators have designed an agreement with which to comply, not to violate, to gain pivotal strategic advantages and capabilities -– to fundamentally alter the balance of power, regionally and beyond.  Then, later, the nuclear weapons option will be back too, with zero breakout warning time.  The Iranian “Grand Plan” may well involve exploiting to the fullest what the JCPOA offers: (1) gradually gaining immunity to military action to foil a future breakout to nuclear weapons; (2) then fielding disabling or first-strike capabilities against regional allies and partners of the United States; and (3) accumulating formidable survivable retaliatory assets alongside immunity to punishment.  This strategic sea-change will empower Iran as the regional superpower it has sought all along to be, dominant and dominating, regardless of the question what kind of Iran it will be.

The Nuclear Aspects of the JCPOA

The Belfer Center’s Definitive Guide is a comprehensive, outstandingly well-organized, and exhaustive discussion of the nuclear aspects of the JCPOA.  It explains how Iran’s access to a nuclear weapons breakout option will be blocked, by both the plutonium and the enriched uranium routes, assuming full implementation and full compliance by Iran for its entire duration, for many years hence –- perhaps fifteen, or even longer.  It discusses in detail how the agreement’s inspection regime, reinforced by the intelligence efforts of countries of concern, is likely to expose virtually any Iranian attempt to substantially violate the agreement.  This would particularly be true if Iran attempted to construct a parallel covert capability, which would involve facilities that are impossible to hide, and cannot be obfuscated in the 24-day grace period allowed Iran by the JCPOA to grant IAEA inspectors access.  Weaponization-related developments that do not require specially constructed facilities and do not involve nuclear materials that leave tell-tale traces would be more difficult to discover, but intelligence may be expected to expose them in the future too, albeit possibly with some delay.

The Belfer Guide devotes a great deal of attention to the critics’ concern that Iran will, sooner or later, violate the agreement, and will not be adhering to its provisions for the full fifteen-year duration of the more stringent of the JCPOA’s restrictions, which in effect block Iran’s path to the bomb.  It also reiterates that military options available today to foil Iranian breakout will be available in the future too -– given that sanctions may be slow-moving and part-time, and by implication not pack quite the required punch.  This, of course, underscores the assumption that U.S. military capabilities will remain overwhelmingly superior to those of Iran, so that the U.S. will be able to foil, by use of force if necessary, any future Iranian breakout to nuclear weapons, given adequate warning.  It remains for the reader to ponder whether the exercise of such an option will in the future be perhaps more difficult, more costly, or less feasible than today; in fact, supporters of the agreement claim that it will be easier to execute, because there will be more information available thanks to the JCPOA’s intrusive transparency regime.  More likely, however, Iran’s strategic empowerment will allow it to become both immune to slow-moving and part-time re-imposed sanctions; and it will radically transform the cost-benefit matrix regarding limited military strikes to foil an Iranian breakout to nuclear weapons, as Iran incrementally acquires both defensive and retaliatory offensive capabilities on a scale to invalidate and reverse the current assumptions regarding the exercise of such a military option.

Iran’s Strategic Empowerment — The JCPOA’s Underlying Logic

In fact, there is an entire spectrum of possibilities.  On the optimistic side, during the run of the JCPOA we might certainly plausibly witness encouraging developments in Iran, which could turn Iran into a moderate and constructive member of the regional and international communities.  This possibility is certainly something for which to hope, and perhaps for which to pray, by supporters and critics of the JCPOA alike.   Another guardedly optimistic possibility is that Iran will comply with the JCPOA, while projecting far into the future a generally “more of the same” scenario regarding its other relatively low-level destabilizing activities.  Two more pessimistic, and more probable, scenarios appear to each be of medium- to medium-high probability: one is a relatively early violation or abrogation by Iran of the JCPOA (after a few years); or, worse, for another, compliance so as to exploit the JCPOA to its fullest to establish a strategic transformation in Iran’s favor.

More probably, Iran will use the lifting of sanctions to landscape a new strategic environment — a shift in the balance of power architecture, regionally and beyond.  This will include within a few years immunity to limited military action to foil an Iranian nuclear breakout, through imposition of a fundamental change in the cost-benefit calculations of the military option.  With the declaration of “Implementation Day,” and the rescinding of sanctions, Iran will immediately begin to acquire defense value assets to make the military option exorbitantly expensive to carry out; and worse, will involve a credible threat of retaliation of a scope to rule out such action in the first place.  As sanctions are rescinded, and in light of legislation mandating non-interference by the E.U. and the U.S. in the free flow of the items detailed ad nauseam in the agreement — all of which runs for the length of about half of the JCPOA — Iran will acquire strategic defense value assets to which it will have unlimited and incremental access.  It will immediately buy a multitude of capabilities to enhance its strategic posture, including such non-shooting defense assets as computers, software^[2], cyber warfare relevant assets, as well as transportation, logistical, communications and assorted advanced electronics, optics and other defense value assets. It will invest in associated defense relevant infrastructures, such as roads, rail, air, sea, as well as storage facilities, bunkers, tunnels, deep attack-immune shelters, intelligence, command, control, redundancy, power facilities, and many other assets of direct or indirect implication for Iran’s both defensive and retaliatory/offensive strategic posture.  And it will use the additional resources at its disposal to expand its indigenous weapons production capabilities, including its missile and rocket industries.

After five years, when the arms embargo is lifted, and Iran is able to buy a multitude of advanced state-of-the-art weapons systems from arms suppliers eager to tap in to Iran’s profligate wealth, it will acquire additional and even more lethal moving and shooting weapons.  After eight years, following IAEA confirmation that Iran is in compliance with the terms of the JCPOA — “Transition Day” — the missile sanctions will be rescinded, and Iran’s ballistic and cruise missile programs will gain international legitimacy.  According to the Belfer report, this may actually happen sooner, subject to IAEA confirmation that all of Iran’s nuclear activities are peaceful.  So, missile sanctions may actually be lifted in three, or four, or five, years’ time, not eight, if Iran strictly complies with its commitments to the JCPOA; it, therefore, probably will.  Thus, Iran will then be able to openly acquire state-of-the-art technology components and materials for its missile industries.  The result will be that Iran will field a great number — hundreds, perhaps thousands — of state-of-the-art, accurate and reliable, ballistic and cruise missiles, free to deploy them and upgrade their survivability absent any quantitative or qualitative restrictions.  State-of-the-art look-down radar capabilities will direct advanced interceptor air-defense missiles (such as incrementally advanced versions of the S-300) to shoot down manned, stealth, and unmanned aircraft and cruise missiles, making Iran significantly resistant to both preemptive and to retaliatory strikes, perhaps immune to them; while Iran’s own retaliatory capabilities will become survivable, and intimidating, quantitatively daunting, and ominous.  Finally, Iran will buy into Ballistic Missile Defense (Russian, European) to further frustrate retaliatory options against it.

Thus, a more alarming interpretation of the JCPOA would be the very probability that Iran designed the agreement in the first place not in order to violate it, but rather to comply with it, to gain pivotal strategic advantages and capabilities, as it acquires paradigmatically up-scaled both defensive and offensive retaliatory capabilities; to eventually empower Iran with disabling first-strike capabilities against regional rivals who are U.S. allies and partners; and to frustrate retaliatory punishment deterrence options.  This Iran will be able to achieve only by compliance with the JCPOA, because its early gross violation would likely undermine the probability for achieving these overarching goals.  Presumably the Iranian leadership understands this, and has labored intensely to design an agreement to facilitate realization of the higher comprehensive strategic agenda, while also allowing for a revival of Iran’s economic and social vitality.  Later, Iran will also be able to move towards acquiring nuclear weapons, if it so chooses, with virtually zero breakout warning time.

The Bottom Line

Admittedly, this is a worst-case analysis scenario.  But it explains perhaps more forcefully the concerns of critics of the JCPOA with the dual worry about Iran both complying, and then later — when it has benefitted to the fullest from the agreement, and has become immune to punishment — violating it.  This may well be a more realistic and probable scenario than optimistic scenarios of a welcome transformation for the good of Iran’s agenda, for one, or of compliance with the JCPOA while continuing no more than a low-level “more of the same” nuisance agenda, for another — although these cannot be altogether ruled out either.  The agreement is thus more of a gamble of extremes than is characterized by the discourse; the oft-repeated caveats regarding “snapback sanctions,” and “all options on the table now will be on the table in the future too,” may not really be anchored in a considered analysis, but rather in an airy belief that the United States will always be the most powerful nation militarily, which is not at all the point.  Instead, it will be whether Iran has become resistant to sanctions — slow-moving and part-time — and to limited military strikes to foil nuclear breakout, through enhanced defensive capabilities, and massive empowerment of its retaliatory options, thus fundamentally turning the tables on the decision-making dynamics.

Critics of the agreement have aimed too low: they consistently focus on Iran cheating, lying, and designing an agreement which it might, and wants to, violate.  This misjudges the Iranian agenda, which is an agreement with which to comply, not to violate, in exchange for superseding benefits of a transformed strategic architecture, regionally and beyond, to complement the retention of a long term, if deferred, nuclear zero warning time breakout option.  In other words, the Iranians have aimed much higher: they have loaned away their nuclear breakout option in exchange for a vision of a fundamental strategic shift in the balance of power, which will reaffirm Iran as the dominant, and dominating, regional superpower, immune to limited attack, and empowered of massive offensive disabling strike and deterring capabilities.  Then, later, the nuclear weapons option will be back too, with zero breakout warning time.

About the author:
*Oded Brosh is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute for Policy and Strategy at the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya, and teaches at the Lauder School of Government, Diplomacy and Strategy and the Raphael Recanati International School of IDC.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

Notes:
[1]The Iran Nuclear Deal: A Definitive Guide.  Cambridge, MA: Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, August 2015 http://belfercenter.ksg.harvard.edu/files/IranDealDefinitiveGuide.pdf

[2] The word software appears in the JCPOA twelve times, but in the Belfer Definitive Guide not once.

Up until yesterday, Azerbaijani government has taken all possible actions and measures to maintain the stability of the national currency, said Azerbaijani president’s aide for public and political affairs, Ali Hasanov.

Hasanov made the remarks Dec. 21 commenting on the Azerbaijani Central Bank’s decision to introduce a floating exchange rate of manat.

“This occurred despite most oil-producing countries, as well as neighboring trade and economic partners of Azerbaijan, CIS countries changed their monetary policy rather earlier,” Hasanov said.

Hasanov said that the experts are well aware of a country’s huge losses as a result of preserving the stability of the currency through intervention.

“However, it is known that the transition to a “floating rate” is not without losses for the public,” he said. “It causes many social and economic problems, and doesn’t pass without negative impact on internal situation in the country and public opinion. During the last several days in Azerbaijan, it was obvious to everyone that switching to the “floating rate” is inevitable, and the Central Bank has to reckon with that.”

“The world has been experiencing an economic crisis for a certain period,” Hasanov said. “The production and income of most countries decline and national currencies lose their values.”

“Regardless of economic power and potential, the national currencies lose their value quickly in all the countries – from one of the most powerful countries in the world, China, up to the small countries,” he said. “National currencies of our closest foreign trade partners, namely, Russia, Turkey, Iran, Kazakhstan, Georgia and others were released to “free float” long ago. This created problems in the economic and trade relations with them.”

Hasanov said that the domestic production was gradually decreasing in Azerbaijan due to the stable and high exchange rate of manat.

“In this situation, a “free floating” rate of manat was inevitable,” he said. “However, Azerbaijani government tried to make the processes as imperceptible as possible and hold the processes that can have a negative impact on the social conditions of the population. But as you know, our country is part of the world. We had to keep up with and adapt to the economic processes.”

“Azerbaijan is an oil country,” he said. “Such countries as ours can not but take into account the sharp drop in oil prices, which is the main source of income of the state budget. The prices on oil and oil products have reduced threefold since early 2015. This means that Azerbaijan’s revenues reduced threefold.

“Many countries with oil as the main source of income took a decision to pass to a floating exchange rate of the national currency in early 2015,” he said.

“But during this period, the Central Bank of Azerbaijan has been trying to cover this deficit through its foreign exchange reserves. However, the continued regulation of the exchange rate through the foreign exchange reserves could further damage the country’s economy. It is clear to everybody that the oil prices are not expected to increase on the world market in the near future. Of course, this is stipulated not only by the objective laws of the market. The subjective reasons and first and foremost, the relations between Russia and the US played a significant role. It is clear for everyone who follows the news that in terms of increasing geopolitical competition with Russia, the US chose the policy of weakening the opponent’s economy by artificial impact on the oil prices on the world market. First, the US took control over OPEC and limited the opportunities of the organization in decision-making on oil prices by various ways. Afterwards, the US lifted a 40-year ban on the export of American oil.”

The House of Representatives supported a bill to lift the ban amid the rapid reduction in oil prices on the world markets, Hasanov said.

“This decision can not be explained by the laws of the economy,” he said. “The US began to sell oil when oil prices reached a record low level – $37 per barrel. They didn’t do this when oil prices were record high – almost $150 a barrel.”

“This proves once again that the US aims at regulating the prices this way, rather than at the economic development and an increase in production,” he said. “Finally, simultaneously with lifting of the ban on the export of oil, the US Federal Reserve decided to raise the rate. This consolidated the dollar and depreciated the currencies of other countries.”

Hasanov said that this was another reason for another decrease in oil prices and revenues of the countries exporting this energy resource.

“If we take into account that neighboring Iran plans to bring its oil to the world market next year, it is possible to conclude that oil prices will not return to the previous level soon,” he said. “The global economic crisis, the transition of the closest trade partners of Azerbaijan to a floating rate of the national currency, a sharp drop in oil prices and other factors have made the recent decision of the Central Bank inevitable.”

“However, this does not mean that the authorities have let the process take its course and will not take advantage of some regulatory mechanisms,” he said.“First, the government will try to make this process as imperceptible as possible for citizens in need of social protection.”

“In the current conditions, actions aimed at stimulating the domestic production, revealing the areas which are still in the shadow economy, combating monopoly and corruption, creating artificial obstacles for entrepreneurs’ activity and so on, will be taken,” Hasanov said.

“At this stage, the main purpose is to compensate the negative consequences of devaluation through the use of new market mechanisms,” he said. “The Azerbaijani government will do everything for that.”

By Sandeep Bamzai*

In the political and economic theatre of India, it is normally one step forward and several steps backwards. While we keep moaning about improving the ease of doing business and ensuring that India takes baby steps towards becoming a manufacturing hub through the Make In India programme, our bureaucracy refuses to unshackle itself from the licence raj mindset which was replete with a draconian inspector raj regime. As we know nothing has really changed and foreign investment continues to find impediments and imponderables strewn in its path as it ventures into India. Making them irascible and crabby, the fear of the unknown stalking them at all times. Beginning with the inability to repeal the swingeing land acquisition bill, the very tentpoles required for a Make In India scenario are not available in India.

In the continuing litany of woes, here is another very recent example which is symptomatic of the prevailing situation in India where the bureaucracy and inspector raj is so deeply entrenched in the system that it is impossible to evict them.

On December 1, Assistant Commissioner – special investigation and intelligence branch in the Office of Commissioner Customs – Imports and General, New Custom House, near IGI Airport sent an innocuous but very curious and dangerous missive to the Deputy Commissioner – Import Shed All Cargo Complex – Import, New Delhi on the import of mobile parts and mobile phones in CKD (completely knocked down) and SKD (semi knocked down) condition by the manufacturers of mobile phones without payment of duty.

The terse order went onto say: It is requested that no consignment of mobile parts in CKD/SKD condition imported without payment of duty by mobile phone manufacturers be allowed clearance without a NOC (no objection certificate) from ACC – SIIB. This issues with the approval of Joint Commissioner SIIB – Import.

Further the order says that this needs to be circulated to all on priority. Which means that it has come into effect. Once again throwing into stark relief how the bureaucracy wants to sabotage the intent of the Government as it decides on what is manufacture and what is assembly. It is doubtful whether the top echelons of CBEC are aware of this order which not only wants duty to be paid on import of mobile phones, but impinges on the general principle of manufacturing in the country. Given that assembly is also part manufacture.

Take the example of Micromax, a genuine Indian success story. In June, the latest report from technology research firm Gartner Inc for worldwide mobile phones sales report for Q1, 2015 said that Micromax has a 1.8 per cent market share globally with 8,158,000 units sold. “During this quarter, local brands and Chinese vendors came out as the key winners in emerging markets,” said Anshul Gupta, research director at Gartner. “These vendors recorded an average growth of 73 per cent in smartphone sales and saw their combined share go up from 38 per cent to 47 percent during the first quarter of 2015.” While it started its India manufacturing operations of mobile phones at its Rudraprayag facility in Uttarakhand last year, the overwhelming bulk of its handsets come from China using the cost and raw material arbitrage model. Shenzen is where a host of manufacturers have set up shop including Karbon, Maxx, Intex and Lava. When Micromax started out in 2008, it simply rebadged Chinese handsets and sold them in India. To attain the next level, it began to pursue a mix and match strategy where it got third party manufacturers to build its product portfolio in China and other countries, sourced components from abroad and manufactured some of the newer lines in India. Assembly continues to take place in India majorly, now what happens with this new Customs order, it obviously acts as a deterrent to even manufacture and assemble in India model because duty will have to be forked out.

In any case, top Indian manufacturers who have leveraged this model in the past have been forced to shift to India. The impetus for the move is rising production costs in China, which have increased by 20 per cent recently. Additionally, the Indian government introduced tariffs for electronic goods imported into India–with a 7 per cent tax on handsets priced above US$33 (2,000 rupees), compared to locally manufactured products which are taxed just 1 per cent. While Micromax is now planning to increase the output from its Indian facility, Maxx and Intex are setting up facilities in Uttarakhand and Himachal. Karbonn meanwhile is clear that manufacturing in India is not a viable alternative because of an absence of an ecosystem and parts. Number two Indian mobile manufacturer, Karbonn Mobile’s director Sashin Devsare is on record as saying, “There has to be an ecosystem first for local manufacturing to be feasible.” So in the interim, they have to deal with this double taxation. First the budget and now this new Customs order.

This comes against the backdrop of an aggressive government which is trying to get its Make in India programme to fly. In order to achieve first base with this, it is planning to organise a ’Make in India Week 2016’ from February 13-18 in Mumbai with an aim to promote India as an investment destination and increase its share in global FDI. “The objective of the Make in India Week is to showcase opportunities to promote India as a preferred investment destination in the source markets overseas and to increase India’s share of global FDIC besides highlighting India’s manufacturing capability,” the DIPP had said.

Till the energy to manufacture in India doesn’t percolate down to the last man standing in the bureaucracy, India’s dream of turning into a cost efficient manufacturing hub compared to China will always remain flawed. With so many clearances required to build a manufacturing unit, why should Indian entrepreneurs manufacture if the government doesn’t provide the necessary comfort level on the ground. And as we know this begins with acquiring land, the single biggest obstacle with the new land bill in force, something that the BJP was unable to over turn.

*The writer is a Visiting Fellow at Observer Research Foundation, Delhi

Hezbollah commander Samir Quntar was laid to rest after thousands bid their farewells in a mass funeral in Beirut’s southern suburbs Monday, one day after he was reported killed in an Israeli airstrike in Syria.

Hezbollah’s yellow flag draped the coffin of the “Dean of Lebanese Prisoners” as huge posters of Quntar were hung up in the Ghobeiri neighborhood.

“Death to America, Death to Israel,” mourners shouted as Quntar’s coffin was carried from Rawdat al-Shahidayn, where his family was receiving condolences, to his burial site of Rawdat al-Hawraa Zainab.

Quntar, the longest-serving Lebanese prisoner in Israel, was killed Saturday night in what is believed to be an Israeli airstrike on a residential building in the Damascus suburb of Jaramana. News of his death emerged earl Sunday.

Hezbollah quickly promised to avenge his assassination.

“Quntar had qualities that prove to us that there is one path of resistance, which is the path to Palestine and Jerusalem,” head of Hezbollah’s executive council Sayyed Hashem Safieddine told thousands of mourners who flocked to pay respect to Quntar.

“Quntar… in one word is the son of the resistance.”

Safieddine warned that Israel “has opened a new battle” following the killing.

Women threw rice and flower petals at the coffin as it passed under their balconies while mourners on the street repeated chants being sung by a speaker on a megaphone.

People held Hezbollah, Palestinian and Lebanese flags during the funeral procession as security forces deployed heavily in the area to prevent any chaos or security breaches.

Zainab Berjaoui, Quntar’s wife, told Al-Jadeed that she was proud of her husband, vowing that their four-and-a-half-year-old son Ali will follow in his father’s footsteps.

“We’re all on the same path, even my son Ali will be where he wanted him to be, on the road to Jerusalem.”

Quntar had met his wife in 2009, a year after he was released from Israeli prisons.

Quntar was released by Israel in 2008 as part of a prisoner swap with Hezbollah, following Israel’s 2006 summer war against Lebanon.

Hezbollah said in a statement that Quntar was killed along with a number of Syrian citizens in the Israeli raid, without giving details. Thousands of Hezbollah fighters are deployed alongside government forces in Syria.

Quntar was imprisoned in 1979 at the age of 16 in Israel and sentenced to three life terms after he and three other Lebanese entered Israel with the aim of kidnapping a nuclear scientist.

He was convicted of staging an attack that led to the deaths of four Israelis, but has repeatedly denied responsibility.

Hezbollah did not say which role Quntar played in the Syrian conflict, but Syrian state media have said that he was involved in a major offensive earlier this year in Qunaitra, near the Golan Heights.

By Hanan Khaled
Original article

The first national study to map U.S. wild bees suggests they’re disappearing in many of the country’s most important farmlands–including California’s Central Valley, the Midwest’s corn belt, and the Mississippi River valley.

If losses of these crucial pollinators continue, the new nationwide assessment indicates that farmers will face increasing costs–and that the problem may even destabilize the nation’s crop production.

The findings were published December 21 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The research team, led by Insu Koh at the University of Vermont, estimates that wild bee abundance between 2008 and 2013 declined in 23% of the contiguous U.S. The study also shows that 39% of US croplands that depend on pollinators–from apple orchards to pumpkin patches–face a threatening mismatch between rising demand for pollination and a falling supply of wild bees.

In June of 2014, the White House issued a presidential memorandum warning that “over the past few decades, there has been a significant loss of pollinators, including honey bees, native bees, birds, bats, and butterflies.” The memo noted the multi-billion dollar contribution of pollinators to the US economy–and called for a national assessment of wild pollinators and their habitats.

“Until this study, we didn’t have a national mapped picture about the status of wild bees and their impacts on pollination,” said Koh, a researcher at UVM’s Gund Institute for Ecological Economics–even though each year more than $3 billion of the US agricultural economy depends on the pollination services of native pollinators like wild bees.

The report that followed the White House memo called for seven million acres of land to be protected as pollinator habitat over the next five years. “It’s clear that pollinators are in trouble,” said Taylor Ricketts, the senior author on the new study and director of UVM’s Gund Institute. “But what’s been less clear is where they are in the most trouble–and where their decline will have the most consequence for farms and food.”

“Now we have a map of the hotspots,” added Koh. “It’s the first spatial portrait of pollinator status and impacts in the U.S.,”–and a tool that the researchers hope will help protect wild bees and pinpoint habitat restoration efforts.

The new study identifies 139 counties in key agricultural regions of California, the Pacific Northwest, the upper Midwest and Great Plains, west Texas, and the southern Mississippi River valley that have the most worrisome mismatch between falling wild bee supply and rising crop pollination demand. These counties tend to be places that grow specialty crops–like almonds, blueberries and apples–that are highly dependent on pollinators. Or they are counties that grow less dependent crops–like soybeans, canola and cotton–in very large quantities.

Of particular concern, the study shows that some of the crops most dependent on pollinators–including pumpkins, watermelons, pears, peaches, plums, apples and blueberries–have the strongest pollination mismatch, with a simultaneous drop in wild bee supply and increase in pollination demand. “These are the crops most likely to run into pollination trouble,” said Taylor Ricketts, “whether that’s increased costs for managed pollinators, or even destabilized yields.”

Pesticides, climate change, and diseases threaten wild bees–but the new study also shows that their decline may be caused by the conversion of bee habitat into cropland. In eleven key states where the new study shows bees in decline, the amount of land tilled to grow corn spiked by two hundred percent in five years–replacing grasslands and pastures that once supported bee populations. “These results reinforce recent evidence that increased demand for corn in biofuel production has intensified threats to natural habitats in corn-growing regions,” the new study noted.

“By highlighting regions with loss of habitat for wild bees, government agencies and private organizations can focus their efforts at the national, regional, and state scales to support these important pollinators for more sustainable agricultural and natural landscapes,” said Michigan State University’s Rufus Isaacs, one of the co-authors on the study and leader of the Integrated Crop Pollination Project, a USDA-funded effort that supported the new research.

Over the last decade, honeybee keepers have lost many colonies and have struggled to keep up with rising demand for commercial pollination services, pushing up costs for farmers. “When sufficient habitat exists, wild bees are already contributing the majority of pollination for some crops. Even around managed pollinators, wild bees complement pollination in ways that can increase crop yields,” said Neal Williams, a co-author on the study from the University of California, Davis.

“Most people can think of one or two types of bee, but there are 4,000 species in the U.S. alone,” said Taylor Ricketts, Gund Professor in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. “Wild bees are a precious natural resource we should celebrate and protect. If managed with care, they can help us continue to produce billions of dollars in agricultural income and a wonderful diversity of nutritious food.”

The team of seven researchers–from UVM, Franklin and Marshall College, University of California at Davis, and Michigan State University–created the new maps by first identifying forty-five land-use types from two federal land databases, including both croplands and natural habitats. Then they gathered detailed input from fourteen experts on bee ecology about each type of land–and how suitable it was for providing wild bees with nesting and food resources.

Averaging the experts’ input and levels of certainty, the scientists built a bee habitat model that predicts the relative abundance of wild bees for every area of the contiguous United States, based on their quality for nesting and feeding from flowers. Finally, the team checked and validated their model against bee collections and field observations in many actual landscapes.

The model’s confidence is greatest in agricultural areas with declining bees, matching both the consensus of the experts’ opinion and available field data. However, the study also outlines several regions with greater uncertainty about bee populations. This knowledge can direct future research, especially in farming areas where need for pollination is high.

“We can now predict which areas are suffering the biggest declines of wild bee abundance,” Insu Koh said, “and identify those areas, with low bee supply and high bee demand, that are the top priority for conservation.”

By Ann Schneible

The Shroud of Turin has different meanings for many people: some see it as an object of veneration, others a forgery, still others a medieval curiosity. For one Jewish scientist, however, the evidence has led him to see it as a meeting point between science and faith.

“The Shroud challenges (many people’s core beliefs) because there’s a strong implication that there is something beyond the basic science going on here,” Barrie Schwortz, one of the leading scientific experts on the Shroud of Turin, told CNA.

Admitting that he did not know whether there was something beyond science at play, he added: “That’s not what convinced me: it was the science that convinced me.”

The Shroud of Turin is among the most well-known relics believed to be connected with Christ’s Passion. Venerated for centuries by Christians as the burial shroud of Jesus, it has been subject to intense scientific study to ascertain its authenticity, and the origins of the image.

The image on the 14 feet long, three-and-a-half feet wide cloth is stained with the postmortem image of a man – front and back – who has been brutally tortured and crucified.

Schwortz, now a retired technical photographer and frequent lecturer on the shroud, was a member of the 1978 Shroud of Turin Research Project which brought prestigious scientists together to examine the ancient artifact.

As a non-practicing Jew at the time, he was hesitant to be part of the team and skeptical as to the shroud’s authenticity – presuming it was nothing more than an elaborate painting. Nonetheless, he was intrigued by the scientific questions raised by the image.

Despite his reservations, Schwortz recounts being persuaded to remain on the project by a fellow scientist on the team – a NASA imaging specialist, and a Catholic – who jokingly told him: “You don’t think God wouldn’t want one of his chosen people on our team?”

And Schwortz soon encountered one of the great mysteries of the image that still entrances its examiners to this day.

He explained that a specific instrument used for the project was designed for evaluating x-rays, which allowed the lights and darks of an image to be vertically stretched into space, based on the lights and darks proportionately.

For a normal photograph, the result would be a distorted image: with the shroud, however, the natural, 3-D relief of a human form came through. This means “there’s a correlation between image density – lights and darks on the image – and cloth to body distance.”

“The only way that can happen is by some interaction between cloth and body,” he said. “It can’t be projected. It’s not a photograph – photographs don’t have that kind of information, artworks don’t.”

This evidence led him to believe that the image on the shroud was produced in a way that exceeds the capacities even of modern technology.

“There’s no way a medieval forger would have had the knowledge to create something like this, and to do so with a method that we can’t figure out today – the most image-oriented era of human history.”

“Think about it: in your pocket, you have a camera, and a computer, connected to each other in one little device,” he said.

“The shroud has become one of the most studied artifacts in human history itself, and modern science doesn’t have an explanation for how those chemical and physical properties can be made.”

While the image on the Shroud of Turin was the most convincing evidence for him, he said it was only a fraction of all the scientific data which points to it being real.

“Really, it’s an accumulation of thousands of little tiny bits of evidence that, when put together, are overwhelming in favor of its authenticity.”

Despite the evidence, many skeptics question the evidence without having seen the facts. For this reason, Schwortz launched the website www.shroud.com, which serves as a resource for the scientific data on the Shroud.

Nonetheless, he said, there are many who still question the evidence, many believing it is nothing more than an elaborate medieval painting.

“I think the reason skeptics deny the science is, if they accept any of that, their core beliefs have been dramatically challenged, and they would have to go back and reconfigure who they are and what they believe in,” he said. “It’s much easier to reject it out of hand, and not worry about it. That way they don’t have to confront their own beliefs.”

“I think some people would rather ignore it than be challenged.”

Schwortz emphasized that the science points to the Shroud being the burial cloth belonging to a man, buried according to the Jewish tradition after having been crucified in a way consistent with the Gospel. However, he said it is not proof of the resurrection – and this is where faith comes in.

“It’s a pre-resurrection image, because if it were a post-resurrection image, it would be a living man – not a dead man,” he said, adding that science is unable to test for the sort of images that would be produced by a human body rising from the dead.

“The Shroud is a test of faith, not a test of science. There comes a point with the Shroud where the science stops, and people have to decide for themselves.”

“The answer to faith isn’t going to be a piece of cloth. But, perhaps, the answer to faith is in the eyes and hearts of those who look upon it.”

When it comes to testifying to this meeting point between faith and science, Schwortz is in a unique position: he has never converted to Christianity, but remains a practicing Jew. And this, he says, makes his witness as a scientist all the more credible.

“I think I serve God better this way, in my involvement in the Shroud, by being the last person in the world people would expect to be lecturing on what is, effectively, the ultimate Christian relic.”

“I think God in his infinite wisdom knew better than I did, and he put me there for a reason.”

“The funding to continue the war against ISIL is an authorization of force against ISIL, albeit a quiet one, designed not to attract public attention.” — Jack Goldsmith, Lawfare, Dec 17, 2015

Money is raining down on the US military complex in the $1.15 trillion spending bill that was unveiled on Wednesday by various leaders of Congress. Of that portion, a good $572.7 billion is set aside for Pentagon expenditure. (These figures tend to be deceptive in themselves, given the notoriously unreliable accuracy of defence accounting.)

The portions, roughly broken down, come to $58.6 billion for so-called Global War on Terror/Overseas Contingency Operations (GWOT/OCO) funds, $111 billion for procurement, which comes to $17 billion more than actual expenditures for the 2015 fiscal year, and $49.8 billion for R&D – $13.7 billion more than 2015 (Defense News, Dec 16).

House Appropriations Chairman Hal Rogers (R-Ky.) pressed his colleagues to pass the legislation, insisting that the “package reflects conservative priorities in both funding and policy – including support for critical areas such as our national defence, halting many harmful regulations, and trimming wasteful spending.”

The overwhelming message here was placed on security, even if there were also very public utterances on the issue of Puerto Rican debt and an end to the ban on crude oil exports. There was less concern about funding ongoing civilian operations – the stress, rather, was on the issue of entrenching the state in what could only be described as a deeper war footing.

Democrat mainstays, despite facing opposition within their own ranks on various parts of the bill, were similarly eager to get it to pass, which it ultimately did. To not pass it would be irresponsible, suggested Whip Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) while minority leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) was insisting that differences be worked out.

The Omnibus bill contains a few sneaky provisions. All in all, this forms a standard tactic: a weighty volume of 2000 pages, in which various provisions can be slipped in and importantly, not debated with any degree of thoroughness, let alone awareness. In the case of such matters as continued authorisation of force, this is a notable point indeed.

Rogers claims, for instance, that the bill “includes funds to combat the real-world threat of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).” Some analysis on this suggests that the funds will issue from the OCO funding pool, a practice that has been previously suggested by the Obama administration. In November last year, President Barack Obama proposed amendments for the Department of Defense (DOD) and the Department of State and Other International Programs to fund Overseas Contingency Operations. These included “$5.6 billion for OCO activities to degrade and ultimately defeat the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) – including military operations as part of Operation Inherent Resolve.”

The legal overview of this by legal commentators such as Harvard University’s Jack Goldsmith suggests that Congress will effectively authorise the use of force by way of its appropriations power. This is an interesting point, given that section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution suggests that congressional authorisation for the use of force “shall not be inferred from any provision of law…, including any provision contained in any appropriation Act, unless such provision specifically authorises the introduction of the United States Armed Forces into hostilities”.

Quibblers will see this differently, but it seems clear that a bit of legal acrobatics has been done here to effectively engage the US in deeper involvement in overseas conflict without broader public debate. At the very least, it suggests that the war machine should continue uninterrupted by the intrusiveness of public discussion.

A memorandum opinion for the US Attorney general from the Justice Department regarding continued authorisation for military operations in Kosovo in 2000 is a case in point. The opinion regards it as given wisdom that “Congress may express approval through the appropriations process” in the area of war making.

It doing so, it takes a rather flexible view about the War Powers Resolution framework, which is supposedly designed to “fulfil the intent of the framers of the Constitution of the United States and insure that the collective judgment of both the Congress and the President will apply to the introduction of United States Armed Forces into hostilities” and “continued use of such forces in hostilities or in such situations.”

Section 8(a)(1) of the War Powers Resolution is effectively neutered, as, according to the Kosovo memorandum, it “does not bar later Congresses from authorizing military operations through appropriation” as a later Congress cannot be bound by the will of a previous one. In any case, one should try as best to see a direct intent on the part of Congress to authorise such force.

An open door in the bill is thereby allowed for the introduction of US armed or military forces into hostilities against Iraq and Syria, or into their respective territories. While the public face of the Obama administration is set against the formal deployment of US combat personnel on the ground, the infrastructure is very much there to permit it. Best, it would seem, to cover those legal channels.

The permanent state of war the US finds itself is not merely set to get deeper at the operational level; it is set to be further legalised, at least in the eyes of Congress, in a surreptitious way. Fine, and importantly informed scrutiny, is set to further abate.

The disenfranchisement of the Rohingya from Myanmar’s recent historic November elections is but the latest event in a long series of tragedies in Rakhine state. Yet the central government finds itself in a position where after a long history of purposeful neglect, the politics of Rakhine state have boiled to the surface of both national level politics, and relations between the international community and the state. The Rohingya issue, and the fact that the states unwanted population now faces a bleak future, confined to camps similar to ‘open air prisons’, and which have compelled thousands to take perilous boat trips to Malaysia and beyond, has become an embarrassment for the government in the context of western donors who have been in a euphoria over Myanmar’s nominally democratic transition.

Sittwe, the capital of Rakhine state has now been ‘cleansed’ of Muslims – or more specifically the Rohingya. Before the 2012 violence there were approximately 20,000 Rohingya living around Sittwe, now nearly all traces of Rohingya have been erased – save for some burnt out Mosques and the 4000 strong hidden away ghetto of Aung Mingalar (which people are unable to freely leave, and have to go under police guard just to travel to the market). The domineering Rakhine cultural Museum also erases all traces of the Rohingya from Arakan history. Across the state Rohingya are confined to villages, displacement camps and ghettos with extremely limited access to healthcare and no access to formal government schooling. It is now dangerous just to say the ‘R word’ (as local development workers term it) when in downtown Sittwe. Especially after the anti UN and NGO pogroms of last year where Rakhine led riots resulted in over 20 INGO and UN properties being ransacked, saying the word ‘Rohingya’ could quite literally incite a violent response. As one small anecdote of the situation, in Sittwe, in a tea shop one night, a Rakhine man proudly wearing a jacket with Nazi insignia on it aggressively asked me – ‘so what are you writing there on your computer, maybe about the ‘Rohingya’ huh?

What is now happening in Rakhine state is not ‘communal violence’ or ‘religious tension’ – it is an experiment with apartheid which has come in the wake of a 60 year old problem on the part of the state – how to govern a population that the state emphatically denies is a legitimate part of the political community. Localised eruptions of violence instigated by Rakhine groups against Rohingya are now so intertwined with citizenship issues, and operate at a scale far above the village level (where state authorities are implicated), that it is no longer feasible to analytically distinguish between localised events of ‘communal violence’, and the state’s broader treatment of the Rohingya. The grievances of prominent Rakhine civil society groups (many of which are implicated in recent violence) are now largely aligned with those of the state – as Rakhine civil society groups have been at pains to point out, for them the issue is about citizenship, not religion.

In a remarkably fascist like movement (in the Deluzian sense) (i) specific historical grievances over land, armed struggle, under-development and representation have now been abstracted into questions of citizenship, borders and a fear of the Other, and risk spreading like a cancer across Buddhist communities. To some degree it is now Muslims and the Rohingya that have displaced the Bamar dominated military state as the all-pervasive threat to the cohesion of community(ii) and ironically it is now the state which is called upon to formally exclude the Rohingya from community . In Rakhine, the corruptibility of the state is even measured on its ability to carry out this task while much more salient issues such as resource extraction revenue sharing have taken a backseat.

Far-right Rakhine and Buddhist groups will predictably remain intractable on the Rohingya issue and push their prejudices to further extremes and absurdities. The National League for Democracy’s recent ineptness on the Rohingya issue and the new dominance of the Arakan National Party are also reason for concern. But this should not distract from the fact that ‘communal violence’ or even the new electoral politics are only blips on a much longer history of state led persecution. The state has tried denial, violent and forceful military actions to push the Rohingya to Bangladesh, it has erected model villages to try and diminish the demographic dominance of the Rohingya in northern Rakhine, it has even dabbled in eugenics(iii), and now it has settled on apartheid. As political philosopher Roberto Esposito (2004) has pointed out, it is the posturing of a group of people as a threat to the coherency of community – whose mere biological existence is rendered a problem that needs to be managed by the state, that represents the most potentially dangerous of situations and that will ultimately lead to horrific cruelty and suffering.

A love of Sovereignty, a love of Borders

As hordes of experts and analysts fumble through the politics of the Rohingya crisis misrepresenting it as a communal or religious problem, the state and its sponsors conjure up ever more systematic and violent techniques to establish sovereignty over Myanmar’s problematized Rohingya. The Australian government has provided over AUS$5 million to Myanmar to help ‘strengthen border control’ with the aim of tackling ‘illegal cross border movement’. Myanmar government officials have made it clear that for the state it is the Rohingya who constitute the largest threat to sovereignty (Zarni & Cowley, 2014).

As Australian supported ‘Border Liaison Offices’ popped up in the region, and state officials were empowered with bureaucratic techniques to dispel unwanted populations like the Rohingya, Australia’s minister for immigration Scott Morrison reportedly visited Rohingya displacement camps where his main message to people was that there is no chance of settling in Australia. A year later, with the spectacle of hundreds of Rohingya adrift at sea facing starvation, being pushed back from state after state, the Australian PM Tony Abbott when asked if Australia could accommodate some of the refugees replied ‘No, No, No’. If anything the boat crisis of April showed that not only neighbouring counties which have for years ignored the atrocities involved in regional trafficking chains, but also Europe, America and Australia, are all complicit in the states exclusion of the Rohingya. Many countries offered statements of concern and criticism over the event but all ultimately succumbed to the Myanmar states insistence that it has the sovereign right to refuse to acknowledge the existence of the Rohingya. Most pathetically, under pressure from the Myanmar state the term ‘Rohingya’ was even omitted from a high level meeting on the Rohingya crisis in Thailand at the time.

Donors decry the situation in Rakhine state but are reluctant to challenge state sovereignty which they are so desperately trying to build up as part of neoliberal state-building programmes (as just one example the EU has dedicated 199 million Euro to ‘good governance’ and ‘state capacity building’ programmes over the last four years). The EU, Australia and other donors have also contributed millions of dollars to the Myanmar Peace Centre which has spectacularly failed to do anything meaningful to help the plight of the Rohingya. Of course, neoliberal development interventions challenge and fragment sovereignty in complex ways (Ong, 2006), but in an age of security obsessed states, the rights of states to brutally expel their unwanted populations has become a de facto sovereign right – for instance Australia’s talk of international rights can hardly be taken seriously when it is busy trafficking its unwanted refugee population – some of whom are Rohingya, across the region.

Unlike the sacred commitment to democracy – which is backed up by the threat of sanctions and aid cuts, the legally sanctioned expulsion of the unwanted results in little more than concerned statements. Or perhaps it is precisely because the states treatment of the Rohingya is not in conflict with democracy, but a dark and imminent part of it , that the international community has been so tolerant of events in Rakhine state. In 2014 Myanmar received a record amount of aid and was the second largest recipient of OECD aid after Afghanistan. Aid flows have largely been unaffected by the states experiment with apartheid in Rakhine state – if anything they have likely increased because of it.

The Rohingya have not just become stateless, but have been made stateless through technologies of sovereignty such as censuses and elections. And in donors endeavours to extend sovereignty by supporting such activities, they have consistently been outmanoeuvred by the state. The Australian supported, and UN implemented census for instance, succumbed to pressure to disqualify the Rohingya from the census – formally rendering the million or so people who identify as Rohingya invisible. Then there was the state’s decision just months before the election to revoke voting rights to white card holders, of which the Rohingya are the largest group – a direct response to fascist like protests from Rakhine groups and Buddhist nationalist group MaBaTha, and which effectively undid the lobbying of the UN in the early 1990’s which had secured at least some basic level of recognition to the Rohingya.

As Australian electoral observers were wandering around Rakhine state in November (to only Rakhine villagers) tacitly legitimising not only the election process but the state’s decision to exclude the Rohingya, hundreds of thousands of Rohingya confined to camps were contemplating taking to sea to escape their worsening plight. Then there was the recent UN supported ‘citizenship verification process’ in Myebon Township. The government refused to back down on the issue of Rohingya as an ethnic group, and instead offered people the category of ‘naturalised citizenship’ if they would register as ‘Bengalis’. Due to the overwhelmingly horrific conditions in those particular camps, most people accepted the compromise (unlike others further north). Yet even those who received citizenship are still under the same mobility restrictions as before, which has given rise to a sense of hopelessness to the Rohingya and no doubt contributed to their exodus by boat.

Through accidents of history those who now identify as Rohingya found themselves on the wrong side of the arbitrary state sanctioned ethnic categories which came out of colonial censuses (Grundy-Warr & Wong, 1997). The British used highly arbitrary groupings that were an amalgamation of geographic based, religious based and racial categories (Harriden, 2002). Yet some researchers still use British censuses to suggest, implicitly or otherwise, that the Rohingya category lacks legitimacy – as if we can look to arbitrary state techniques for categorising people as a proxy for whether those people exist. As debates rage on academic and popular sites about the legitimacy of the Rohingya category where much academic labour has been invested in elucidating the contested nature of the identity(iv) – and some academics even now insist on using inverted commas every time they use the term, violent technologies of sovereignty go largely unquestioned.

One white male academic in Sittwe for instance told me that even my own country Australia has to put in place mechanisms to deal with ‘illegal immigrants’. I immediately thought of Australia’s offshore mandatory detention gulags and the remarkably similar circumstances people find themselves in when they are rendered illegal – and it just so happens that in both Australian and Myanmar some of the same NGOs manage both camps, and some detainees from one camp inevitably end up in the other. But the academic was defending sovereignty, not challenging it. So many English language discussions on the Rohingya, both within academic and practioner circles, remain either tacitly or overtly framed within the categories of citizenship, legal and illegal migration, and borders. The challenge, as border theorists such as Angela Mitropolous have pointed out, is to keep up with the way border technologies evolve in disparate circumstances with the aim of contesting and challenging them, rather than tacitly defending them.

Borders and bare life

There is one crucial difference between Muslims in Yangon or Mandalay, and Muslims in Arakan – the border. The worsening situation of the Rohingya is in a large part due to the historical process of the state trying to exert its sovereignty over a peripheral and porous borderland. This no doubt stems from the fact that Arakan has historically tended to be in the orbit of Chittagong as much as lowland Burma (Christie, 1996). The concessions that the Rohingya had gained in the aftermath of the mess of independence were slowly eroded from the 60’s onwards (Zin, 2015). As the state sought to not only crush the Mujahidin, but extend its sovereignty over all people in Arakan , legal and administrative ambiguities and inconsistencies were replaced with a sharp divide between legal citizens and illegal immigrants. Long held tensions over land, autonomy, the future of Arakan and underdevelopment became abstracted into questions of citizenship and borders – and in the process further deferred any actual solution to underlying problems in Arakan (Grundy-Warr & Wong, 1997).

The Rohingya, who like the Rakhine had experienced a de facto exclusion from the very most basic of state goods and services, began to experience a de jure exclusion as the 1982 citizenship law sought to formally render them as non-citizens. It is even likely that the 1982 citizenship law was put in place with the large number of Rohingya refugees being repatriated back to Arakan from Bangladesh in mind (Lewa, 2005). The state used seemingly banal bureaucratic procedures, but which on the ground were backed up by raw violence (as nearly all bureaucratic institutions ultimately are), to deal with the Rohingya.

The most violently notorious government operation NagaMin (dragon king), which was the cause of the large refugee flows to Bangladesh in 1978 was not a mere counterinsurgency operation but a programme to ‘scrutinize each individual living in the State, designating citizens and foreigners in accordance with the law and taking actions against foreigners who have filtered into the country illegally’. At the centre of the Rohinga’s plight over the last 60 years has thus been the border, and in particular populist anxiety’s that ‘illegal Bengali’s’ have been flowing across the border taking land, jobs and exerting a negative influence on Buddhist norms. There is little point to dispute the fact that especially during the colonial period large number of Bengali’s were encouraged by the British to cultivate northern Arakan’s fertile alluvial plains and that no doubt many of these farmers melded with the pre-existing Muslim Arakan community. But it is the perceived fear that matters more here than the realities of cross border migration, as the large scale military operations and border forces erected to deal with supposed illegal immigration are on a scale far greater than the trickle of Bengali in-migration after. It is hence no coincidence that it was those put in charge to police the border –i.e the notorious state border force NaSaKa, that gained a particular reputation for brutality in Rakhine state, or that so much of the state military actions over the last 50 years in Arakan (of which there have been 17 major campaigns) have been almost exclusively focused on that population which lives exactly along the porous border region.

It is also no coincidence that as the Rohingya progressively became politically marginalised, it was the camp that the state turned to as a solution to the supposed problem of dealing with the non-citizen ‘illegal Bengali’s. In this sense, Giogio Agamben’s (1998) insistence that the camp is the space par excellence used to deal with that form of life that has been stripped of all its political significance – what he terms ‘bare life’, appears accurate. Yet what is different about the camps set up to deal with the Rohingya is that unlike similar camps such as those on Guantanamo or Manus islands where the state exerts its sovereign right to run the camps as exceptional spaces where external interference is strictly prohibited, in the case of the Rohingya camps, NGOs, and UN agencies exert ‘petty sovereignties’ over displaced populations, pushing for rights and providing goods and services that the state refuses.

The UNHCR for instance played a large role in early repatriations from Bangladesh in 1978-79 and 1991 and also pushed for temporary citizenship papers (white cards) for the Rohingya in 1995 (which allowed them to vote in the 2010 elections but largely closed down and options for full citizenship). Right now 29 NGOs operate in Rakhine with varying degrees of cooperation with various UN agencies. Yet the UN and NGOs find themselves restricted by the forces of sovereignty and confined to providing humanitarian assistance to a population the state does not recognise. As Hannah Arendt (1943)identified more than 50 years ago the notion of right only gains meaning in the context of a state that recognise such rights and it here that the UN and NGOs have been coerced into entering into a pact with the state where they are confined to addressing only the most basic of needs of the Rohingya – i.e. that the Rohingya are treated as bare life.

The UNHCR has had a particularly controversial role in Rohingya camps. After operation NagaMin, the UNHCR achieved a MoU with the government of Bangladesh to provide essential services within camps which turned out to be a disaster– largely due to acquiescence with the government’s strategy of underproviding for refugees as an incentive for them to return to Burma. After six months of settlement the camps had the appallingly high fatality rate of 33 per 10,000 per week and by March 1979, 12,000 refugees had died in less than a year (Lindquist, 1979). Controversies over forced repatriations continued in the 1990s and it appears that the UNHCR , who was the first non-government entity to establish an office in Rakhine state in 1994, was reluctant to publicly acknowledge continued instances of violence and extrajudicial killings (as this would no doubt compromise its work) (Human Rights Watch Asia, 1996)o.

The current situation that the Rohingya find themselves in is equally precarious. After the violent 2012 riots where 112 people were murdered, and over 100,000 people displaced, military rule in Rohingya dominated areas was established and large numbers of Rohingya were once again moved into displacement camps. In northern Rakhine where the Rohingya are a majority, people were confined to their villages. INGOs and the UN essentially provide people in camps with their basic daily needs, while the military retains what it sees as its sovereign right to impose mobility restrictions and limit access to state services to those deemed as non-citizens. The state has made it clear that Rohingya are not rights bearers and since violent attacks against INGOs and UN agencies in 2014, these agencies have had to carefully avoid any work that treats Rohingya as full citizens or is seen in any way to ‘privilege’ them (and they cannot even formally use the term ‘Rohingya’).

No doubt, some of the attacks on NGOs and the UN were in response to a perceived intrusion on the states sovereign right to exclude its unwanted populations without interference. In early 2014, MSF-Holland for instance was expelled from Myanmar due to the fact that it treated a number of Rohingya from northern Rakhine suffering from gunshot and stab wounds. The state is happy to outsource responsibility of its unwanted population to external agencies on the provision that they do not interfere when it wants to take life away. Thus the Rohingya find themselves in a situation where at any moment they could be exposed to death. It is unlikely the state will resort to militaristic violence to directly inflict mass death on the Rohingya. Rather, it is much more likely that the state will progressively withdraw the means to security and life. The UN and NGOs expressed that in the next two years they are likely to face major shortages in funding and face a crisis in terms of maintaining goods and services to the displaced. The UN has responded by trying to dramatically reduce its humanitarian case load and transition to development rather than humanitarian assistance. NGOs and the UN provide emergency means to sustaining life, while the state maintains its right to take it away.

Thus accounts of what is going in Rakhine state as ‘communal violence’, ‘ethnic conflict’ or ‘religious tension’ are unable to grasp the situation adequately. When life is reduced down to its bare state, stripped of citizenship, and able to be killed without sanction, it become extremely vulnerable to death. In the short time researching in Rakhine state, I heard of three men who had mysteriously disappeared from camps outside of Sittwe (and whose relatives claimed had been murdered), and one women who was unable to access Sittwe hospital during the election period and died of a treatable illness. Then there are the hundreds of people who have died while on boats fleeing Rakhine. Ultimately no one is responsible for these deaths.

*Tim Frewer is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney (human geography) and has spent the last ten years researching various issues in Southeast Asia.

References:
Agamben, G., & Raiola, M. (1998). Homo sacer: Stanford University Press Stanford.
Arendt, H. (1943). We refugees. Menorah Journal, 31(1), 69-77.
Christie, C. J. (1996). A Modern History of South East Asia: Decolonisation, Nationalism and Spearatism, . London: Taurus.
Esposito, R. (2004). Immunitas. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Grundy-Warr, C., & Wong, E. (1997). Sanctuary Under a Plastic Sheet – The Unresolved Problem of Rohingya Refugees. IBRU Boundary and Security Bulletin, 8(23).
Harriden, J. (2002). ” Making a Name for Themselves:”: Karen Identity and the Politicization of Ethnicity in Burma. Journal of Burma Studies, 7(1), 84-144.
Human Rights Watch Asia. (1996). Burma – The Rohingya Muslims – Ending a cycle of Exodus? (Vol. 8). London: Human Rights Watch.
Lewa, C. (2005). The Rohingya: Forced Migration and Statelessness. In O. Mishra (Ed.), Forced Migration in the South Asian Region: Displacement, Human Rights and Conflict Resolution. Washington DC: Centre for Refugees Studies.
Lindquist, A. C. (1979). REPORT ON THE 1978-79 BANGLADESH REFUGEE RELIEF OPERATION. Cox’s Bazar: UNHCR.
Ong, A. (2006). Neoliberalism as exception: Mutations in citizenship and sovereignty: Duke University Press.
Zarni, M., & Cowley, A. (2014). Slow-Burning Genocide of Myanmar’s Rohingya, The. Pac. Rim L. & Pol’y J., 23, 683.
Zin, M. (2015). Anti-Muslim Violence in Burma: Why Now? Social Research: An International Quarterly, 82(2), 375-397.

Notes:
i. Fascism here is understood as described by Giles Deleuze and Felix Guattari – i.e. an organic and often uncontainable movement composed of individuals who take state thinking and duties upon themselves, who act as ‘policemen, judge and juror all in one’. Unlike localised clashes that arise due to specific historical grievances (such as the WWII skirmishes between Rakhine and Rohingya groups, fascist movements take abstract notions such as ‘illegal migrants’, ‘the nation’, ‘the Buddhist community’, ‘citizenship’ and attempt to restore the purity of their community/ nation through the systematic expulsion or destruction of that/ those deemed a threat.
ii. Francis Wade quotes the Rakhine National Development Party (the precursor to the Arakan National Party): “In order for a country’s survival, the survival of a race, or in defense of national sovereignty, crimes against humanity or in-human acts may justifiably be committed […] So, if that survival principle or justification is applied or permitted equally (in our Myanmar case) our endeavors to protect our Rakhine race and defend the sovereignty and longevity of the Union of Myanmar cannot be labeled as “crimes against humanity,” or “inhuman” or “in-humane””.
iii. Eugenics as a philosophy which attempts to improve or protect the racial characteristics of a particular group have been enacted through a number of local government policies (eg released in 1993 and 2005) and state level policies (2008), that restrict the number of offspring of Rohingya (although appears to have been implemented sporadically). There have also been claims that family planning activities have been used to sterilise Rohingya without their consent – see (Human Rights Watch Asia, 1996).
iv. See for instance see the works of historian Jaques Leider and former British diplomat Derek Tonkin.

Spanish goods exports rose by 3.8% in the first ten months of 2015 (1.7 points above that of the same period of 2014, 2.1%) to 208.43 billion euros, an all-time record. In terms of volume, growth stood at 3.1% since export prices measured using Unit Value Indices (UVIs) rose by 0.7%.

In turn, imports rose by 3.2% (to 228.96 billion euros). In terms of volume, the increase was greater (5.5%), due to prices falling by 2.2%.

As a result, the trade deficit from January to October amounted to 20.53 billion euros, down 2.7% on the figure posted in the same period of 2014. The coverage rate stood at 91%, 0.5 points higher than in the period January-October 2014 (90.5%). The non-energy balance posted a surplus of 2.16 billion euros (11.96 billion euros in the period January-October of 2014), while the energy balance improved by 31.3% (energy deficit reduction), due to a substantial fall in energy prices.

The accumulated results for Spain are in line with those posted by the country’s main Eurozone partners. Exports from the Eurozone rose by 4.2% year-on-year, while those from the EU-28 rose by 4.8%. By country, Spain’s rate is similar to that posted by France (3.9%) and Italy (3.5%), higher than that posted by the United Kingdom (-1.6%) and the United States (-6.5%), and lower than that posted by Germany (6.7%) and Japan (5.5%).

Economic sectors

In the first ten months of 2015, exports grew in almost every productive sector. Capital goods exports (19.9% of total Spanish exports) rose by 3% year-on-year. It is worth noting the automotive sector (16.9% of the total), which maintained its significant growth over these last ten months, at 19% year-on-year. The food, beverage and tobacco sector (15.9% of the total) and the chemical products sector (14.6% of the total) also saw export growth of 8.7% and 6.2%, respectively. In contrast, energy product exports fell by 28% year-on-year as a result of low international energy prices. The same can be said of the export of other goods (down 22.2% year-on-year) and raw materials (down 2.1%).

In terms of imports, the 18.4% growth in capital goods imports (19.9% of the total) can be explained by the consolidation of the Spanish economic recovery, due to the dynamic nature of productive investment. The recovery in consumption and increased exports from the sector partly explains the 16.5% growth in imports in the automotive sector (13% of the total), as well as imports in the manufactured consumer goods sector (up 13.5%) and the durable consumer goods sector (up 13.8%).

Since initiating a legal challenge to China’s claims and recent activities in the West Philippine Sea (WPS) in January 2013, the Philippines had effectively restrained itself from undertaking any action in the contested maritime space believing that the same will undermine its case and that such exercise of self-restraint will confer it moral high ground. The primacy of the legal track apparently led the Philippines to close all other avenues of resolving the dispute while the case remains pending, despite the fact that (without necessarily endorsing) private out-of-court settlement remains a widely accepted legal option. The hands-off policy hurts Philippine interests indefinitely, notably fishing, without adequate relief or mitigation. It also prevents even the barest minimum repairs and improvement necessary to maintain the country’s facilities in the Kalayaan Island Group (KIG) /Spratlys in WPS. Finally, the legal fixation limits Philippine action and fails to take into account evolving realities and dynamics, notably increasing U.S.-China competition that blurs and shifts alliances, compelling smaller powers to be more cautious and contributing to overall regional anxiety and instability.

Fishing for jurisdiction

While the policy of inaction in WPS for the duration of the case may have its merits, it has considerable immediate and potential long-term unfavorable consequences. One of the innocent casualties to the disputes are Filipino fishermen who were advised to refrain from fishing in Bajo de Masinloc (Scarborough Shoal) as doing so may put them in harm’s way, a move seen by some as surrendering access to this rich traditional fishing ground to the Chinese. These poor individuals are not big commercial fishing operators who can assume the costs of moving to other farther fishing grounds, but are municipal or artisanal fishing people, whose very subsistence and livelihood depend on this nearby fishing lagoon. Government efforts to account for them and provide them with an alternative livelihood have been vague at present. One wonders why instead of finding ways to let them fish again in the area or equip them with more sturdy seaworthy vessels and better communication means to keep in touch with Philippine maritime law enforcement authorities in case they were threatened, they were told to fish at their own risk. The presence of Filipino fishermen in WPS, aside from curbing foreign illegal fishing, justifies the presence of Philippine maritime law enforcement assets in the area to regulate their activities and to ensure their safety and protection.

Meantime, while the Philippines hold back its own fishermen, other littoral states had been actively supporting the fishing activities of their own nationals to the point of escorting them as they fish in disputed areas. In fact, some claimants argue that far from being purely military fortifications, the structures they built on the features they presently occupy include provisions for supporting their fishermen, such as shelters in times of inclement weather at sea, thus bolstering not only their claims, but also civilianizing their jurisdiction – in a way conditioning the international community to believe that their presence in the area is not directed against any other state and that they do not pose a danger to freedom of navigation and overflight. Hence, while Filipino fishermen stay onshore, fishermen from other littoral states continue to fish and more importantly, fish for jurisdiction.

Winning the legal battle, but losing the islands to the sea

The Philippines had been a pioneer in demonstrating its effective jurisdiction in the WPS since the 1970s, but decades of neglect, complacency and now the present hands-off policy curtailed the necessary upgrades and improvements in most of the decades-old structures and facilities in KIG. Pag-Asa (Thitu) Island is the second biggest naturally formed land above water in the Kalayaan. Together with the Taiwanese-occupied Taiping (Itu Aba) Island, they may be the only two features in WPS, which can rightfully claim the status of true islands under UNCLOS. However, soil erosion and exposure to the elements are already reducing its land area. The Rancudo Airfield, one of the earliest and formerly the biggest of its kind to be established in KIG, has long been overdue for repairs and improvement to remain serviceable.

Lack of able infrastructure prevents the country from fully maximizing the benefit of KIG’s proximity to Palawan to facilitate the delivery of public goods, such as provisions and supplies and services to the more than 200 Filipino settlers in the country’s smallest municipality. There had been many proposals put forward for the rehabilitation of the structures in KIG, but none or very few of them ever materialized and the hands-off policy could only further stalled these needed undertakings. In 1994, then President Fidel Ramos planned the construction of lighthouses in KIG, but the project got bungled due to bureaucratic wrangling and concerns over possible reaction of other states. Looking back, that failure to seize the initiative costed the country lost momentum and strategic advantage. By 1995, the tide turned against the country’s favor with the Chinese occupation of Panganiban Reef (Mischief Reef).

Law is good, but sound strategy works better

After winning partial admissibility and jurisdiction from the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), the Philippines expects the tribunal to render a decision on the merits of the case by next year. But as early as now, many had already said that China had already achieved fait accompli in the SCS through its island construction, making any final tribunal decision moot. By all accounts, China appears not willing to honor and comply with the tribunal’s ruling regardless of the reputational costs, arguing that SCS is a core sovereignty issue that they cannot compromise on. Domestic legitimacy and popular support can weather whatever international criticism China may receive on account of such non-observance.

Meanwhile, while Philippines’ hands were self-tied, other littoral states had been actively engaging one another in formal and informal platforms, including high level visits, exchanges, and dialogues, not to mention track 1.5, track II, and people-to-people diplomacy. Most importantly, activities on the ground, especially on the part of China, continued. In fact, it can be argued that the initiation of the case may have extinguished whatever prior restraints or inhibitions some claimants had with respect to conducting certain activities in the disputed sea, making hardly reversible facts-on-the-ground changes. In turn, China’s reclamation and construction of artificial islands in the perennial regional flashpoint further cemented the Philippine resolve.

Some relevant circumstances and recent sequence of events also led some in China to think that the arbitration was part of a larger containment strategy. The President of the International Tribunal of the Law of the Sea (ITLOS) at the time Manila lodged the arbitration was a Japanese, Shunji Yanai, and the lead legal counsel for the Philippines was a renowned American lawyer. The PCA decision also came two days after USS Lassen conducted its freedom of navigation operation, a move long-awaited by littoral states wary of China’s island building activities, but was seen by many in China as a direct challenge to its claims. Viewed from this larger geopolitical prism, the arbitration tend to be taken less as an independent Philippine undertaking in response to Chinese assertive actions in WPS, but rather viewed as an integral part of the U.S.-led effort to check China’s ascendancy through lawfare. Thus, instead of talking to the Philippines and trading compromises and concessions, China, following this logic, would prefer discussing with its rival the U.S., which it sees, rightly or wrongly, as the one ultimately behind all these. Hence, in the course of engaging the U.S. and other countries in the legitimate defense and enjoyment of the bounties of WPS, it is important for the Philippines to demonstrate independence and strict neutrality and non-participation in great power competition, particularly between U.S. and China, lest it be caught in the middle.

Balance we must: The fate of smaller powers

China’s rise is gradually challenging U.S. primacy in East Asia and, in this evolving context, middle and small powers thread a careful balance, force to be more calculating in hedging their bets and refrain from putting their eggs in just one basket. For long, the U.S. has been the region’s security guarantor, but even in this dimension China is already making some progress. China conducted joint anti-terrorism military exercises with Indonesia (July 2013), first ever joint naval exercise with Singapore (May 2015), first joint military exercises with Malaysia (September 2015) and first air force exercise with Thailand (November 2015). In addition, Thailand was reportedly acquiring Chinese submarines. These initiatives can be seen as challenging America’s rebalance to Asia, as well as its longstanding mil-to-mil exercises and security treaty alliance system with countries in the region (e.g. with Philippines, South Korea, Japan). The only complicating aspect in China’s security engagements with regional states is its expansive and ill-defined maritime claims.

However, despite the much publicized South China Sea (SCS) disputes, most littoral states continue to harness the Sea’s marine economic resources (even those well within China’s infamous nine dash line) with little incident, except for Filipino fishermen who continue to be deprived of access over Bajo de Masinloc since the May 2012 standoff. Indonesia had been strictly enforcing its law against foreign illegal fishing in its waters, including in its Exclusive Economic Zone, and had been sinking foreign fishing vessels, including a Chinese one last May 2015, without inviting adverse response from its neighbors. ASEAN leaders, including Indonesian President Widodo and Vietnamese General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong had been actively shuttling to and from Washington and Beijing, as well as Tokyo, not to mention engaging their fellow ASEAN members and other regional players. In a feat of diplomatic rivalry, U.S. President Obama and Chinese President Xi, also made their rounds of East Asian capitals to reassure allies and partners and promote their leadership credentials.

This is the very fluid regional environment that small and middle powers have to learn to navigate. It requires a comprehensive appreciation of many relevant factors. It demands foresight and audacity moderated by caution and nuancing. Seen from this vantage, the Philippines’ legal fixation seems inadequate in responding to the needs of the times. It needs to be complemented by engagement elements. To this end, the recent visit by Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi preceding the attendance of President Xi Jinping in APEC 2015 at Manila may augur well for the resumption of a high-level officials’ dialogue between the two states. Hopefully, this could renew confidence building important for managing their bilateral relations beyond the WPS disputes and post arbitration decision.

It is often said that when the elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled. But far from being powerless pawns, small and middle states can and are actually cleverly exploiting the opportunities opened up by big power rivalry to advance their own national interests. It is not an easy balancing job to do but it is the fate that they must live or suffer. If they do it well and refuse to play in the hands of big powers, they can even keep the balance of peace and stability in an already tension-filled region.

This article appeared at China-US Focus.

During Japanese PM Shinzo Abe’s recent visit to India, both countries made important progress in strengthening their security engagement focused on maritime security, defence purchases and counter-terrorism. Nonetheless, Indian policymakers are conscious of regional concerns about Japan’s renewed nationalism and of balancing this relationship with that of China.

By Sameer Patil*

The MoU on civilian nuclear cooperation and the bullet train agreement grabbed the headlines during the recently concluded visit (11-13 December) of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to India. But equally important is the security cooperation forged by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Abe to make the India-Japan relationship a key element of Asia’s new geopolitical order.

For a relationship that has blossomed only in the last decade – after the 2006 India-U.S. nuclear deal – the current contours of the India-Japan security engagement are wide. They range from maritime security (concerns over the South China Sea territorial dispute and joint exercises) and defence purchases (potential aircraft sale to India) to counter-terrorism (Islamic State and radical extremism). This has been aided in no small part by the United States’ active diplomacy, which perceives New Delhi and Tokyo as important partners for its ‘Rebalancing to Asia’ strategy. Washington has encouraged these two reticent Asian democracies to engage bilaterally and also trilaterally in the form of the U.S.-India-Japan[1] and the India-Japan-Australia[2] dialogues to cooperate on regional security matters. These engagements have been enhanced by PM Abe’s effort to restore Japan’s position as a “normal” country by receding from its pacifist constitutional orientation.

The India-Japan security engagement reflects these strong external strands. But these most prominently converge with India’s own security concerns in the maritime security sphere. For the last two years, India has viewed with alarm the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) aggressive tactics on the Line of Actual Control in the Himalayas, the growing Chinese presence in the Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and Gilgit Baltistan – Indian territories under Pakistan’s illegal occupation – and the rising profile of the PLA Navy in the South China Sea with adverse implications for India’s Indian Ocean Region (IOR) positioning.

Faced with these, India has become vocal about the territorial disputes in the South China Sea, committing itself to the freedom of navigation (as stated in the January 2015 India-U.S. joint statement[3]), and intensifying its defence cooperation with Vietnam – one of the parties to the South China Sea territorial dispute[4]. Stating this shared concern, Abe and Modi have, for the first time in a bilateral document, called for restraint on unilateral actions in the South China Sea, an implicit reference to China.[5]

An early recognition of the problem has brought the Indian Navy (IN) into regular interaction with the Japan Maritime Self-Defense Force (JMSDF) through the Japan-India Maritime Exercise, held annually since 2012. This has helped the two navies achieve some degree of mutual familiarity. This year, the JMSDF participated as a permanent member in the Malabar exercises of 2015, which was so far a India-U.S. bilateral naval exercise. A key component of this year’s exercise was anti-submarine warfare. Understandably China was rankled, since it relies on its submarine fleet to penetrate the IOR.[6]

PM Abe is eager for Japan’s military exports to contribute to its domestic defence industrial base and cement geopolitical relationships. In April 2014, Japan had eased restrictions on arms exports[7] and since then, Tokyo has been busy hunting for overseas military hardware contracts, including bidding for Australia’s ambitious submarine upgrade programme.[8]

Among the contracts is one for the IN: the purchase of at least a dozen ShinMaywa US-2 amphibious aircraft[9], useful for Search-and-Rescue operations on the high seas and to guard the island territories, particularly the Andaman and Nicobar islands – our first line of defence in the Indian Ocean.

India and Japan have held multiple talks for this aircraft sale. One of the key obstacles – India is not a member of the Wassenaar Arrangement,[10] a multilateral export control regime governing transfers of conventional arms and dual-use goods and technologies such as the US-2 aircraft. To overcome this, two agreements were signed during PM Abe’s visit – ‘Agreement concerning the Transfer of the Defence Equipment and Technology’ and the ‘Agreement concerning Security Measures for the Protection of Classified Military Information’, to help facilitate the sale from the Japanese side.

An even larger impediment to the purchase is the high cost of the aircraft – reportedly 11 billion Japanese Yen per unit, much higher than a similar spec-ced competing aircraft such as Bombardier CL-415.[11] To reduce costs, India is looking to locally produce the plane by involving a private Indian defence manufacturer under the ‘Make in India campaign’. Both countries are treating this as a Government-to-Government agreement to escape India’s cumbersome defence procurement procedure. But New Delhi will still have to sort out thorny issues related to the offsets and the amount of the contract value required to be invested back domestically and how.

There’s a lot at stake, and India and Japan will surely conclude this big-ticket deal soon. But there is a need to look beyond a single deal, to the broader bilateral defence business of both countries. It may be wiser to look at the purchase or manufacture of smaller equipment and components such as image sensors, batteries and carbon-fiber aircraft components, which are not only dual-use but will be particularly useful for India’s own weapons development efforts.

An additional common concern for Japan and India is terrorism. Japan became the latest victim of the Islamic State’s (IS) violence when IS beheaded two of its nationals- a security consultant and a journalist- earlier this year.[12] Though Japan participated in the U.S.-led Iraq war effort through a humanitarian contingent, this violence is a new challenge for Japan. India is more experienced in this sphere, and therefore a good counter-terrorism partner for Japan. New Delhi has now offered training and related support to Tokyo’s newly-established terrorism focused intelligence collection unit.[13] A next step can be intelligence-sharing on the critical issue of terrorist financing.

This natural convergence of strategic interests notwithstanding, India has taken a nuanced approach towards its engagement with Japan.

Certainly China’s growing military assertiveness and the China-Pakistan relationship have been catalysts for strengthening the India-Japan bilateral. Yet PM Modi also realises China’s critical importance for India’s financial and infrastructural needs, not to mention the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) grouping. An amicable relationship with China is a pre-requisite for India’s ‘Act East’ policy. The Indian establishment is aware that many western analysts posit the India-Japan relationship as an alliance against China. But India is careful to balance its security concerns vis-à-vis China and ensure that it does not become a pawn in American geopolitical ambitions. An added sensitivity is to East Asia: PM Abe’s attempts to hark back to Japan’s ‘glorious’ past have proved contentious not only domestically but also regionally in those parts of East Asia which experienced the war crimes of  Japan’s Imperial Forces during World War II.

India, under PM Modi, has been remarkably candid about China and certainly envisages a central role for itself along with Japan in the emerging Asian security architecture. However, it also realises that only by maintaining a strategic autonomy in its foreign policy, can a stable Asian balance-of-power be promoted.

About the author:
*Sameer Patil is Fellow, National Security, Ethnic Conflict and Terrorism, at Gateway House.

Source:
This feature was written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations.

References:
[1] Department of State, Government of the United States of America, Inaugural U.S.-India-Japan Trilateral Ministerial, 29 September 2015, <http://www.state.gov/r/pa/prs/ps/2015/09/247483.htm>

[2] Mitra, Devirupa, ‘India, Japan, Australia on Same Page on China, Says Japanese Foreign Secretary’, The New Indian Express, 9 June 2015, <http://www.newindianexpress.com/nation/India-Japan-Australia-on-Same-Page-on-China-Says-Japanese-Foreign-Secretary/2015/06/09/article2857954.ece>

[3] Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, US-India Joint Strategic Vision for the Asia-Pacific and Indian Ocean Region, 25 January 2015, <http://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/24728/USIndia_Joint_Strategic_Vision_for_the_AsiaPacific_and_Indian_Ocean_Region>

[4] Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, Joint Statement on the State Visit of Prime Minister of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam to India, 27-28 October 2014, <http://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/24142/Joint+Statement+on+the+State+Visit+of+Prime+Minister+of+the+Socialist+Republic+of+Vietnam+to+India+October+2728+2014>

[5] Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India, Joint Statement on India and Japan Vision 2025: Special Strategic and Global Partnership Working Together for Peace and Prosperity of the Indo-Pacific Region and the World, 12 December, 2015, <http://www.mea.gov.in/bilateral-documents.htm?dtl/26176/Joint_Statement_on_India_and_Japan_Vision_2025_Special_Strategic_and_Global_Partnership_Working_Together_for_Peace_and_Prosperity_of_the_IndoPacific_R>

[6] Jincui, Yu, ‘Concurrent India drills spark unnecessary speculation’, Global Times, 14 October 2015, <http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/947001.shtml>

[7] Ministry of Defense, Government of Japan, ‘Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology’, 1 April 2014, <http://www.mod.go.jp/e/pressrele/2014/140401_02.pdf>

[8] AFP-Jiji Kyodo, ‘Japan submits bid for huge Australian submarine contract’, The Japan Times, 30 November 2015, <http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/11/30/national/japan-submits-bid-for-huge-australian-submarine-contract>

[9] ShinMaywa Industries Ltd., ‘By Land, Sea, or Air US-2’, 2014, <http://www.shinmaywa.co.jp/aircraft/english/us2/>

[10] Basic Documents, Wassenaar Arrangement Secretariat, ‘Wassenaar Arrangement on Export Controls for Conventional Arms and Dual-Use Goods and Technologies- Basic Documents’, Wassenaar Arrangement Secretariat, January 2015, <http://www.wassenaar.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/WA-DOC-15-SEC-001-Basic-Documents-2015-January.pdf>

[11] ‘Japan mulls export to India of SDF search-and-rescue aircraft’, The Asahi Shimbun, 30 May 2013, <http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201305300069>

[12] ‘Japan outraged at IS ‘beheading’ of hostage Kenji Goto’, BBC, 1 February 2015, <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-31075769>

[13] Takenaka, Kiyoshi, ‘Japan to launch new intelligence unit focused on Islamic militants’, Reuters, 4 December 2015, < http://in.reuters.com/article/france-shooting-japan-idINKBN0TN0IG20151204>

By Neil Berry

Forty years ago the United States “gonzo” journalist, Hunter S. Thompson, evoked an America rife with “fear and loathing” as the idealism of the 1960s gave way to the hard-eyed, right-wing politics of Richard Nixon, the Republican president who spawned the criminal conspiracy known as “Watergate.”

Since Donald Trump became a Republican candidate for the 2016 presidential contest, American fear and loathing have received a massive new stimulus. With his proposal that the US close its borders to Muslims, this billionaire demagogue is breaking fresh ground in whipping up mass hysteria and ill feeling. Nixon, who was a keen student of foreign affairs, seems like a philosopher king by comparison.

Trump’s focus on the threat posed to American people by Muslims comes at a time when gun crime perpetrated by indigenous Americans has reached epidemic proportions. Over 300 mass shootings were reported this year, prompting President Barack Obama to urge his fellow Americans to face the fact that they confront a scourge known to no other advanced nation. Yet few condemn Trump for blatantly seeking to divert attention from this homemade bloodletting. To challenge him is to risk being stigmatized as anti-American, a liberal bleeding heart who condones terrorism. Trump is trading on US jingoism, blind patriotic faith that the health of the American body politic is endangered only by demonic outside forces.

Trump’s success resides in his willingness to articulate rank popular prejudice. Indifferent to the proprieties of public discussion, he has no hesitation in saying things calculated to shock — irrespective of whether they correspond to reality. Hence his inflammatory claim that there are areas of European cities, not least in London, where police fear to tread because they are redoubts of violent radicals. Trump’s implication is that Europe presents a portent of a nightmare future in which non-Muslims are at the mercy of fanatics bent on destroying civilized society.

In the wake of November’s Paris attacks, Islamophobic incidents have risen sharply in the United Kingdom, as in France. Yet in the UK Trump’s anti-Muslim pitch has met with no little contempt. A petition to ban him from visiting Britain rapidly gathered half a million signatures. It is worth pointing out that this came soon after the xenophobic United Kingdom Independence Party polled poorly in a by-election won by the Labour Party, notwithstanding efforts by the UKIP leader, Nigel Farage, to insinuate that Labour’s hierarchy is soft on terrorism. Trump’s views may have more resonance in France, the European county with the largest Muslim population. Marine Le Pen, the leader of the far-right Front National, is Trump’s Gallic counterpart — and a formidable one. Though tactical voting stalled her party’s progress in this December’s regional elections, this shrewd populist may yet run for president in 2017.

Le Pen and Trump appeal to millions who have lost faith in mainstream politics, people who feel disorientated by the headlong march of events, the onset of a post-industrial era characterized by chronic insecurity in the workplace and a demographic dramatically transformed by immigration. A time when perpetual change is the only constant spells a bright future for the politics of fear and loathing. Already Donald Trump has had an impact on public debate few imagined possible. That he might occupy the White House no longer seems like the stuff of wild fantasy. Another terrorist strike in a western capital could hugely boost his bid to become the most powerful man in the world.

It is the objective of Daesh, as it was the objective of Osama Bin Laden, to create an unbridgeable chasm between the Muslim world and the West. Now, on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean, politicians with high profiles are peddling their own vision of a starkly polarized planet. Between these opposed exclusivists a kind of informal unholy alliance is emerging. In 1929, D.H. Lawrence wrote that the world was waiting for a “new great movement of generosity or for a great wave of death.” Haunted by the carnage of the First World War, Lawrence feared that the human appetite for horror had not yet been slaked. He would, one suspects, find the current crisis of world affairs no less pregnant with apocalyptic possibilities.

By Bryan Riley and Ambassador Terry Miller*

The latest rankings of trade freedom around the world,[1] included by The Heritage Foundation and The Wall Street Journal in the forthcoming 2016 Index of Economic Freedom, confirm that citizens of countries that embrace free trade are better off than those in countries that do not. The data continue to show a strong correlation between trade freedom and a variety of positive indicators, including economic prosperity, low poverty rates, and clean environments.

Worldwide, the average trade freedom score improved slightly, from 75.3 to 75.6 (of a maximum score of 100). The improvement was due to a modest decline in average tariff rates among the countries measured.

The volume of world trade in goods and services plummeted during the global recession, declining by nearly 20 percent between 2008 and 2009. Since then, trade volume has increased every year. In dollar terms, world trade volume is currently larger than ever, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) predicts another 3.9 percent increase in global trade in 2016.[2]

U.S. trade volume has also increased. From 2013 to 2014, combined U.S. exports and imports increased by $156 billion to $5.2 trillion, the highest overall level in history.

Why Trade Freedom Matters

A comparison of economic performance and trade scores in the 2016 Index of Economic Freedom demonstrates the importance of trade freedom for prosperity and well-being. Countries with the most trade freedom have higher per capita incomes, lower rates of hunger in their populations, and cleaner environments.

Boosting Trade and Economic Freedom. Since World War II, government barriers to global commerce have been reduced significantly. Today, the average worldwide tariff rate is less than 3 percent. The average world tariff rate has fallen by one-third since the turn of the century alone.[3] Thirty-eight countries have an average tariff rate of 1 percent or less.

These countries with low tariffs and few non-tariff barriers benefit from stronger economic growth. But free trade policies do not just promote economic growth, they encourage freedom—including protection of private property rights and the freedom of average people to buy what they think is best for their families, regardless of attempts by special-interest groups to restrict that freedom.

But not all countries have embraced free trade. Double-digit tariff rates are applied in 37 countries, and even countries with low average tariff rates often have high tariff peaks for specific items. In the United States, for example, the average tariff rate is just 1.5 percent, but pickup trucks face a prohibitive 25 percent tariff, and many types of clothing are subject to double-digit tariffs.[4]

Approaches to Trade Freedom. The simplest way to achieve trade freedom is to unilaterally reduce tariff and non-tariff barriers. Reducing trade barriers allows countries to reap benefits including increased foreign investment and accelerated economic growth. Many developing countries have taken this route. Economist Richard Baldwin described unilateral tariff cuts in developing countries beginning in the 1980s as a “curiously universal phenomenon.”[5] These unilateral tariff cuts generated dramatic results. As economist Pierre-Louis Vézina observed, “[T]wo decades of unilateral tariff-cutting in emerging economies accompanied the most successful trade-led development model of the past 50 years, i.e., ‘Factory Asia.’”[6]

Reducing barriers to imports allows countries to participate in global value chains by encouraging foreign investment and lowering the cost of inputs. Increasing trade barriers has the opposite result. According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), “Protective measures against imports of intermediate products increase the costs of production and reduce a country’s ability to compete in export markets: tariffs and other barriers to imports are effectively a tax on exports.”[7]

Trade agreements have provided another way to reduce trade barriers. As Douglas A. Irwin observed:

[M]ultilateral reductions in trade barriers may reduce political opposition to free trade in each of the countries involved. That is because groups that otherwise would be opposed or indifferent to trade reform might join the campaign for free trade if they see opportunities for exporting to the other countries in the trade agreement. Consequently, free trade agreements between countries or regions are a useful strategy for liberalizing world trade.[8]

More than 250 regional and bilateral agreements are in force, with dozens more being negotiated.[9]

Examples of regional and sectoral negotiations include the following:

Continental Free Trade Area for Africa (CFTA). In 2012, the African Union Summit approved a plan to create a continental free trade zone by 2017. According to the Action Plan for Boosting Intra-Africa trade, “Trade is widely accepted as an important engine of economic growth and development. There are many regions and countries of the world that have been able to lift their people from poverty to prosperity through trade. In Africa however, trade has not served as a potent instrument for the achievement of rapid and sustainable economic growth and development.”[10] Potential benefits identified by the African Union include improved food security through reductions in agricultural protectionism, increased competitiveness, and reduced reliance on foreign aid.

Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). Current TPP participants are the United States, Australia, Brunei, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, New Zealand, Peru, Singapore, and Vietnam. TPP negotiations were completed in October, and member countries are currently reviewing the final product.

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP). Negotiations for this agreement between the United States and the European Union are ongoing. A TTIP agreement that reduces barriers to trade and investment between the United States and the EU, thereby empowering individuals on both continents, would boost trade freedom. To be successful, negotiators need to resist efforts to create new regulatory barriers to trade under the guise of “harmonization.”

Trade in Services Agreement (TISA). Service industries account for nearly 80 percent of the U.S. economy.[11] In 2013, countries representing a majority of the world’s services market launched TISA negotiations, covering industries such as transportation, travel, communications services, construction, insurance, banking, and computer services. Numerous barriers interfere with the free flow of trade in services. For example, state-owned enterprises often restrict competition from foreign companies; many government policies are biased against services provided by foreign companies; local ownership requirements require service providers to partner with local businesses; and data storage requirements force companies to store their data locally.

Information Technology Agreement (ITA). This past July, 54 WTO members agreed to eliminate tariffs on more than 200 products accounting for over $1 trillion in annual trade. Tariffs will be eliminated on products including semi-conductors, GPS navigation systems, magnetic resonance imaging machines, telecommunications satellites, and touch screens.[12]

Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA). Australia, Canada, China, Costa Rica, the EU, Hong Kong, Iceland, Israel, Japan, Korea, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey, and the United States are in negotiations to reduce trade barriers for environmental goods ranging from carbon dioxide scrubbers to solar panels.[13]

Ending Agricultural Export Subsidies. The original WTO agreement established limits on export subsidies, but agricultural products were largely exempt from these controls. Efforts to reduce agricultural export subsidies are currently underway.[14]

One problem with regional and bilateral agreements is that each agreement has a separate set of rules. Consequently, it is a challenge for many companies to operate efficiently under them. According to a recent survey, 70 percent of companies do not take full advantage of regional trade agreements. Two-thirds of survey respondents said they expect global trade rules to become more complicated in coming years, not more streamlined.[15] It has been over 20 years since the creation of the WTO and conclusion of the Uruguay Round, the last comprehensive global trade agreement.

Next Steps for Trade

Today, it is rare for a product traded on the global market to be made entirely in one country. As a WTO report concluded: “The notion of ‘country of origin,’ something carefully recorded by customs authorities, is in particular losing much of its significance, since the total commercial value of a product is attributed to the country in which it last underwent processing, regardless of its relative contribution to the value-added chain. As a result, the study of bilateral trade balances is becoming less relevant.”[16] In the United States, nearly half of all imports are intermediate goods used by U.S. manufacturers.[17] Permanently eliminating tariffs on these inputs would make American companies more competitive.

Most Americans are open to the idea of more free trade. According to a 2014 survey by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 65 percent of Americans believe that “globalization, especially the increasing connections of our economy with others around the world, is mostly good for the United States.”[18] A 2014 Pew Research Center survey found that 68 percent of Americans believe growing trade and business ties with other countries is “a good thing.”[19] A 2015 Pew survey found that 58 percent of Americans believe that trade agreements have been “a good thing” for the United States.[20]

Not surprisingly, when The Heritage Foundation’s American Perceptions Initiative asked, “Which is more important? Allowing free trade so companies can buy the inputs they need at a lower cost, low-income families can buy clothing at more affordable prices, and the economy can create new jobs, or allowing Congress to protect some politically connected industries from low-priced imports,” just 9 percent of Americans chose protectionism.[21]

The 2016 Index of Economic Freedom shows that people who live in countries with low trade barriers are better off than those who live in countries with high trade barriers. Reducing those barriers remains a proven recipe for prosperity. Governments interested in higher economic growth, less hunger, and better environmental quality should work to increase trade freedom.

*About the authors:
Bryan Riley is Jay Van Andel Senior Analyst in Trade Policy in the Center for Trade and Economics, of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity, at The Heritage Foundation. Ambassador Terry Miller is Director of the Center for Trade and Economics and the Center for Data Analysis, of the Institute for Economic Freedom and Opportunity, as well as Mark A. Kolokotrones Fellow in Economic Freedom, at The Heritage Foundation.

Source:
This article was published by The Heritage Foundation.

Appendix B: Methodology

The trade freedom scores reported in this Backgrounder are based on two variables: trade–weighted average tariff rates and non-tariff barriers (NTBs).

Different imports entering a country can, and often do, face different tariffs. The weighted average tariff uses weights for each tariff based on the share of imports for each good. Weighted average tariffs are a purely quantitative measure and account for the basic calculation of the score using the equation:

Trade Freedom_i = 100(Tariff_max – Tariff_i) / (Tariff_max – Tariff_min) – NTB_i

where Trade Freedom_i represents the trade freedom in country i, Tariff_max and Tariff_min represent the upper and lower bounds for tariff rates, and Tariff_i represents the weighted average tariff rate in country i. The minimum tariff is naturally zero, and the upper bound was set as a score of 50. NTB_i, an NTB penalty, is then subtracted from the base score. The penalty of 5, 10, 15, or 20 points is assigned according to the following scale:

• Penalty of 20. NTBs are used extensively across many goods and services or impede a significant amount of international trade.
• Penalty of 15. NTBs are widespread across many goods and services or impede a majority of potential international trade.
• Penalty of 10. NTBs are used to protect certain goods and services or impede some international trade.
• Penalty of 5. NTBs are uncommon, protecting few goods and services, with very limited impact on international trade.
• No penalty. NTBs are not used to limit international trade.

Both qualitative and quantitative data are used to determine the extent of NTBs in a country’s trade policy regime. Restrictive rules that hinder trade vary widely, and their overlapping and shifting nature makes gauging their complexity difficult. The categories of NTBs considered in the trade freedom penalty include:

• Quantity restrictions. These include import quotas, export limitations, voluntary export restraints, import/export embargoes and bans, and countertrade measures.
• Price restrictions. These include antidumping duties, countervailing duties, border tax adjustments, and variable levies and tariff rate quotas.
• Regulatory restrictions. These include licensing; domestic content and mixing requirements; sanitary and phytosanitary standards; safety and industrial standards regulations; packaging, labeling, and trademark regulations; and advertising and media regulations.
• Customs restrictions. These include advance deposit requirements, customs valuation procedures, customs classification procedures, and customs clearance procedures.
• Direct government intervention. These include subsidies and other aids; government industrial policy and regional development measures; government-financed research and other technology policies; national taxes and social insurance; competition policies; immigration policies; state trading, government monopolies, and exclusive franchises; and government procurement policies.

As an example: Brazil received a trade freedom score of 69.4. By itself, Brazil’s weighted average tariff of 7.8 percent would have yielded a score of 84.4, but the existence of NTBs in Brazil reduced its score by 15 points.

Gathering data on tariffs to make a consistent cross-country comparison can be a challenging task. Unlike data on inflation, for instance, some countries do not report their weighted average tariff rate or simple average tariff rate every year. To preserve consistency in grading trade policy, the authors use the World Bank’s most recently reported weighted average tariff rate for a country. If another reliable source reported more updated information on a country’s tariff rate, the authors note this fact and may review the grading if strong evidence indicates that the most recently reported weighted average tariff rate is outdated.

The World Bank produces the most comprehensive and consistent information on weighted average applied tariff rates. When the weighted average applied tariff rate is not available, the authors use the country’s average applied tariff rate. When the country’s average applied tariff rate is not available, the authors use the weighted average or the simple average of most-favored-nation (MFN) tariff rates. In the very few cases in which data on duties and customs revenues are not available, the authors use international trade tax data instead.

In all cases, the authors clarify the type of data used and the different sources for those data in the corresponding write-up for the trade policy factor. When none of this information is available, the authors simply analyze the overall tariff structure and estimate an effective tariff rate.

The trade freedom scores for 2016 are based on data for the period covering the second half of 2014 through the first half of 2015. To the extent possible, the information is current as of June 30, 2015. Any changes in law effective after that date have no positive or negative impact on the 2016 trade freedom scores.

Finally, unless otherwise noted, the authors use the following sources to determine scores for trade policy, in order of priority:

1. The World Bank, World Development Indicators 2015.
2. The World Trade Organization, Trade Policy Review, 1995–2015.
3. Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, 2015 National Trade Estimate Report on Foreign Trade Barriers.
4. The World Bank, Doing Business 2014 and Doing Business 2015.
5. U.S. Department of Commerce and U.S. Department of State, Country Commercial Guide, 2010–2015.
6. Economist Intelligence Unit, Country Commerce, 2015.
7. World Economic Forum, The Global Enabling Trade Report 2014.
8. Official government publications of each country.

[1] See Appendix A.

[2] News release, “Falling Import Demand, Lower Commodity Prices Push Down Trade Growth Prospects,” World Trade Organization, September 30, 2015, https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/pres15_e/pr752_e.htm (accessed November 25, 2015).

[3] The World Bank. “Tariff rate, applied, weighted mean, all products (%),” http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/TM.TAX.MRCH.WM.AR.ZS (accessed November 25, 2015).

[4] U.S. International Trade Commission, Harmonized Tariff Schedule of the United States, http://hts.usitc.gov/current (accessed November 25, 2015).

[5] Richard Baldwin, “Unilateral Tariff Liberalisation,” Centre for Trade and Economic Integration Working Paper, April 2011, http://graduateinstitute.ch/webdav/site/ctei/shared/CTEI/working_papers/CTEI-2011-04.pdf (accessed December 1, 2015).

[6] Pierre-Louis Vézina, “Race-to-the-Bottom Tariff Cutting,” Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies Working Paper No. 12/2010, July 2010, http://repec.graduateinstitute.ch/pdfs/Working_papers/HEIDWP12-2010.pdf (accessed November 11, 2015).

[7] Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, “Interconnected Economies: Benefiting from Global Value Chains,” 2013, p. 25, http://www.oecd.org/sti/ind/interconnected-economies-GVCs-synthesis.pdf (accessed November 11, 2015).

[8] Douglas A. Irwin, “Free Trade Agreements and Customs Unions,” The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics, http://www.econlib.org/library/Enc1/FreeTradeAgreementsandCustomsUnions.html (accessed November 25, 2015).

[9] World Trade Organization, “Regional Trade Agreements,” https://www.wto.org/english/tratop_e/region_e/region_e.htm (accessed November 25, 2015).

[10] African Union, “Boosting Intra-African Trade,” http://www.au.int/en/ti/biat/about (accessed November 24, 2015).

[11] The World Bank, “Data: Services, etc., Value Added (% of GDP),” http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NV.SRV.TETC.ZS (accessed November 25, 2015).

[12] News release, “WTO Members Reach Landmark $1.3 Trillion IT Trade Deal,” World Trade Organization, July 24, 2015, https://www.wto.org/english/news_e/news15_e/ita_23jul15_e.htm (accessed November 25, 2015).

[13] News release, “The Environmental Goods Agreement (EGA): Liberalising Trade in Environmental Goods and Services,” European Commission, September 8, 2015, http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/press/index.cfm?id=1116 (accessed November 25, 2015).

[14] Tom Miles, “EU, Brazil Seek WTO Deal to Ban Agricultural Export Subsidies,” Reuters, November 17, 2015, http://af.reuters.com/article/commoditiesNews/idAFL8N13C3HM20151117?sp=true (accessed November 25, 2015).

[15] News release, “Seventy Percent of Companies Do Not Fully Utilize Free Trade Agreements, According to Thomson Reuters–KPMG International Survey,” Thomson Reuters, November 6, 2015, http://thomsonreuters.com/en/press-releases/2015/november/seventy-percent-of-companies-do-not-fully-utilize-free-trade-agreements.html (accessed November 25, 2015).

[16] The World Trade Organization, “Globalization of Industrial Production Chains and Measurement of Trade in Value Added,” conference proceedings, October 2010, p. 3, http://www.wto.org/english/res_e/booksp_e/act_conf_e.pdf (accessed October 9, 2014).

[17] Heritage Foundation calculations from U.S. International Trade Commission “Interactive Tariff and Trade Dataweb,” https://dataweb.usitc.gov/ (accessed November 25, 2015).

[18] Dina Smeltz and Ivo Daalder, “Foreign Policy in the Age of Retrenchment,” Chicago Council on Global Affairs, 2014, p. 37, http://www.thechicagocouncil.org/sites/default/files/2014_CCS_Report_1.pdf (accessed December 1, 2015).

[19] Pew Research Center, “Spring 2014 Global Attitudes Survey, Q27: Growing Trade Seen Positively,” September 15, 2014, http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/09/16/faith-and-skepticism-about-trade-foreign-investment/trade-09/ (accessed December 1, 2015)

[20] Pew Research Center, “Free Trade Agreements Seen as Good for U.S., But Concerns Persist,” May 27, 2015, http://www.people-press.org/2015/05/27/free-trade-agreements-seen-as-good-for-u-s-but-concerns-persist/ (accessed November 25, 2015).

[21] Bryan Riley, “Americans Are Pro-Trade When They Understand the Tradeoffs,” The DailWy Signal, July 10, 2015, http://dailysignal.com/2015/07/10/americans-are-pro-trade-when-they-understand-the-tradeoffs/.

The recent arrest of Martin Shkreli, former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, on charges of securities fraud, reminds us that high prescription drug prices are today’s whipping boy for the costs of health care. Hillary Clinton and other politicians have promised to impose federal controls on pharmaceutical prices.

However, prescription drugs have not been the fastest growing item in health care since the economy started to enter the Great Recession in 2007. That distinction belongs to health insurance (specifically, medical and hospital insurance, not workers’ compensation, income replacement, or long-term care). Table I shows price indices for various components of personal consumption expenditures, indexed such that 2007 equals 100.

“Net” medical and hospital insurance (that is, premiums less claims paid out to doctors, hospitals, and others), increased 27 percent over the period. Spending on actual health goods and services rose only 16 percent.

To be sure, prices of prescription drugs increased 21 percent. However, prices for hospitalization increased 18 percent. For some reason, politicians generally do not berate hospitals for their greed, like they do drug makers.

Obamacare makes the purchase of private health insurance mandatory for most Americans. While it regulates insurers’ profit margins, it does not regulate premiums. If the government did not force us to buy insurance, or otherwise encourage us to use insurance for medical spending that would be more efficiently purchased directly, we would not see this remarkable price inflation for health insurance.

This article was published at The Beacon.

The launch of the ASEAN Community has drawn lukewarm responses as ASEAN has long been compared unfavourably with the European Union. The two are fundamentally different integration projects that have evolved as alternative models to community building.

By Ong Keng Yong and Kyaw San Wai*

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations at their annual summit on 22 November 2015 formally established the ASEAN Community. The realisation of the ASEAN Community is a momentous milestone in ASEAN’s history but has met with lukewarm responses from various sectors of ASEAN society. Pundits questioned whether ASEAN had really become a community – they had compared ASEAN with the European Union, and were disappointed that ASEAN does not measure up to the level of integration achieved by the EU. There was nothing like the European Parliament or the European Court of Justice. Social activists argued that the ordinary citizens of ASEAN are mostly unaware of the community-building process or see no benefit from being part of it.

The business sector claimed that commercial transactions and investments across Southeast Asia are still challenging, with high and unprofitable cost of doing business. Skilled workers cannot move or work freely across national borders as in the EU. Political strategists were not at all sure that the ASEAN Community had secured the region’s peace and stability. Economists, for their part, debated the value-added contribution of the ASEAN Community to Asia’s dynamism and growth trajectory. The bottom line, in the view of many quarters, was a negative for ASEAN’s community-building effort.

The bigger picture

While these commentators have raised important points, there is another side of the coin. It is crucial for everybody to appreciate what actually happened. The launch of the ASEAN Community is part of the strategic move by ASEAN leaders to get Southeast Asian countries to stay on the collective path of peaceful and sustainable development and make the organisation attractive as a viable political and economic partner for external powers interested in the region.

Despite each ASEAN member state having its own policy towards the major powers engaging Southeast Asia, there is a shared strategic outlook that the grouping should maintain a key role in the regional architecture, and that this can only be realised by having all ten ASEAN members hanging together.

What the EU has achieved in integration is instructive, but is not the model for ASEAN community-building. ASEAN remains an inter-government body, distinct from the EU’s supra-national construct. Directly comparing ASEAN to the EU is not apt.

Though the ASEAN Community is a work-in-progress, member states are committed to make it work, albeit in a uniquely Southeast Asian way. Referred to as the “ASEAN Way”, this is consensus-based decision-making at a pace comfortable to all, with non-interference in domestic affairs and flexibility in implementing collective agreements as guiding principles. It is unfair to say that ASEAN is an ineffective regional body that fails to meet the aspirations of the people of Southeast Asia. In the Southeast Asian context, punitive measures and an interventionist approach do not guarantee success. Moral persuasion, cooperation and collaboration can yield positive outcomes, though more time is required.

Different views

ASEAN and the EU are the two most prominent regional integration projects in the world today. However, they arose out of different contexts and have different visions and missions. European integration, after the two internecine World Wars and ideological divide of the Cold War, followed the modality of building institutions and setting common rules to minimise sovereignty.

Pooling sovereignty is a strategy aimed at reducing the potential for military adventurism as witnessed during the two World Wars. Integration across the European continent provides better security, sustaining peace and development.

On the other hand, the historical experiences of Southeast Asia are different. Many of the ASEAN member states are relatively young independent nations and view sovereignty as paramount and something to be jealously guarded. Building regional institutions is still a nascent idea. Globalisation and technological advancement have however enhanced the need for cooperation across national borders and ASEAN is nimbly trying to adapt to the changes in global dynamics – by integrating the member states’ economies and social systems in a strategic collective to secure peace and development.

Substantive ties

Notwithstanding their differences, ASEAN and the EU have worked hard to cultivate significant political, economic and cultural ties over the years. Cooperation and collaboration provide a mutuality of support and an exchange of ideas and innovations beneficial for both. It is germane to highlight some important facts that buttress the ASEAN-EU relationship. The EU is ASEAN’s second largest external trading partner at US$248 billion for 2014 – around 10% of ASEAN’s total trade. It is also ASEAN’s largest external investor for 2012-2014 with more than US$56 billion, with US$29 billion alone in 2014, amounting to around 22% of total FDI inflow.

An ASEAN-EU Free Trade Agreement is unlikely in the foreseeable future but there is political understanding for this with work on concluding bilateral FTAs proceeding, albeit slowly. The EU has concluded negotiations with Singapore and Vietnam, while talks with Malaysia, Myanmar and Thailand are ongoing. Going forward, the prospects for more trade and investment are positive despite strong competition from elsewhere.

Air connections between ASEAN and EU cities by airlines from both sides provide nearly a quarter of a million seats per week. In 2014, the EU was the second largest external source of tourism in ASEAN, with around 9.3 million arrivals. At the same time, the EU is emerging as a preferred travel destination for the burgeoning ASEAN middle class.

Common challenges

The relationship between ASEAN and EU countries is not based on business and trade alone. In the socio-cultural arena, there are many projects that have added to the web of linkages and substantive ties. Arts, biodiversity, education, environmental protection, pandemics, post-disaster humanitarian assistance and science & technology are some of the areas covered in functional cooperation.

These platforms have brought about considerable people-to-people exchanges which are at the foundation of ASEAN-EU connectivity. And through more sharing and regulatory convergence in the areas where they can work together, there will be increased mutual understanding to cement ties between ASEAN and the EU.

Being the two regional integration works always in the news these days, comparing ASEAN and the EU will be unavoidable. However, such direct comparisons are not appropriate as the two groupings originated from different circumstances and are navigating through different terrains towards different destinations. Yet, they face common challenges in the 21st century and they can certainly offer each other valuable lessons in tackling the complexities of governance at the national, regional and international levels.

*Ong Keng Yong is Executive Deputy Chairman and Kyaw San Wai is a Senior Analyst at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

As UN Resolution 1325 celebrates its 15th anniversary, it is time to take stock of its progress and challenges. On one central theme of the resolution, gender and peacekeeping, there is a need for more systematic knowledge about how we can create a more equal peace for men and women, and how we can ensure a more gender-aware implementation.

By Louise Olsson and Theodora-Ismene Gizelis*

On October 13, 2015, the United Nations Security Council held its yearly Open Debate on Resolution 1325, the first thematic resolution on Women, Peace and Security. The day-long row of statements did indeed contain all the correct rhetoric on a wide array of topics and processes, which today have grown into a very broad agenda.

To take stock of developments, the Open Debate was preceded by an ambitious Global Study. In parallel, the report from the High Level Panel on Peace Operations complemented the debate. In fact, given the vast amount of information available, it can be difficult to keep track of ongoing developments, even if we limit ourselves to the area of peace operations.

Putting the (Gendered) peace into peacekeeping

In our book Gender, Peace and Security: Implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1325 and in a commentary in International Peacekeeping, we therefore make an attempt to structure the debate and find that current discussion on gender and peacekeeping to a large extent revolves around two strands of questions. First, what form of peace does peacekeeping contribute to establishing? Hence, it focuses on developing our understanding of the ‘gendered’ contents of ‘peace’ in peacekeeping. The second strand focuses on the actual ‘keeping’. In short, does it matter how peacekeeping operations are conducted?

Theodora-Ismene Gizelis’ research indicates that more gender-equal societies have a significantly higher capacity for benefitting from any international support provided. Thereby, the result is a decreased risk of renewed conflict. Similarly, there are early indications that female participation – at least at the local level – in post-conflict reconstruction can help UN-led peace missions to overcome some of the many hurdles that frustrate the establishment of a durable peace.

What this also indicates, as Louise Olsson has previously observed, is that ‘peace’ should not be presumed to automatically have the same ‘quality’ for women as it does for men. This is important to note as research often defines peace as the lack of armed conflict. This means that ‘peace’ does not have a specific content. Feminist theorists have argued that to use this ‘negative’ definition of peace disregards the fact that there might not even be ‘peace’ for women if their security and political roles have not been an integral part of the peace process.

In a more radical interpretation, peacekeeping is even perceived as being part of a militaristic approach to world order which, in turn, is based on gender inequality. Hence, while much research discusses the impact of gender on peacekeeping success, feminist research, in the words of Cynthia Enloe, has instead argued that ‘[t]o take seriously the full implications of gender entails shining bright lights into the cultures, the structures, and the silences of peacekeeping.’ In essence, there is a need to understand that peace is not automatically the same for men and women and that it is highly ‘gendered’.

Gender and the keeping of peace

From the mid-1990s, gender mainstreaming became established as the main approach to integrate women’s and men’s situations and needs in the core work of peace operations. However, Gizelis highlights that despite the overall interest on the topic there has been little systematic research and evidence on whether the current gender mainstreaming programmes have any discernible impact.

One exception that illustrates the salience of such research is Helen Basini’s study of the disarmament, demobilisation, rehabilitation, and reintegration (DDRR) process in Liberia where she shows that in spite of lobbying, the process never addressed questions of sexual violence and inequalities linked to the process of DDRR.

With the continued release of gender disaggregated data from multilateral institutions such as the UN, EU, NATO and OSCE, research is also on the rise regarding women’s participation in peacekeeping operations. In one of the first statistical studies, Sabrina Karim and Kyle Beardsley examine military components deployed in UN peacekeeping. They find that women personnel are primarily sent to less hostile environments rather than to theatres of operation where conflict violence against local women, in accordance with international policy, would have warranted a higher degree of female military presence.

Annica Kronsell observes the same phenomena regarding participation in military peacekeeping in Europe. She notes that the problem of women’s participation is linked to military organisations not having dealt with norms of masculinity and the ideals of the protected and the protector. To paraphrase Joshua Goldstein, while gender in peacekeeping is a topic that includes both men and women, it “ultimately revolves around men somewhat more than women”.

Considerable progress, despite the critique

The critique from other feminist researchers has been rather severe with regard to how the above focus, in the words of Sandra Whitworth, risks emptying “ ‘gender’ of its radical political potential and shift our attention away from the people who are affected by peacekeeping missions and toward those who conduct those missions”. The critique includes specifically that one form of personnel behaviour – Sexual Exploitation and Abuse – is thereby toned down. Withworth argues that this behaviour is instead fundamental to understanding peacekeeping.

In 2013, Ragnhild Nordås and Siri Rustad compiled the first global dataset on Sexual Exploitation and Abuse. While struggling with data reliability, they still find that large missions operating in a poor country or in conflicts with considerable sexual violence are more likely to record reports of sexual exploitation and abuse. Interestingly, they relate these findings to similar arguments as the feminist literature on the vulnerabilities and perceptions of the personnel who conduct such violence.

It is thus important to note that in spite of the critique, there has been considerable progress in the field of gender and peacekeeping over the last 15 years. The anniversary will, hopefully, contribute to a renewed interest in even further increasing our systematic knowledge both on what peace we seek to create and how we best can keep it.

*Louise Olsson is Head of Research and Policy on Gender, Peace and Security at the Folke Bernadotte Academy in Sweden. Theodora-Ismene Gizelis is a professor in the Department of Government at the University of Essex. They contributed this to RSIS Commentary in conjunction with the joint event organised by the RSIS Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief Programme and the Swedish Embassy in Singapore to mark the 15th Anniversary of UN Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security.

**Sections of the text are derived in part from Louise Olsson and Theodora-Ismene Gizelis. Commentary: “Advancing Gender and Peacekeeping Research”. International Peacekeeping, 21(4), 2014, and Theodora-Ismene Gizelis and Louise Olsson, “Gender, Peace and Security: Implementing UN Security Council Resolution 1325”, Routledge 2015.

The conflict between Russia and Turkey after the shooting down of a Russian aircraft that violated Turkish airspace has led to intensified pressure on Circassians who have succeeded in returning to their ancestral homeland in the North Caucasus and reduced still further Moscow’s willingness to take in Circassians from war-torn Syria.

FSB persecution of Circassians from Turkey has intensified since the shooting down of the Russian plane, ranging from demands that Circassians give up Turkish citizenship and take part in anti-Turkish demonstrations to arrests and bureaucratic restricts prompted Circassians to hold a protest meeting at the Russian consulate general in Istanbul last Friday (kavkaz-uzel.ru/articles/274672/).

The meeting adopted a resolution which declared that “the Circassian people must not suffer as a result of the conflict between Russia and Turkey.”  In fact, one of the organizers said, Circassians are divided about who is to blame in that conflict and are trying as much as possible to stay out of the debate.

Unfortunately, Moscow and the FSB are trying to draw them in and that is generating a backlash.  But the current problems have deep roots, the organizers say.  “If Russia has helped the Circassians of Syria and take them in [when the Syrian conflict started], then the relation of the Circassian diaspora toward Russia would be completely different.”

Indeed, some of them say, had Moscow helped Syria’s Circassians out, “there would not have been any No Sochi campaign in the run up to the Olympiad. The lack of a desire by Russia to see the Circassaians and return even some historical justice toward them has given birth to a reaction in the diaspora.”

“The most comic aspect” of the Russian-Turkish crisis, one of the Circassian demonstrators said, is that “the commander in chief of the Turkish air force is an Abaza who speaks Kabardinian and his brother in the past was the leader of KAFFED,” an indication of how integrated Circassians are in Turkish security agencies.

By Robert Shines

“Diamond of Democracies” was a term used to refer to a would-be alliance between the U.S., Japan, Australia, and India and their collective efforts to counter the rise of China. However, Japan has patiently and carefully formulated its own bloc for this very same purpose.

Additionally, these plans were complemented by pre-Ukraine Crisis overtures toward Russia to resolve their Kuril Islands dispute.

Former Colonies Awaken

Echoing their mother country’s path to preeminence, both India and Australia are making strides in building formidable navies able to project power locally and deny access to potential enemies. India’s value to Japan is twofold. First, it is a huge Asian land power with a contemporary history of animosity with China, namely their 1962 border skirmish. It also serves to keep China’s attention divided in the event of a clash with Japan, much like China keeps India’s attention divided with its alliance with Pakistan.

Even more important, India is the one Asian state capable of projecting force into the Indian Ocean if necessary. While it doesn’t receive nearly as many headlines as the East or South China Seas nowadays, it must be remembered that resources flowing from Africa and the Middle East to Asia must cross the Indian Ocean first before they ever even get to the two seas. Lastly, the Indian Ocean is home to a significant amount of the world’s offshore oil production in its own right.

Similar to India, Japan is developing military ties with Australia as well. While technically only a middle power, Australia’s utility to Japan may even surpass that of India. This is because, in addition to its strategic location near the convergence of the Indian Ocean and South China Sea, it exports a whole range of mineral resources to China. These resources are critical to China’s continued economic growth and have enabled China to become Australia’s top trading partner.

A Crowded Neighborhood

Japan has additionally been developing military and economic ties with various Southeastern Asian states, most notably Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia. All three states have island disputes with China in the South China Sea, with the Philippines going as far as seeking an international legal ruling in support of its claim, while Malaysia is proximate to the Strait of Malacca, namesake of China’s “Malacca Dilemma.”

Of primary importance to Japan, however, is that all three countries surround China’s nine-dash line which, in turn, surrounds the bulk of the South China Sea’s natural resources. Taken together, India, Australia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and Malaysia are in prominent maritime positions to deny China access to the resources it needs in order to survive. However, a certain northern land power would have made the chokehold complete.

Northern Capstone

While China may indeed have an ancient history of “using barbarians to fight barbarians”, most of these have come from the north, such as the Mongols and the Manchus. Similar to how ancient Rome feared invasion from the north due to Hannibal’s legendary Alps crossing, Japan was poised to leverage Russia to play on traditional Chinese unease with powerful northern neighbors. If not for the present Ukraine Crisis and the subsequent Western sanctions, Japan was on track to finally come to some sort of resolution with Russia over the disputed Kuril Islands. Japan’s desire was also evident in the degree of sanctions imposed on Russia, which were not as severe as those imposed by the U.S. and Europe.

Having Russia, a huge supplier to China of oil and natural gas, allied to Japan would have served Japan’s interests perfectly. It would have more completely enclosed China in a stranglehold from all sides, putting China in a more vulnerable position, its economy dependent on resource-flows through allies’ spheres of influence or, even better in Russia’s case, directly from the allies themselves. Lastly, even though China is making economic inroads into Central Asia, Russia retains an inordinate amount of influence there which may affect the foreign policy calculus of these states as well.

Summarily, this isn’t to say that Japan would like to have all of these countries engage in military hostilities with China on its behalf. Simply having these countries’ positions vis-a-vis China relatively ambiguous would have caused enough strategic uncertainty in China’s calculations to benefit Japan. This would have been compounded by the acknowledgement that the key to China’s continued economic growth, and by extension political stability, is continued access to desperately-needed resources. This is in keeping with Sun Tzu’s maxims of winning without fighting and letting the enemy destroy himself from within.

This article was published at Geopolitical Monitor.com

By Attaullah Waziri*

In 2014 Presidential elections, at least eight million voters had braved Taliban threats and gone to the polls in two rounds of elections. After a long dispute between the two rival teams led by Dr. Ashraf Ghani and Dr. Abdullah Abdullah, Afghanistan’s presidential election was resolved in a U.S.-brokered deal that created a National Unity Government (NUG), agreement signed on September 21, 2014.

The new president Ashraf Ghani, by decree, created the post of chief executive officer (CEO), filled by Abdullah Abdullah. This resulted in a power-sharing arrangement between the two teams, the formal legal parameters of which will not be decided until 2016.

In addition to its internal tensions, the NUG faces a challenging political, security, and economic situation in the country—one that threatens to be exacerbated as international assistance and U.S. military forces draw down. Although President Ghani was not pleased with forming a two-headed government that could divide his authority over the government institutions, in bringing the much-needed reforms and improvements in key departments and offices like that of the General Attorney, Supreme Court and local Governance.

In fact, the NUG which was given a 100-day deadline to perform the prioritized tasks in what can be addressed as its probationary period, this two-headed government embarrassedly failed to execute them, facing strong public criticism and international admonishments. What have been even more embarrassing are the criticisms that have followed the President into the public domain, with the CEO having asked Ghani to reconsider the appointment that he had made to the Ministry of Defense! Nothing could have undermined the strength of the NUG more than these demeaning internal quarrels.

The battle over key appointments extended to other institutions including local governance appointments. The NUG has had its first anniversary, but it is yet to have Ministers appointed to key ministries such as Defense, with some of the existing portfolio bearers being nothing more than acting executives, lacking full authority and consequently, evading full responsibility for their actions.

The internal disputes over power sharing have badly affected the private business sector resulting in creating a huge crisis of unemployment throughout the country. The majority of native investors have fled the country due to security threats that come from many quarters. The NUG, in all, has failed to deliver security and support to both the domestic and international investors alike.

While facing jobs crisis, a big number of educated and skilled youths are leaving the country every single day to find jobs and as well a secured future for their families in other countries. Initial reports confirm that approximately 80,000 skilled youths have already left the country. Providing a proof of this exodus is the Afghan Passport department. Since the draw-down of the ISAF, the department has been stretched to its maximum capacity, issuing as many as 7,000 passports for young and old alike.

Afghan peace talks have also lost their credibility after it was revealed that the supreme leader and the spiritual fountainhead of Taliban, Mullah Mohammad Omar, has been dead for as many 2 years now. Apart from dealing with Pakistan, what has disgruntled the Afghan domestic constituency even more is the sheer ignorance with which the NUG proceeded with the talks, not knowing who they were talking to and rather being bluffed all this while.

At the level of governance, the inception the Afghan government has not translated into full control over the country, particularly at the district level. Lately, the government lost Kunduz, one of the major cities of the country, to their longstanding foe as Taliban. A city of three million people fell into the hands of Taliban who were kept away from the province for 13 long years.

The country’s deep and broad political divisions and wounds, exacerbated by the presidential election are yet to be healed. In these circumstances, the Taliban renaissance and the increasingly apparent inadequacies of the Afghan security forces are likely to do further damage to Ghani’s leadership credentials.

The army by its retreat in the wake of the Kunduz attack has really shown that the government’s ability to enforce its writ has not been so effective. In fact, the leading positions in Kunduz were also a casualty of the power sharing deal that failed to administer from a sole command and control resulting in the falling of the city into the hands of longstanding-Taliban.

Tackling corruption was one of priority task for the NUG in order to earn public support and improve the chances of obtaining further international assistance, but this too has gone nowhere.

In order to put an end to the currently faced challenges -security, battling corruption and establishing good governance- I personally suggest the US should reconsider and review the brokered deal between the two teams ending with elimination of CEO position, as they have clogged the pipeline of administration more than making it functional. These will not only settle the quarrels and struggle for power, but this will also allow the elected President to issue his orders and approvals for merit based assignments for key officials in order to maintain good governance.

The President will be able to make decisions on his own consulting with team for economic initiatives and institutional reforms. This means that a number of structural obstacles in the agreement must be overcome and Afghan elites need to foster greater cooperation to begin the actual process of governing.

Under the constitution, the President is the head of state and government; it is the President who leads the cabinet. Power-sharing arrangements do not have a good-track record in Afghanistan’s recent history. One of the main factors in their failure has been the emergence of powerful patronage networks generated by decades of war and the involvement of outside supporters. These centers of authority disrupted the traditional conflict resolution mechanisms that the government formerly exercised, as well as the effectiveness of traditional informal authorities, including tribes, clergy, and tribal jirgas.

Given the failed experience of the past, what are the prospects for the current Afghan coalition to function effectively? Although political fragmentation and ethnic division continue to strongly influence domestic politics in Afghanistan, there are many compelling reasons for the government to mobilize to achieve national goals. The majority of international forces are leaving and future external financial and military assistance will hinge on Afghanistan’s commitment.

*Attaullah Waziri is the Director of Waziri Human Development Organization, Afghanistan. He can be reached at: editor@spsindia.in