At least seven people were killed in a Islamic State-claimed suicide car bomb attack outside the residence of embattled Yemeni President Abd Rabbuh Mansour Hadi in the southern city of Aden on Thursday, Reuters reported local officials and eyewitnesses as saying.

“A suicide car bomb targeted a security checkpoint about 500 meters from the Maashiq palace,” an official told Reuters over the phone.

“Seven people were killed and 10 were wounded. The majority of the casualties are civilians,” adding that President Hadi was not inside the building at the time of the attack.

The Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for the attack in an online statment. Similar incidents at the hands of Islamic State militants have been on the rise as the group steps up operations in the war-torn country.

Original article

By Rashid Hassan

The cold weather which resumed in Saudi Arabia’s capital this week after a long spell of relatively warm weather will continue next week with cloudy skies and light rain.

The General Presidency of Meteorology and Environment (PME) has forecast sandstorms whipped by cold winds blowing at high speed and light rain during the next 48 hours in the central and eastern regions.

Strong northwesterly winds were recorded at 27km per hour on Thursday.

The minimum temperature dropped to single digit with the mercury plummeting to 2°C on Thursday. The PME predicted it will go down to 1°C on Friday and -1°C on Saturday, the lowest during this winter season so far.

Riyadh residents were once again seen wearing warm clothes after a relative warm weather for a week.

The weather is expected to improve Monday onward.

The Civil Defense has urged city’s residents to follow preventive measures to protect themselves from cold and flu.

The worst worries of a child’s school day should be homework. Maybe a lost book, or an argument with a friend. No child’s walk to school should routinely involve armed soldiers and fear of sometimes being chased and assaulted by angry adults. But for the Palestinian children who live with their families in the small rural villages that make up the South Hebron Hills, this is how the school day begins. Illegal settlements and outposts isolate and separate their villages and soldiers are a constant in their lives.

Once, the trip from the tiny hamlet of Tuba to the school in the village of Tuwani was a calm and beautiful walk along a quiet road connecting the two villages. During the l980s Israeli settlers built a settlement on privately owned Palestinian land, which had been used to graze sheep and goats. Following construction of the settlement, the settlers established an illegal outpost. Now, industrial chicken barns sit astride the road that once served children walking to school, farmers taking livestock to town, and families traveling to Tuwani, or the larger town of Yatta for health care, shopping, and higher education.

Between the settlement and the outpost, what remains of the road is closed to Palestinians. With one exception, – children walk behind an Israeli military jeep to reach their school. Their parents are not allowed to walk with them.

The twenty or so children who make this trip start their school day in an unprotected field, anxiously waiting for the Israeli soldiers who will oversee their walk to school. Villagers had built shelters in which the children could await the soldiers, but Israeli authorities have dismantled every shelter. If it is raining, the children get soaked. Some days the soldiers are the same soldiers who chased or arrested shepherds the day before – shepherds who may be the brothers or fathers of these children. Some days the soldiers are late, leaving the group of children waiting, vulnerable to attack and within easy reach of the outpost. Some days the military escort does not arrive at all, and the children make the trip to school with international volunteers along a longer path, which also lies alongside the settlement.

About 1,000 people live in the neighboring villages, an estimated half of whom are children. Nevertheless, because the villages lie inside of Israeli Firing Zone 918, the military uses the land for military training.

Amazingly, despite all of this, it is almost unheard of for children to miss a day of school. Parents are determined that their children will be educated. When I began volunteering in Tuwani, the school reached only to third grade. Now thanks to the community’s determination to provide their children with education, students can complete high school in the village, and although facing a continued threat of demolition by Israeli military bulldozers, villagers have built and staffed primary schools for children who live in 8 nearby villages.

This is what nonviolent resistance to military occupation looks like.

I’m grateful that I can spend a portion of this year in Palestine. For many years children in these villages have taught me about nonviolence. Sometimes, the presence of international human rights workers holding cameras has some small positive effect on their days.

U.S. people bear some responsibility for the interruption of their childhoods. The U. S. subsidizes about 25% of Israel’s military budget, at a cost to U.S. taxpayers conservatively estimated at $3.1 billion a year.

I’m working with the Italian organization Operation Dove.

They support Palestinians who resist the Israeli occupation, standing with families in their commitment to remain on their land. This includes accompanying school children and farm families as they walk to school, graze their animals and tend their crops. Operation Dove helps document the harassment, intimidation, arrests, detentions, home demolitions, checkpoints, road closures, military training exercises, and settler attacks. Villagers also report to Operation Dove when they endure theft and when their crops and property are destroyed.

Protective presence provided by activists is not a large-scale solution to the violence that intrudes into childrens’ lives in Palestine. But many years of visits with these families persuades me that it’s important and necessary to support and participate in the villagers’ nonviolent efforts. Families that confront militarism and occupation help us move beyond our addiction to militarism and violence.

The children I met early on are grown now. Some have gone on to college, and some have families of their own.

These young people have every reason to be angry. Their childhoods included fear, intimidation, demolitions, arrests and isolation. But they have also grown up witnessing their community’s steadfast commitment to nonviolently resist injustice. Their families have supported them well, including them in the community’s struggle for dignity.

Against all odds they are growing up with humor and tenacity instead of anger and bitterness. They are living proof to the rest of us that love wins.

To read more about Operation Dove’s work in the South Hebron Hills, visit http://www.operazionecolomba.it/togetherattuwani

*Cassandra Dixon lives at Mary House of Hospitality, a small catholic worker house which offers hospitality to families visiting the federal prison at Oxford, WI, and works as a carpenter in Madison.

Around 10% of UK primary care patients prescribed antidepressants for depression or anxiety have undiagnosed bipolar disorder, a study has found.

Researchers from Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and the School of Medicine at the University of Leeds interviewed young adults from general practices in a study1 published in the British Journal of General Practice (BJGP).

Bipolar disorder often presents with depression and can be difficult to diagnose. People who have had periods of symptoms of high mood (such as increased energy and activity, increased confidence, over-talkativeness or being easily distracted) often don’t recognize these as significant and don’t tell their doctor about them.

This can lead to inappropriate treatment, such as the prescription of antidepressants without mood-stabilising medication, which might increase the risk of mood remaining unstable.

The study found that among people aged 16-40 years prescribed antidepressants for depression or anxiety, around 10% had unrecognized bipolar disorder. This was more common among younger patients and those who reported more severe episodes of depression. The study recommends that healthcare professionals should review the life histories of patients with anxiety or depression, particularly younger patients and those who are not doing well, for evidence of bipolar disorder.

Dr Tom Hughes, Consultant Psychiatrist at Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and the University of Leeds, said, “Bipolar disorder is a serious problem, with high levels of disability and the risk of suicide. When it is present in depressed patients it can easily be overlooked. Under-diagnosis and over-diagnosis of illnesses bring problems. Our General Practitioners are the greatest part of the best nationwide health service in the world. We hope this study will be of some help to them and to their patients in helping the better recognition of this important and disabling condition.”

Professor Roger Jones, Editor of the BJGP, said, “Dr Tom Hughes and his colleagues from Leeds and York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust recommend that general practitioners look carefully at patients with depression and anxiety disorders, particularly younger patients and those who are not doing well with their treatment. By reviewing life histories for evidence of symptoms this could provide people with better treatment and quicker recovery.”

This is the second in a series of three essays on the challenge of strategic foreign policy planning for the next administration. In Part One, Colin Dueck described problems with the national security decision-making process under the current president, then considered and rebutted the argument that any sort of strategy in US foreign policy is impossible. Here in Part Two, Dueck outlines the uses of strategic planning, and put forward specific recommendations for an improved decision-making process. In Part Three, Dueck will offer some guidelines for the substance of an alternate US strategic direction.

By Colin Dueck*

On January 20, 2017, the next American president will inherit a powerful array of international challenges, capabilities, and opportunities. Apart from the naturally current focus on the election season itself, the various presidential campaigns and their leading foreign policy advisers would benefit from thinking through how they plan to tackle these international security challenges, not only country by country, but overall. A genuinely prudent US foreign policy strategy, starting in 2017, would involve a shift toward a different presidential decision-making style along with a shift in overall direction. In terms of decision-making style, if a president wanted to impose greater order and coherence on US foreign policy strategy, it would certainly be possible to do so. Based on both recent and historical experience, a variety of instruments might be developed. These are laid out in the essay below. In truth, the precise organizational flowchart adopted is less important than the fact of genuine interest and trust from the top down. No formal arrangement for strategic planning will avail if it does not fit the personality of the president, or if it does not have his confidence. On the other hand, any one of several mechanisms could help considerably if a president decided to get serious about conceiving, developing and imposing a successful strategy on US foreign and security policies. Since these are literally matters of life and death, getting serious would seem appropriate.

The Uses of Strategic Planning

Crushing time constraints on top US foreign policy officials these days leave precious few moments to think strategically. In his memoir, George Shultz wrote that he had his own private routine for strategic planning, first developed as Secretary of Labor, and then used as Secretary of State:

In any day, or certainly any week, I would block out periods of time when nothing was scheduled and I wasn’t going to deal with things in my “in” box. I was going to sit with a piece of paper and think ahead about key problems, ways of getting at them, what I wanted to work on, and what I wanted to cause others to work on. This was my own personal version of policy planning.^[1]

A good model for any cabinet official, or indeed any president. And proper staffing arrangements can help. Dean Acheson records that when George Marshall established a policy planning staff at the State Department in 1947, he intended it:

To look ahead, not into the distant future, but beyond the vision of the operating officers caught in the smoke and crises of current battles; far enough ahead to see the emerging forms of things to come and outline what should be done to meet or anticipate them.^[2]

Or in Marshall’s own characteristically trenchant instructions: “avoid trivia.”^[3]

A coherent strategic planning process can assist the president and his leading foreign policy advisers in several ways. Aaron Friedberg suggests four.^[4] First, it can help them to consider and develop alternative strategies and courses of action in a systematic fashion, weighing explicitly the costs and benefits of each. Second, it can help policymakers to assess current strategies, including whether existing policies are actually working, along with recommended adjustments if they are not. Third, it can help them to identify some possible high-impact future contingencies, including recommended policy responses should these contingencies occur. Fourth, it can help them to recognize key long-term trends or emerging issues of potential significance for ongoing policy, and think through the potential implications.

In order to be genuinely strategic, all such planning must necessarily factor in the current and possible future reactions and responses of international adversaries, along with possible US counter-reactions and adjustments. There is no pretense here that any such ‘plans’ can be carried out to the letter operationally. Indeed the failure to adapt day-to-day to international events would itself be un-strategic. Yet there is ample evidence to indicate that a more rational strategic planning process both can and could contribute to an improvement in the quality of US foreign policy decision-making. Dwight Eisenhower himself suggested, based upon his own considerable experience, that while plans necessarily change, the process of strategic planning is indispensable, because it helps decision-makers better respond to actual events.^[5]

One might assume that given the resources and expertise available to the federal government, this kind of planning is already done. Yet all too often it isn’t, at least not in a coordinated and impactful manner. As Friedberg notes, the consequences in such cases have frequently been misallocated resources, suboptimal policies, duplication of effort, lost opportunities, costly improvisation, and even catastrophic failure. Significant improvements to the National Security Council (NSC) decision-making process are possible. Here are six specific recommendations:^[6]

• Develop and execute a meaningful national security strategy early on.
• Restore a proper balance of responsibilities between the NSC and line departments and agencies.
• Appoint a strong national security advisor to play the role of genuine honest broker, policy entrepreneur, and presidential agent.
• Appoint and empower a strategic planning directorate on the NSC staff.
• Create an effective strategic planning board.
• Learn from private sector experience.

1. Develop and execute a meaningful national security strategy early on.

Ever since the Goldwater-Nichols Act of 1986, presidents have produced a public national security strategy roughly every four years. A common criticism of these types of documents is that they rationalize existing policies more than guide them.^[7] Certainly this would seem to be the case with the 2015 National Security Strategy (NSS), which calls for “strategic patience” in allowing existing policies to work, reveals limited conceptual learning since 2009, and seems oddly disconnected from pressing challenges in numerous regions overseas.^[8] To be fair, there is a persistent problem in terms of the timing of these quadrennial statements. Such documents can take months or even years to produce, and in the meantime, US officials in relevant departments and agencies must act upon events and implement what they understand to be the president’s policy.^[9] Still, abolishing a national security strategy of any kind would be unlikely to improve the quality of US foreign policy. A better course would be to take it seriously.

Part of the dilemma lies in formulating and implementing a proper national security strategy when that strategy is required to be public.^[10] Critics such as David Edelstein and Ronald Krebs suggest in their recent Foreign Affairs article that what’s needed in US security strategy is “meaningful transparency” and “more regular venues for officials to articulate the logic behind policy.”^[11] This is a strange conclusion to draw in the age of Julian Assange and Bradley/Chelsea Manning. By any reasonable comparative or historical standard, American foreign policy is formed, debated, and then regularly leaked in a way that is astonishingly public. How is the United States supposed to compete with serious adversaries internationally, if its every thought and move is deliberately signaled to these same adversaries ahead of time? The debate over US foreign policy already too often resembles a circus. What’s needed is not an even bigger carnival tent, but some sort of rational process whereby a popularly elected president can formulate a coherent American security strategy with fair expectation of discretion.^[12]

As Paul Lettow and Thomas Mahnken have suggested, the example of the Reagan administration is useful here.^[13] Early in his presidency, and even prior to entering the White House, Ronald Reagan developed a conceptual framework for pressuring and weakening the Soviet bloc worldwide through a variety of political, military, economic, technological, ideological, and diplomatic tools. The details of this strategy didn’t come together all at once, and its precise implementation was naturally the subject of serious internal bureaucratic debate once he was in office. But documentary evidence clearly indicates that Reagan had a distinct, self-conscious approach for competing with the Soviet Union relentlessly — and the development and execution of a classified national security strategy early on was crucial to that effort.^[14] The president’s National Security Decision Directive 32 (NSDD-32) from May 1982, entitled US National Security Strategy, declared the administration’s aim was “to contain and reverse the expansion of Soviet control and military presence throughout the world,” to “weaken the Soviet alliance system by forcing the USSR to bear the burden of its economic shortcomings, and to encourage long-term liberalizing and nationalist tendencies within the Soviet Union and allied countries.”^[15] In order to produce this document, Reagan’s National Security Advisor and NSC staff led an extensive, rigorous, classified interagency planning effort that helped guide the administration’s policy successfully over the course of two terms. Despite hostile caricatures of Reagan at the time, the president was personally invested in this process – generally businesslike, diligent, and in charge of the key decisions. Further presidential strategy directives flowed from NSDD-32, laying out policies for specific regional and functional issues with appropriate flexibility. These directives were then sent out to the relevant departments and agencies to be implemented – an expectation that was enforced by the White House.^[16]

The next president should follow Reagan’s example, and develop a classified national security strategy early in his administration to help guide a successful foreign policy. He can then decide how much to make public, in order to build support from allies, Congress, and public opinion. At the very least, a classified annex to a public document could help to ensure the kind of frank internal discussion and direction necessary for genuine strategic analysis. Streams of classified papers can also be commissioned to flow from such a document.

These strategy documents are valuable mainly and only insofar as they constitute a relatively brief, crisp, timely encapsulation and description of the president’s aims. The current interagency paper churn should therefore be reformed and simplified in that direction, in cooperation with Congress.^[17] It might even be worth considering short annual white papers with classified annexes as a substitute for the current variety of strategy reports, a few of which – like the Quadrennial Defense Review – are truly gargantuan exercises. The important thing for the next president is to have some kind of early, streamlined opportunity for genuine strategic planning, in whatever precise form that takes. As Jordan Tama argues in a recent issue of Political Science Quarterly:

The American public would probably be better served by a system wherein the White House directs a comprehensive interagency national security planning process at the outset of an administration that generates both the public NSS and classified guidance regarding priorities and key policies, to be followed by more narrow reviews by individual agencies aimed at implementing the output of the interagency process – with the precise timeline for those follow-on reviews set by the White House. Limiting the scope of the agency reviews to implementation of the interagency review would also reduce the number of person-hours spent on the agency reviews.^[18]

A sensible, reformed national security strategy process can be used to drive interagency planning and set the agenda so that the United States takes the initiative internationally, rather than constantly allowing its adversaries to do so. Any such strategy released by the White House does have the great advantage that by definition it is an authoritative description of the president’s views. This forces officials at high levels to think about the president’s priorities and worldview in a systematic way, and to confront tensions or contradictions within existing US policies.^[19] The response to valid criticisms of the current NSS process is therefore to give it real impact: treat it as an opening opportunity for an administration-wide exercise in basic strategic thought. This can be a chance for incoming officials to think through fundamental issues, including long-term trends and challenges; establish some hierarchy of goals, priorities, and threats; consider how the policy pieces fit together; and start building internal consensus and cohesion, by giving everyone their say upfront. The beginning of a new administration is exactly the right time to do this. For all of these reasons, the prompt completion of a serious national security strategy should be a top priority for the next president.^[20]

2. Restore a proper balance of responsibilities between the NSC and line departments and agencies.

The Obama White House mimics the hyper-centralization of the Nixon-Kissinger foreign policy team without their geopolitical aptitude. The unfortunate result has been NSC micromanagement and indecision simultaneously.^[21] The execution of policy should be treated as the province of agencies and departments that actually have their hands on the tools of implementation. The proper role of the National Security Advisor and their staff is to manage the interagency process and arm the president for policy engagement – to monitor what is going on inside government, generate ideas for presidential initiatives, and provide the president with the wherewithal to make decisions and conduct foreign policy successfully.^[22] The overarching size of the NSC staff should therefore be reduced from its current excess level. It should be a relatively flat, streamlined, and elite group, with the appropriate mix of political appointees and career detailees in regional and functional directorates. They should each be able to handle multiple topics, and to work together with collegiality and discretion. Senior positions should have some prior stature in the policy world. They should furthermore have some incoming awareness of the specific instruments available to help develop and implement the president’s policies.

NSC staff can help to improve the quality of information search. Like the National Security Advisor, they can play the role of honest broker, and also an entrepreneurial role that respects the prerogatives of line departments and agencies while ensuring the president’s options are not limited to those favored by the interagency. NSC staff should ensure that interagency perspectives are included in the policy development process. They should further ensure that deputies and principals committee meetings do not consume too much valuable interagency time. Departments and agencies should, in turn, send appropriately senior representatives to participate in NSC meetings, and then faithfully implement the president’s policies once decided. This would be the implicit struck bargain of a functional interagency process headed by the NSC.^[23]

Overall, the next administration should restore a proper balance of responsibilities between NSC staff on the one hand, and the various departments and agencies on the other. NSC staff should bring up to the deputy level those issues — and only those issues — requiring senior-level attention.^[24] They should reach out and build informal relationships with staff across the various agencies who may not frequent interagency meetings, but are running critical initiatives and implementing policies within the bureaucracy.^[25] As stated by Peter Feaver and William Inboden, both of whom worked in strategic planning for the White House from 2005 to 2007, the NSC needs to “listen more and meet less.”^[26] It is perfectly reasonable for the president to appoint and empower people not only at the cabinet level, but inside departments and agencies, who understand his priorities and are able to represent them effectively.^[27] This is doubly true for NSC staff, who are after all a centripetal force in US national security policy.^[28] Ideally they can provide coordination, breadth, coherence, integration, and proximity to political authority in a way that regular bureaucratic settings do not.^[29] But this is no reason to disdain career civil servants. On the contrary, it is those with decades of practical experience in the career military, intelligence, and diplomatic services that bring situational awareness and case-specific understandings indispensable to any successful foreign policy strategy. The same might be said of political appointees working at the head of line departments and agencies; NSC staff need not duplicate their work. There are already thousands of people in government whose job it is to carry out and implement US foreign policy. When it comes to policy execution, NSC staff should work to ensure implementation on a few key issues of high priority to the president – and then get out of the way.

3. Appoint a strong national security advisor to play the role of genuine honest broker, policy entrepreneur, and presidential agent.

Among the principal players in the foreign policy process, only the National Security Advisor can represent the president’s distinct overarching perspective, separate from specific departmental responsibilities. In order to be fully effective however, this official must play several roles simultaneously. This is difficult, not impossible. Stephen Hadley for example was able to do so as National Security Advisor for President George W. Bush during the late 2006 Iraq war strategy review.^[30] First, the president needs a National Security Advisor to be an honest broker. An honest broker probes existing assumptions, considers alternative policy directions, weighs the costs and benefits of each possible course, and ensures that all relevant bureaucratic actors receive a fair hearing. More than one National Security Advisor has actually done this, and in doing so improved the quality of the deliberative process. No other cabinet official is adequately placed to perform this role.^[31] Second, a National Security Advisor must be an effective agent of the president. In other words, they must act upon the president’s evident concerns and priorities, to ensure those priorities are being followed. The National Security Advisor’s authority derives precisely from the fact that they act on behalf of the president and are understood to do so. Any conception of the office detached from that foundation will not allow it to have much practical influence over the decision-making process. Third, a National Security Advisor can and should act as policy entrepreneur from time to time. Policy entrepreneurs connect viable alternative solutions, to pressing problems, to political conditions.^[32] This need not contradict the role of honest broker if handled with integrity. The key is for the National Security Advisor to manage the process scrupulously, so all cabinet officials can be confident their views are being honestly represented to the president and vice-versa.^[33] Procedural propriety does not require National Security Advisors to be completely indifferent to the substantive merit of policy alternatives, nor to be silent when asked for their personal views by the commander-in-chief. Only by joining the role of honest broker to that of policy entrepreneur, when necessary, can the National Security Advisor be an effective agent of the president. Academic analyses tend to appreciate the first role, while underestimating the significance of the other two.

Needless to say, any incoming National Security Advisor should possess serious prior foreign or defense policy experience within the executive branch. What is the best historical model for this complex, vital office? Henry Kissinger is of course the most famously influential National Security Advisor in American history, and in that capacity he centralized the foreign policy process tightly inside the White House with President Nixon’s full support.^[34] Kissinger was, unusually, both a brilliant conceptualizer and a canny implementer of an innovative foreign policy agenda. In my view the Nixon-Kissinger innovations were on the whole productive for American interests, and largely necessary at the time. But Kissinger’s sidelining of the State Department during Nixon’s first term – with the president’s approval – cannot be a model for the future. Indeed Kissinger himself later admitted as much, after serving at Foggy Bottom: a president must have confidence in his Secretary of State, and should make that appointment accordingly.^[35] In the words of the late Peter Rodman, who served every Republican president since Nixon, the purpose of a National Security Advisor is not to substitute for a weak Secretary of State, but among other things to ensure presidential control of a strong Secretary of State.^[36] This is exactly the role Brent Scowcroft played for President George H.W. Bush, in relation to Secretary of State James Baker, and organizationally it worked well. Scowcroft operated as a truly scrupulous honest broker. Yet any notion that he did only this is mistaken. As historian Bartholomew Sparrow makes clear in a recent biography, Scowcroft was also the president’s strong right arm, and an influential voice on behalf of specific foreign policy choices more than once.^[37] He was in fact honest broker, occasional policy entrepreneur, and presidential agent simultaneously. For all of these reasons, it is Scowcroft rather than Kissinger who provides the best model for this office looking ahead.

4. Appoint and empower a strategic planning directorate on the NSC staff.

The overall size of the NSC staff should be reduced from its current numbers. Within the area of strategic planning however, there would be little gained and potentially much lost by further decimating any presidential capacity for overall foreign policy planning. Only presidents have the authority to cut across interagency tensions and interests. Yet strategic planning cells for American foreign policy have had a precarious and uncertain history in the White House. The result has been a persistent gap in the president’s institutionalized ability to oversee coherent foreign policy and security strategies. This gap can be addressed in part by establishing a properly staffed and empowered strategic planning directorate on the staff of the NSC.

An effective strategic planning directorate inside the White House can perform several useful tasks for the National Security Advisor, and consequently for the President:^[38]

• Lead author the next National Security Strategy (NSS) in consultation with equivalent staff at the relevant departments and agencies.
• Represent the National Security Advisor on any interagency strategic planning board or working group.
• Explicitly weigh the costs and benefits of alternative US foreign policy strategies in specific regional and functional cases.
• Assess current strategies and recommend needed adjustments.
• Conduct scenario and contingency planning.
• Author retrospective studies with current policy implications.
• Identify key long-term international trends and relevant emerging issues.
• Commission external studies relating to all of the above.
• Assist with speechwriting for the National Security Advisor, the President, and other top officials.
• Meet with planning counterparts in allied governments.
• Help author strategy documents apart from the NSS.
• Act as an internal foreign policy think-tank for the White House.
• Reach out to members of Congress from both parties along with outside experts in order to gain useful advice, identify useful sounding boards, explain the administration’s policies and build support for them.

Such a planning cell would include a senior director, along with a number of directors, counselors, advisers, and/or assistants, on par with other functional and regional NSC directorates. In terms of numbers and expense, the planning directorate would not have to be very large. Access to the National Security Advisor and quality of personnel would be more important than sheer numbers. Planning staff would need to have a demonstrated ability to provide added value, to defer credit, and to work collegially with line directorates in order to earn their trust.^[39] But such a planning directorate would work best if supplemented by a sister cell charged with overseeing implementation and execution, along with at least one staff member responsible for working directly with the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The planning directorate would also be well advised to work closely with other officials in the Executive Office of the President oriented toward top presidential priorities, and to remember that in a successful administration the White House functions as a team.

An effective NSC planning directorate could play a useful role in helping to coordinate strategic and policy planning cells at the various departments and agencies. This in turn could encourage more coherent presidential foreign policy strategies. But of course such a directorate will only work if the principal decision-makers — particularly the President and his National Security Advisor — are truly interested in using it to secure better policy outcomes. According to Rosa Brooks, who worked in the Department of Defense from 2009 to 2011, “if President Obama lacks a clear strategic foreign policy vision, it’s partly because the strategic planning shops within the White House’s National Security Staff…have been marginalized and disempowered.”^[40] Shawn Brimley of the Center for a New American Security, having directed strategic planning efforts on Obama’s NSC staff, is more diplomatic, but makes an important point about the centrality of command climate:

In general, greater strategic thinking and planning often comes down to greater intentionality and intellectual honesty about decision-making….Being strategic at the NSC is as much a mindset and managerial demand signal as it is a set of documents. The degree to which the NSC makes time for strategic deliberations versus day-to-day crisis management rests largely with the people in the top leadership positions and the messages they send to staff.^[41]

Again: if principal US foreign policy decision-makers are not interested in either acting or thinking strategically, then it certainly will not happen.

5. Create an effective strategic planning board.

On organizational matters related to strategic planning, Dwight Eisenhower provides a leadership model worth emulating in certain significant ways. Upon becoming president, Eisenhower decided it was ”inconceivable…that the work of the White House could not be better systematized.”^[42] He decided to institute a strategic planning board to generate and debate policy recommendations for consideration by the NSC. The board was made up of top officials responsible for strategic policy planning from each of the relevant departments and agencies, including those related to foreign economic policy. The president himself considered it vital, and gave the board instructions to meet regularly in order to “supply a continuity of planning and thought.”^[43] The board’s function was to analyze trends, anticipate problems, consider alternative proposed solutions, and explicitly confront questions of ends and means through rigorous deliberation. It formed a mechanism by which the relevant experience and expertise of various departments and agencies were gathered and integrated effectively. In their policy papers, members of the board were not to split the difference between departmental positions, but if necessary “bring out conflicts,” and see themselves as part of a corporate body whose responsibilities were to the president.^[44] Each member had an “unbreakable engagement” to brief one principal decision-maker before every NSC meeting, and to lay out key differences in order to help structure top-level deliberations.^[45] The president expected his cabinet officials to arrive at NSC meetings properly briefed and ready to discuss planning board options and recommendations. The board’s value to the principals was not in specific operational blueprints, since Eisenhower understood very well the day-to-day need for flexibility, but rather in “living with the problem before it becomes acute.”^[46] Indeed this was the essence of Eisenhower’s view regarding the value of strategic planning.  Responsibility for execution was delegated to the relevant agencies, but Ike created and used an operations coordinating board to help implement approved policies.

Ike’s successor, John F. Kennedy, abolished the strategic planning coordination board in favor of a more freewheeling approach. Certainly this suited Kennedy’s rather dismissive attitude toward his predecessor, and it also suited conventional academic wisdom at the time, but the United States paid a price for it in the loss of a sensible planning mechanism. Eisenhower knew what he was doing. He used a strong staff system to inform lively, thorough debate in regular meetings with top advisers, explicitly weighing the costs and benefits of various policy options while maintaining firm control of the entire process.^[47] As President Carter’s national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski noted years later, ever since the abolition of Ike’s strategic planning board, there has never really been a reliable substitute in terms of institutional capacity.^[48] Numerous administrations have been forced to learn this through painful experience. President George W. Bush during his final months in office established a national security policy planning committee, to institutionalize regular meetings between strategic policy planners from various departments and agencies. Any new administration would do well to create and rely upon something like this from the very beginning, in a meaningful way.

The next president should create and empower a strategic planning coordination board to link the various policy planning cells across the executive branch and connect them to the NSC. The pieces are already in place at strategic and policy planning offices inside the various agencies and departments, but they rarely integrate effectively. A true planning board, or at the very least some sort of robust interagency working group, would help to address that problem. Such a group or board could assist the president and his leading advisers in bringing greater coherence to US foreign policy. Because of changes since Eisenhower’s day, its recommendations would probably go to the NSC deputies committee for subsequent consideration by the principals. Indeed it might be worth appointing an experienced deputy national security advisor, distinct from operations, specifically to oversee strategic planning.^[49] Presidents further need to be well advised as to how economic and commercial considerations impact national security and vice-versa. Any interagency planning board should therefore integrate economic considerations into US national security strategy through formal input and representation from the departments of Treasury, Commerce, and Agriculture. This would have the effect of usefully connecting the work of the NSC with that of the National Economic Council.^[50] The planning board should be complemented by an interagency operations or implementation group to ensure that strategies are actually executed successfully. Admittedly this will all require some political lift on the president’s part. But it would help to reverse America’s current strategic dysfunction.

6. Learn from private sector experience.

The United States has the richest, most dynamic civil society in the world. It’s clear the federal government could do a better job tapping into that vast private expertise in specific areas like foreign aid and democracy promotion. Strategic planning in foreign policy benefits from the input and advice of think-tanks, NGOs, consultants, and outside experts who possess time, insight, and objectivity.^[51] Yet this is not the limit of what can be learned from private sector experience.

Over the years, many leading companies have utilized internal strategic planning processes in an attempt to foster innovation and productivity. And what they have learnt is extremely relevant to the concept of strategic planning. They have long since learnt that strategy cannot realistically be detached from operations. To some extent, it emerges as a pattern from action, decision, learning, and adaptation, whether or not entirely preplanned. The formulation of strategy thus walks on two legs, one deliberate, and the other emergent.^[52] Indeed these private sector lessons are in keeping with some of the most cutting-edge research in political science on how American grand strategy is really made.^[53] As Andrew Erdmann points out in a very useful essay on the subject, the implications for strategic planning are profound. The chief executive must own the strategy; it cannot be outsourced. This actually requires a serious attention to process. Those who would implement any strategy must be involved in developing it, not only to bring ownership, but crucial situational awareness and understanding. The purpose of strategic planning is therefore not so much to fabricate plans, as to help prepare policymakers to make better decisions and then execute them when the opportunity arises. This was precisely Eisenhower’s own insight. In the end, strategic planning cells do not literally make strategy; they help those who do.^[54]

Presidential Leadership and the Necessity of Choice

This brings us back to the centrality of presidential leadership in the NSC system and in any US foreign policy strategy. Informally, a great deal depends upon the personal qualities of the president and his leading advisers, including whether they are compatible and trust one another. No organizational structure can substitute for real presidential engagement. No foreign policy strategy is credible if not backed up by him. Presidential authority provides democratic legitimacy and accountability to the entire process. It also provides executive direction. When presidents don’t engage personally, forcefully, and consistently, they frequently lose control. Attempts at, or assumptions of bureaucratic consensus then turn out to be a recipe for deadlock and incoherence.

Presidents must face up to the fact that difficult tradeoffs in US foreign policy are inevitable. There are often serious risks in trying to split the difference between sharply opposing policy positions. If there is no bureaucratic consensus on a given leading issue, then pushing departments and agencies to compromise may be a real abdication of responsibility.^[55] The presentation of real choices to the chief executive is central to his authority. A president ought to be made aware of his options. Then it is up to him to decide. Strategic planning can help.

About the author:
*Colin Dueck is an associate professor in the School of Policy, Government, and International Affairs at George Mason University and Senior Fellow of the Foreign Policy Research Institute. Portions of this essay are drawn from his book The Obama Doctrine: American Grand Strategy Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015).

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] George Shultz, Turmoil and Triumph: My Years as Secretary of State (New York: Scribner, 1993), 32.

Most of Europe has experienced strong summer warming over the course of the past several decades, accompanied by severe heat waves in 2003, 2010 and 2015. New research now puts the current warmth in a 2100-year historical context using tree-ring information and historical documentary evidence to derive a new European summer temperature reconstruction.

The work was published in the journal of Environmental Research Letters by a group of 45 scientists from 13 countries.

Warm summers were experienced during Roman times, up to the 3rd century, followed by generally cooler conditions from the 4th to the 7th centuries. A generally warm medieval period was followed by a mostly cold Little Ice Age from the 14th to the 19th centuries. The pronounced warming early in the 20th century and in recent decades is well captured by the tree-ring data and historical evidence on which the new reconstruction is based.

The evidence suggests that past natural changes in summer temperature are larger than previously thought, suggesting that climate models may underestimate the full range of future extreme events, including heat waves. This past variability has been associated with large volcanic eruptions and changes in the amount of energy received from the sun.

The new research finding that temperatures over the past 30 years lie outside the range of these natural variations supports the conclusions reached by the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that recent warming is mainly caused by anthropogenic activity.

“We now have a detailed picture of how summer temperatures have changed over Europe for more than two thousand years and we can use that to test the climate models that are used to predict the impacts of future global warming,” said the coordinator of the study, Professor Jürg Luterbacher from the University of Giessen in Germany.

India could save $80 billion annually if oil prices stay at the current 12-year low. Policy-makers must use this opportunity to lock-in energy prices for the long-term. Financial markets, through futures and options, offer a way to make these savings permanent, and the Ministry of Finance must formulate ground rules for hedging.

By Amit Bhandari*

In the first half of January 2016, the price of crude oil fell to a 12-year low of below $30 per barrel.[1] This is a windfall for India, which imported 1,086 million barrels of crude oil and petroleum products in FY15.[2] If the current prices sustain, India will save close to $80 billion from its import bill, annually. This has benefited consumers, who are paying less for petrol and diesel, as well as the government, which gave almost $15 billion in fuel subsidy during FY14.[3]

By Niccolò Beduschi*

The United Nations, turning 70, has increasingly failed to maintain international peace and security. Under the watch of the UN’s accountable organ, the UN Security Council (UNSC), the world has witnessed more than enough cases of the body’s systematic failure to keep peace.1 The 1994 Rwanda genocide, for example, resulted in the massacre of some 800,000 Tutsi and moderate Hutu, by members of the Hutu majority; as many as three-quarters of the Tutsi populations were wiped out in the carnage.2 A UN Peace keeping mission was, in fact, in place in the African country since October 1993. It was helpless, however, and its limited mandate was merely renewed in the midst of the crisis in April 1994 and finally, reinforced in May when most of the atrocities have already been committed.3

The genocide would also lead to the Great Lakes refugee crisis, which counts amongst the causes of the First Congo War as militias among the 1.5 million people that were displaced in the then Zaire began launching attacks against the local government.4 This case may be the best example of the UNSC’s inability to respond to a domestic crisis which had international repercussions not because of active opposition from UN members, but rather for their passivity and unwillingness to engage. The most telling fact may be that, at the time of the crisis, Rwanda was seated as a non-permanent member to the UNSC, represented by the very government that was perpetuating the massacre, while the neighbours of Rwanda, who were affected the worst, were not represented in the Council.5

The ongoing crisis in Syria, where efforts to end the tragic events through the UN have failed, accounts for more than 200,000 casualties over the four and a half years of the crisis.6 Since 2011, four UNSC resolutions on Syria have been vetoed by permanent members, Russia and China, both of which are thousands of kilometers away from the conflict area. Such is a clear demonstration of how the clout of a few privileged actors affects the crisis resolution process in the UN.7

On average, the number of resolutions passed by the UNSC per year has increased notably compared to the Cold War period.8 The incidence of vetoed proposals, meanwhile, has even relatively declined.9 However, it is important to stress the role played by self-censorship in the tabling of proposals at the UNSC, showing the huge hidden cost of this increasingly consensual system, and proving that the quantity of proposals does not necessarily translate to their quality. Evidence of the difficulty of achieving concrete results is the trend of member states bypassing the UNSC. In 2003, for example, the so- called ‘Coalition of the Willing’ invaded Iraq without explicit UN mandate.10 In 2014, perhaps unsurprisingly, Syria witnessed the Anglo, French, American and Russian interventions, among others, in its territory.11 Every such time that states themselvesand in particular, core UN membersseek to use force to settle a crisis, the UN system is shaken, and its legitimacy and legality, contested.

It is not within the scope of this research to elaborate on UN failures and make yet another case for the already universally recognised need for reforms in the UN system. This paper simply highlights the institutional rigidity, issues of representation, and the special status granted to the core members in the UNSC as detrimental factors at the root of the UN’s diverse failures in the maintenance of international security.

The world has changed in the last 70 years and so, too, should the UN. Membership, to begin with, has almost quadrupled since the UN’s inception, from 50 to 193 States. Further, new powers have emerged around the globe over these many decades, changing the geopolitical equilibrium and calling for a keen appreciation of the evolving landscapes. If the UN has to stand up to the new nature of conflicts, often domestic or transnational, and return to the heart of the multilateral system then new solutions are needed. In a historic session of the General Assembly in September 2015, nearly all the UN members agreed that over the following year they will negotiate a document that will call for reforming the Security Council.12 This year will thus prove crucial as it is also the year when a new Secretary General will be elected in the move forward in the long-drawn reform debate.

THE REFORM DEBATE: REPEATING OLD MISTAKES

The reform of the UNSC has been in the docket since the foundation of the UN, as proved by the presence in the Charter itself of a pledge to call a conference to review the Charter no later than ten years after its promulgation.13 In practice, the only reform of the UNSC that has taken place was in 1963, when the number of non-permanent members was merely increased from six to ten.14 A more comprehensive reform debate started only in 1991 with the Accra Declaration. This was adopted by the 103 nation-strong, non-aligned group, sparking a movement and various reactions during the 1990s and up to the present, where the pattern remains stubbornly the same: both Africa and Latin America still lack a permanent seat in the Council, Asia is underrepresented, while Europe is overrepresented.15

All the UNSC reform plans revolve around two concepts: membership and veto. Expanding the Security Council seems like one of the more reasonable ways to answer to critics of the body’s lack of representative character, but competition among countries to obtain a seat, the resistance by permanent members and difficulties in designing the new seats such as whether or not to make them permanent or to extend the veto power to new members has characterised the ongoing stalemate.

Among the latest and most significant reform plans is the document, In Larger Freedom, written in 2005 by then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan.16 Annan went on the record to state that access to the Council should be granted to those members who contribute the most to the United Nations financially, militarily and diplomatically, as well as countries more representative in the developing world, without impairing the effectiveness of the Council, while increasing its democratic and accountable nature.17

The question, as anticipated, is not limited to the expansion of the Council, but whether an extended Council should further extend, or eliminate, its veto privilege. Various scholars have suggested that the veto power is vital in the interest of the permanent members and that its removal or extension could undermine their participation in the UN or the survival of the UN itself.18

A problem with the current debate about expansion of the UNSC is that no matter how many new seats are created and in the best-case scenario it would amount to a total of 24 seats some countries are still going to be left out and not represented in the Council. This is a major issue, considering that a consistent number of countries, presently around 70, have never had a seat in the UNSC.19 If a good number of countries continues to be denied a voice, the non-representativeness of the Council will not be resolved and with it, a main reason for the UN’s failure: crises being overlooked because core members of the UNSC were simply not engaged enough. The countries more prone to crises, and their neighbours, are probably not the ones that contribute the most and therefore not the ones that would see themselves heard in the traditional reform plans. Another problem is that any expansion of the UNSC towards member states that represent the current main actors of the international realm only delays the resolution of the problem of representativeness. Indeed, as the world continues to change, the countries that contribute the most today may no longer be the powers of tomorrow. Once that day comes, even the new asset of the Council will appear once again outdated and see its authority diminished and challenged, exposing the world to other avoidable failures.

Further, any simple expansion, either in the membership or in the veto system, will first of all be contrasted by the still-excluded UN members and most importantly, extend the risk of deadlocks as reaching decisions will become exponentially more difficult. Finally, the reform debates do not answer the most fundamental hidden weakness of the UN: the absence of incentives to regional cooperation, because rogue states always manage to get shielded by veto-carrying members, usually distant and untouched by regional instability, and persist in their destabilising conduct as the world witnesses in Syria. The veto system has been devised to defend the interests of the core members of the UN, and as such remains the condition to safeguard for any reform plans. However, its use to project power around the globe is beyond its intended scope.

The present reform debate does not only fail to change the decision-making structures in the UNSC, and keep voiceless the dozens of the most critical countries; the debate also remains confined to a rigid institutional framework solution. The present highly legalised setting of the UNSC has guaranteed predictability in the processes which, though valuable, comes at the price of political flexibility in finding solutions to crises; moreover, member states shielded themselves from the responsibility to take action behind institutional rigidity.

A NEW ‘REGIONALIST’ SOLUTION

In light of the above debate it is necessary to strive for reforms that not only address these flaws in the structure, but also provide answers to real- world incentives and disincentives to which states actually respond. A solution may be the creation of a total of nine seats in the UNSC, each of them representing a group of states.

As geopolitics is a controversial science, any attempt to define a priori these groups would only provoke infinite objections. And while a regional configuration is expected to naturally emerge, each member state would be free to form or apply for the group which best represents it until the nine seats are filled. Indeed, the regional logic is not alien to the UN system that since July 2011 has provided that UN member states are voluntarily divided into five geopolitical regional groups and to ensure equitable geographical distribution of the representation in the UNSC.20

In a projection, the Big Five should be able to accommodate themselves at ease and without conflict in the different groups. Logically, given the choice of belonging to a group, the US and Russia, for instance, should be inclined to go in a group without the other. A possible configuration could see the US in a North America group, Russia in a Central Asia one, China in North East Asia and exceptionally UK and France, or Germany for that matter, should not have trouble co-existing in a Europe group. Other areas should please the parties in today’s debate around the UNSC: India could prevail in a South Asia grouping, Brazil in a Latin America one, and the African Union, the ASEAN and Arab League would likely see their regions awarded with one seat each thus completing the nine seats configuration.

Countries like Israel, Pakistan, Japan and other exceptions may not find themselves at ease with their ‘natural’ region or find themselves at the border between two, so countries will not only be able to select freely their group, but also to change their preference over time. This is consistent with the practices in the regional system already in place in the UN described earlier, as Israel, which was denied membership in the Asia Grouping due to refusal by the Arab League has resorted to participation in the Western Europe Grouping.21 A multi-annual transition is envisioned to discourage opportunistic behaviours as well as the requirement of permission to accede of the members of the new group to avoid disturbances. Countries that choose not to belong to any group will merely continue to be not represented in the UNSC. However, as countries have a choice they will also face the political weight of such decision, to justify domestically and internationally why, for instance, Japan would choose to be part of an America grouping. This should discourage, and reduce over time, the exceptions to the anticipated, but not mandatory, regional configurations.

The membership of the Council is exclusive to member states, thus individual countries, at least formally, will continue to chair the meetings. Still, each group in a self-rule exercise shall define the mechanisms that will result in the selection of the actual representative seating in the Council.22 In Europe, members may decide to be represented by the European Union, and could opt to select a small country, such as Luxembourg, to be the physical representative in the UNSC with a mixed diplomatic corps. Other regions, like Latin America for instance, could opt for a system of rotation, while others again could resolve to give the representation to the member with the greater economic, military or demographic mass. Presently, a main opposition force to a simple enlargement of the UNSC with the above mentioned ascending leading parties is represented by their very neighbours: for example, Pakistan opposes India, Germany is opposed by Italy, and Mexico opposes Brazil.23 These oppositions should be mitigated by the shared representation in the UNSC and by their freedom in selecting the common representative.

Furthermore, small and less wealthy nations in a bloc should not fear marginalisation, and should embrace their ability, before denied, to be represented in the Council with magnified capacities due to the information-and burden-sharing inside their bloc.

Another key aspect of the reform is related to decision-making in the UNSC. Current UN rules state that a majority of nine out of 15 is necessary to enforce resolutions, with the concurring votes of the permanent members. In the proposed plan, the majority should be of six out of nine, a slightly higher threshold than today’s, and with the possibility of veto only for the regional bloc which is the subject of the UNSC resolution. Therefore, the veto will still exist in its more genuine function of defence of oneself when directly threatened by other groups, and it will encourage states to cooperate with their neighbours.

In practical terms, through an amendment procedure (Art. 108) or a review procedure (Art. 109, with two-thirds favorable votes of the members of the General Assembly or of the review conference the Charter is amended, however, the ratification of the decision is required by the permanent members of the UNSC in order to have the adoption, as it has been done in the 1963 extension of the UNSC.24 This reform proposal would simply set a total of nine seats for the UNSC, each to be occupied by a country connected to one group to which UN members can apply.

As a transitory regime, UN members are given a specified set of time to freely populate the groups with at least three members, following which each group will freely proceed to set its own functioning rules, specifying those for accession and secession of UN member states, election and removal of the representative in the UNSC as well as the rules for internal arbitration and modification of these rules to be deposited in the UN Treaty Collection office, including an updated list of the members of the group in order to activate the connected seat. Further, as said earlier, it is set that the new UNSC adopts its decisions by a majority of six out of nine, including the concurring vote of the seat where the party or parties directly interested by the decision is/are grouped. Decisions can be temporarily suspended if the majority of one group presents a motion to the UNSC within 24 hours, to be expected in case the majority does not feel represented by the decision adopted by their representative in the UNSC. In this scenario the UNSC will re-take the same vote no later than 48 hours from their first vote, according the principle of urgency of the UNSC, during which the group, according to its own rules of procedure, may have had the chance to change its representative. Groups with less than three members are, with their corresponding seat in the UNSC, temporally deactivated, leaving their members free to apply to another group; the majority voting system is proportionally adjusted to reflect the new number of active seats in the UNSC, if only two seats are active the decision is to be taken by consensus. These latter provisions are aimed to avoid that one UN member state can take permanent control of one group/seat and to take into account the unlikely, but possible and even desirable, condition of increased harmony and reduced fragmentation in the international system.

AN ALTERNATIVE SYRIA

When looking at Syria as a case study, which is causing the present deadlock in the UNSC, it can be inferred that under the proposed system the deadlock would have been overcome and the crisis possibly even prevented. Countries under the present system seek, when the necessity arises, for patronage from one or more veto members of the UNSC. However, under the proposed reform the choice of field has to be made typically in advance and reflect stable conditions rather than a sudden crisis. Further, the choice is charged with regional political connotations which would discourage Syria, an Arab League member, to be part of distant groupings.

Therefore, at the outbreak of the crisis Syria would have likely been part of an Arab/NEMA grouping and therefore the only veto that could stop the UNSC from acting would have been the one of this very group. The actual development of events in the region, the position of the Arab League on the Assad regime, would suggest that such veto would have not been used.25 More interestingly, if the reform was in place, Syria would have been much more careful in upsetting its neighbours, because they would have been the only ones that could shield the country from international action, and because of their geographical proximity, the Syrian government would have preferred a course of action that would limit disturbance in the regions. Today, Syria does not have such positive incentives as it is able to count on the support of distantly placed allies which do not have to come to terms with the instability that it creates, for example with refugees. The case shows that this reform can correct a major dysfunction in the UNSC by putting in place a system that values regional relations and, therefore, stability.

However, intra-regional crises are not diminished by default, rather, external influence on such crisis is reduced as result of the monopoly of the veto power by the affected region itself. The reform only assigns responsibility to the members of a group by empowering them and removing external justification for inaction. The proposed reform leaves full margins of political manoeuvre as it is built on the principle of flexibility, which, in turn, makes predictions extremely difficult. Formally, there is no actual geographical regional tie for countries to group and Syria for instance could have chosen to be in a Russia grouping or in a group built on the very purpose to shield its members from any international intervention, maybe composed by the almost totality of the UN members as there is, again consciously, no provision for maximum size or balance between groups.

Further, as groups are given absolute freedom of self-rule, the group, for instance, in which Syria belongs could have opted for consensus decisions, in which case they would have to veto an international intervention in Syria. These are examples to show how reforms cannot solve problems that do not want to be solved by the international community. The UN, even under the proposed reform, will remain, as a condition for the very feasibility of the proposal, a system that cannot impose decisions against the direct interest of the core members. A reform can only remove institutional obstacles, allowing solutions to be foundand this potential gain should not be underestimated. Presently, countries can blame the UN system in the form of the Big Five, their own absence in the UNSC or the voting system for instance which are hard institutional limits. Shifting the crisis resolution process from legal to political, empowering countries to organise the system, and to update it in the course of time, brings political weight and responsibility on how the groups determine their composition, rule and finally act in the UNSC. Groupings, especially if made on a regional base which seems to be the more spontaneous and consistent method of members statescan bring further positive political incentives to crisis prevention and resolutions through multilateral dynamics. As radical as it may sounds, the reform is self-implementing and explainable in political science terms; offering a solution different from any in the current debate and the real potential for a new UN which might retake its position at the core of the international system.

CONCLUSION

Every year that passes by increases the pressure for reform of the UNSC as every other year where the status quo prevails, increases the risks of episodic and systematic failure of the UN to occur. Although this pressure and these tragic risks have not compelled the core UN members to act towards reform, it is more striking that the long- drawn reform debates have not yet matured to a point where real solutions have been proffered to address the underlying problems of the Council. The calls for more representativeness and the need for effectiveness, the calls for a more responsible use of the veto power and the need to guarantee the core UN members’ interests, are at the foundation of the reform project presented in this paper.

A total of nine seats in the UNSC should offer sufficient diversity to allocate numerous world powers without conflicting with each other’s space and the potential to introduce collective regional positive cooperation dynamics in the UN system. Every UN member, by being free to choose its own grouping and to change its preference over time, will be empowered by the access to the UNSC and by being given a responsibility towards all the members in its grouping. These co-members will be the ones expected to shield a state from unfavourable international action, with the use of a defensive veto. This is also instrumental for the present permanent members. The proposed mechanism is radical, political, and admittedly short of legal guarantees at the UN level, leaving member states to self-organise and self-rule in subgroups.

The key in this proposal is that it turns the current dysfunctional UN system beset by various problems, among them being prone to individualistic and crony behaviours towards a new system that is more accountable to collective responsibility. It may yet herald more peace and stability, at least at the regional level. It is not a simple reform. It may yet be the last major reform that the UN will face as it has the potential to change and adapt with the world, up to extreme scenarios in which some seats might be left empty as countries might find that less groups can accommodate their interests. While reforming the UN will not change the world, it will change the game-setting rules, according states with potentially greater power to find solutions through the UNSC in the pursuit of maintaining peace and security.

About the author:
*Niccolò Beduschi is a Researcher at the Observer Research Foundation. He specialises in Asia-Europe subjects and regional integration.

Source:
This article was published by the Observer Research Foundation as ORF ISSUE BRIEF No. 126, JANUARY 2016 (PDF)

Notes:
1. ‘UN Charter’ chapter V, Article 24, par. 1. Accessed 28 December 2015. http://www.un.org/en/documents/ charter/chapter5.shtml.
2. ‘Genocide in Rwanda’. United Human Rights Council. Accessed 24 December 2015. http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/genocide/genocide_in_rwanda.htm.
3. ‘Rwanda-UNAMIR mandate’. Peace and Security Section of DPI in cooperation with the Department of Peacekeeping Operations of the United Nations. Accessed 12 January 2016. http://www.un.org/en/ peacekeeping/missions/past/unamirM.htm.
4. Reyntjens, Filip. ‘e Great African War: Congo and Regional Geopolitics, 19962006’. Cambridge, 2009. Pp. 30-45.
5. ‘Rwanda to the UNSC’. Permanent Mission of Rwanda to the United Nations. Accessed 12 January 2016. http://rwandaun.org/site/rwanda-to-the-unsc/.
6. Lai, Karen Yourish, K. k Rebecca, and Derek Watkins. ‘How Syrians Are Dying’. e New York Times, 14 September 2015. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2015/09/14/world/middleeast/syria-war- deaths.html.
7. ‘Security Council – Veto List’. United Nations Library. Accessed 12 Janurary 2016. research.un.org/en/ docs/sc/quick.
8. ‘Non-Consenus Decision-Making in the Security Council: an Abridged History’ Security Council Report. January 2014. Accessed 13 January 2016. www.securitycouncilreport.org/atf/cf/%7B65BFCF9B-6D27- 4E9C-8CD3-CF6E4FF96FF9%7D/January_2014_Insert.pdf.
9. Ibid.
10. Chantal de Jonge Oudraat ‘Intervention in Internal Conicts: Legal and Political Conundrums’. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Global Policy Program number 15, August 2000.
11. Moynihan, Harriet. ‘Assessing the Legal Basis for UK Military Action in Syria’. Chatham House, 26 November 2015. Accessed 22 December 2015. https://www.chathamhouse.org//node/19203. ‘Syria Air Strikes: What You Need to Know’. BBC News, 3 December 2015. Accessed 22 December 2015. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-34931421.
12. ‘General Assembly Adopts, without Vote, ‘Landmark’ Decision on Advancing Eorts to Reform, Increase Membership of Security Council’ UN press. Accessed 20 December 2015. www.un.org/press/en/2015/ ga11679.doc.htm.
13. Charter chapter 18, article 109, par 3 http://www.un.org/en/documents/charter/chapter18.shtml.
14. Pirozzi Nicoletta and Ronzitti Natalino ‘e European Union and the Reform of the UN Security Council: Toward a new regionalism?’ Istituto Aari Internazionali.3 November 2013.
15. Rajamani Lavanya. ‘Democratization of the United Nations’. Economic and Political Weekly, Vol. 30, No. 49 (Dec. 9, 1995). p. 3140.
16. Ibid. ‘Democratization of the United Nations’. p. 3140.
17. ‘In larger freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all’. Report of the Secretary General. 21 March 2005. p.42. Accessed 28 December 2015 http://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/ followupreport.pdf.
18. Schlesinger Stephen . ‘Can the United Nations Reform?’ World Policy Journal, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Fall, 1997). p. 49.
19. Countries Never Elected Members of the Security Council’. Accessed 28 December 2015. www.un.org/en/sc/members/notelected.asp.
20. United Nations Regional Groups of Member States’. Accessed 27 December 2015. www.un.org/depts/ DGACM/RegionalGroups.shtml.
21. Gruenberg, Justin S. ‘An Analysis of United Nations Security Council Resolutions: Are All Countries Treated Equally’. 41 Case Western Reserve, Jorunal of International Law vol 41 (2009) p. 479.
22. Ronzitti Natalino. ‘e Reform of the UN Security Council’. Istituto Aari Internazionali. July 2010. p. 2.
23. Paul James and Nahory Céline. ‘eses Towards a Democratic Reform of the UN Security Council’. Global Policy Forum. 13 July 2005. Accessed 6 January 2016. https://www.globalpolicy.org/un-reform/un- reform-topics/reform-of-the-security-council-9-16/41131.html?itemid=1321.
24. Ronzitti, Natalino. ‘e Reform of the UN Security Council’. Istituto Aari Internazionali. July 2010. p. 3. Accessed 6 January 2015. https://www.globalpolicy.org/images/pdfs/IAI_Report_1.pdf.
25. Arab League urges UN-backed action in Syria’ Aljazeera. 2 September 2013. Accessed 27 December 2015. www.aljazeera.com/news/middleeast/2013/09/20139118235327617.html.

By Elise Harris

On Thursday Pope Francis met briefly with actor and environmental activist Leonardo DiCaprio, who recently won an award for his efforts for environmental protection at the World Economic Forum.

The meeting between the two lasted just 15 minutes, but was enough time for DiCaprio to hand the Pope a book of art from Dutch Renaissance painter Hieronymus Bosch, according to Vatican Radio.

Francis’ gift to the actor was likely a copy of his encyclical “Laudato Si” and a medal – lately he’s been giving one to presidents and heads of state who have come to the Vatican that bears the image of St. Martin cutting his cloak in two for a poor man.

In some of the pictures of the encounter, DiCaprio can be seen holding the small box usually containing papal medals, as well as two red books.

What the two discussed is unknown, however it’s likely that issues surrounding the environment formed the bulk of the dialogue.

DiCaprio – who is a candidate for Best Actor at the Feb. 28 Oscar Awards ceremony for his lead role in the drama “The Revenant” – describes himself on twitter as an “actor and environmentalist.”

He recently participated in the World Economic Forum where he received their Crystal Award for his leading role in fighting climate change.

In his speech for the event, DiCaprio said that “we simply cannot afford to allow the corporate greed of the coal, oil and gas industries to determine the future of humanity.”

“Those entities with a financial interest in preserving this destructive system have denied, and even covered up the evidence of our changing climate… Enough is enough. You know better. The world knows better. History will place the blame for this devastation squarely at their feet.”

According to the actor, “our planet cannot be saved unless we leave fossil fuels in the ground where they belong.” He said that with today’s technologies, we have the means to end our “addiction” to them.

DiCaprio also announced that his foundation, The Leonardo DiCaprio Foundation, will be donating $15 million to support environmental protection projects.

Pope Francis himself sent a message to the forum participants, in which he said that while advanced technologies are good, they should promote environmental protection and shouldn’t replace the jobs currently held by people.

Global dependence on coal and fossil fuels is something Francis also condemned in his encyclical “Laudato Si,” published June 18, 2015.

As usual, the Pope did not shy away from controversial issues in the document, making bold statements on global warming, pollution, species extinction and global inequality’s impact on natural resources.

He cited studies supporting the theory of global warming and stated that human activity is the primary driving force behind the phenomenon, as well as the main cause of species extinction. He also spoke of developed nations’ obligations involving renewable resources and the development of poorer countries.

In addition to defending life from conception to natural death, Francis also issued a condemnation of gender ideology and advocated for a limited use of non-renewable resources.

While the two men might not have much in common apart of DiCaprio’s Catholic roots – he was raised Catholic, but currently has no specific religion – their mutual interest in safeguarding the environment is enough to bring them together for the brief encounter.

European scientists have gathered tiny fungi that take shelter in Antarctic rocks and sent them to the International Space Station. After 18 months on board in conditions similar to those on Mars, more than 60% of their cells remained intact, with stable DNA. The results provide new information for the search for life on the red planet. Lichens from the Sierra de Gredos (Spain) and the Alps (Austria) also travelled into space for the same experiment.

The McMurdo Dry Valleys, located in the Antarctic Victoria Land, are considered to be the most similar earthly equivalent to Mars. They make up one of the driest and most hostile environments on our planet, where strong winds scour away even snow and ice. Only so-called cryptoendolithic microorganisms, capable of surviving in cracks in rocks, and certain lichens can withstand such harsh climatological conditions.

A few years ago a team of European researchers travelled to these remote valleys to collect samples of two species of cryptoendolithic fungi: Cryomyces antarcticus and Cryomyces minteri. The aim was to send them to the International Space Station (ISS) for them to be subjected to Martian conditions and space to observe their responses.

The tiny fungi were placed in cells (1.4 centimetres in diameter) on a platform for experiments known as EXPOSE-E, developed by the European Space Agency to withstand extreme environments. The platform was sent in the Space Shuttle Atlantis to the ISS and placed outside the Columbus module with the help of an astronaut from the team led by Belgian Frank de Winne.

For 18 months half of the Antarctic fungi were exposed to Mars-like conditions. More specifically, this is an atmosphere with 95% CO2, 1.6% argon, 0.15% oxygen, 2.7% nitrogen and 370 parts per million of H2O; and a pressure of 1,000 pascals. Through optical filters, samples were subjected to ultra-violet radiation as if on Mars (higher than 200 nanometres) and others to lower radiation, including separate control samples.

“The most relevant outcome was that more than 60% of the cells of the endolithic communities studied remained intact after ‘exposure to Mars’, or rather, the stability of their cellular DNA was still high,” said Rosa de la Torre Noetzel from Spain’s National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA), co-researcher on the project.

The scientist explained that this work, published in the journal Astrobiology, forms part of an experiment known as the Lichens and Fungi Experiment (LIFE), “with which we have studied the fate or destiny of various communities of lithic organisms during a long-term voyage into space on the EXPOSE-E platform.”

“The results help to assess the survival ability and long-term stability of microorganisms and bioindicators on the surface of Mars, information which becomes fundamental and relevant for future experiments centred around the search for life on the red planet,” said De la Torre.

Also lichens from Gredos and the Alps

Researchers from the LIFE experiment, coordinated from Italy by Professor Silvano Onofri from the University of Tuscany, have also studied two species of lichens (Rhizocarpon geographicum and Xanthoria elegans) which can withstand extreme high-mountain environments. These have been gathered from the Sierra de Gredos (Avila, Spain) and the Alps (Austria), with half of the specimens also being exposed to Martian conditions.

Another range of samples (both lichens and fungi) was subjected to an extreme space environment (with temperature fluctuations of between -21.5 and +59.6 ºC, galactic-cosmic radiation of up to 190 megagrays, and a vacuum of between 10-7 to 10-4 pascals). The effect of the impact of ultra-violet extraterrestrial radiation on half of the samples was also examined.

After the year-and-a-half-long voyage, and the beginning of the experiment on Earth, the two species of lichens ‘exposed to Mars’ showed double the metabolic activity of those that had been subjected to space conditions, even reaching 80% more in the case of the species Xanthoria elegans.

The results showed subdued photosynthetic activity or viability in the lichens exposed to the harsh conditions of space (2.5% of samples), similar to that presented by the fungal cells (4.11%). In this space environment, 35% of fungal cells were also seen to have kept their membranes intact, a further sign of the resistance of Antarctic fungi.

By Dr. S. Chandrasekharan*

Protests erupted again after a lull in many of the districts of Terai ( Madhes).

Following a firing incident at Rangeli in Morang, the SLMM intensified protests in Siraha, Sunsari, Janakpur and Morang districts. There was palpable tension in Janakpur, the main seat of unrest. Buses were stopped. Educational and Business institutions were again closed.

In Saptari, protestors shut the schools and colleges. At Lahan the East West Highway was blocked.

It all started with a provocative meeting by UML cadres that goes by the name “Youth Force” at Rangeli. Both K.P.Oli and party leader Ishwor Pokhrel were supposed to attend. In the end only Pokhrel attended.

But the meeting itself at this time on 21st of this month was totally uncalled for when the Madhesi groups as a whole were already angry with the UML government who were proceeding to pass the constitutional amendment bill over the objections of the Madhesi leaders.

Protestors had gathered at Rangeli Bazar on the morning of 21st December itself in anticipation of the arrival of the UML leaders. When the Police decided to evict the protestors from the area of the meeting, violent clashes ensued. Three people including a woman were killed and nine others received bullet injuries. The condition of some of them is said to be serious.

Terai in Deep Distress:

For almost six months now, life in Terai has come to a standstill. Consider the following:

• All educational institutions, hospitals, government offices, industries, banks, shops are closed.
• All agricultural activities and transport services have been crippled.
• Essential items like food grains, petrol and gas are in short supply.
• There is rampant black marketing.
• The State Mechanism has ceased to function.
• A humanitarian crisis is developing and neither the government nor the Terai leaders seem to care about the depressing situation.
• The Police continue to act in a high-handed manner. Killing of three persons including a woman is unacceptable. Except for some representatives from the Human Rights organizations no one seems to care. One would have expected at least the Nepali Congress who are now in opposition with many of their leaders having been elected from Terai to protest. But this has not happened.

It is just a question of time before the extremists in various groups take charge. Already Matrika Prasad Yadav has made a call to start a violent movement in Terai.

Constitutional Amendments Passed unilaterally

On the night of 23rd the government unilaterally passed the Constitution amendment bill for proportionate inclusion in state organs and delineation of electoral constituencies.

Two amendments from the Nepali Congress were accepted. These were

• Minendra Rijal’s proposal- that the Constituency delimitation Commission shall delimit the constituencies in every province keeping population-based representation as main basis and geography as secondary basis . . . Every district in the federal provinces shall have at least one constituency- were accepted. Using both the provinces and districts as basis for delineating the constituencies is going to be problematic.
• Farmullah’s proposal that “Economically, socially and educationally backward women, dalits, Adibasi/janajathi, Madhesi, Tharu, Muslim, differently abled people, backward classes, gender and sexually minority groups and citizens of backward regions shall have the right to participate in state structures on the basis of the principle of proportionate inclusion” was also accepted.

But the amendments were silent on the delineation of the provincial boundaries and the Madhesi groups were dissatisfied. They have therefore decided to continue the agitation.

Visit of PM Oli to India, Demonising India and Review of Indo Nepal Relations:

Prime Minister Oli has again reiterated that he would visit India only after the supposed “informal blockade” is lifted by India and the border traffic gets stabilised. Except for some hiccups in the Raxaul-Birgunj route almost all the border points are operative and there is steady of flow of goods and commodities. The situation on the border is almost normal and if PM Oli has reservations about visiting India, he should be allowed to have his way. India should officially make it clear that he is not welcome. The government and many of the political leaders of the three main stream parties are encouraging “India bashing.” This is unfortunate. Nepal’s long term interests are not served by demonising India.

There was a media report that PM Oli has set up a task force to review the entire gamut of relations with India. This is a good step and my suggestion is that since official Nepal has so many grievances against India, let Nepal decide the kind of relationship it wants with India. There is no need for a special friendship treaty either. Let Transit laws be also determined by the international rules and nothing more.

By Annie Slemrod

“Five years of conflict have been too much. The horror is in front of everyone’s eyes… You have seen enough conferences, two of them already taken place. This one cannot fail.”

Fine words from UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura in a video message to the Syrian people on Thursday evening, the day before he hoped to sit down in Geneva with many of the protagonists and eke out some progress towards peace.

Slight problem: before this message could even be rolled out to the media, George Sabra, head of the Syrian National Council, an umbrella of opposition groups, announced that he and others would not be attending.

“For certain we will not head to Geneva and there will not be a delegation from the High Negotiations Committee tomorrow in Geneva,” he told Arabic TV network al-Hadath.

Sabra’s objection could be tied to earlier demands for a halt to the bombardment of civilian areas and the lifting of blockades on besieged areas. Another opposition group is protesting the exclusion from the talks of the Syrian Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).

So will the talks go ahead or not? Is Sabra for real or is this just more brinksmanship in a week full of brinksmanship?

De Mistura, who has already delayed the talks once, from Monday, didn’t rush to do so again.

“We have no comments to George Sabra’s announcement,” his office wrote in an emailed reply to IRIN. “As for the talks, the SE [Special Envoy] intends to hold the talks as planned tomorrow hoping that both parties will be here.”

So what if the talks do go ahead?

If and when the latest Syrian peace talks begin, there won’t be any pomp and circumstance. Don’t expect an opening ceremony or the customary photo-op.

That’s because de Mistura has avoided officially splitting invitees into regime and opposition delegations – in fact he hasn’t issued a public list of invitees.

Instead, he’s muddied the waters by including representatives of civil society, women’s groups, and various interested parties. This gives all participants the chance to leave in a huff without bringing the whole morass down.

He said as much at a press conference earlier this week: “There will be a lot of posturing, we know that, a lot of walk-outs and walk-ins because a bomb has fallen or because someone has done an attack.”

Confused? That’s likely by design. Syria expert Aron Lund of the Carnegie think-tank believes de Mistura deliberately created as much ambiguity as possible so the talks wouldn’t be snagged on minor details, you know, like who exactly turns up.

As Lund told IRIN: “[de Mistura] is deliberately making it more confusing in order to make it less complicated.”

So who might be coming?

Thanks to this strategy, and especially following Sabra’s 11th hour curve ball, nobody knows who will be in Geneva to discuss the future of Syria, for the third official time since the war began in 2011.

Sabra is one of the main players in a coalition of Syrian opposition groups that is backed by Saudi Arabia. In its current form, it is known as the High Negotiations Committee and its lead negotiator is Mohammed Alloush of the Islamist militant group Jaysh al-Islam.

Another key Islamist rebel group, Ahrar al-Sham, was reportedly undecided about attending the talks. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ally Russia consider both Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham to be terrorist groups.

The Kurds are another sticking point. Turkey threatened to boycott if the PYD – which it sees as an offshoot of its own, outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – were allowed to join. Even if the PYD aren’t officially in Geneva, keep a lookout for representatives from the Syrian Democratic Forces, a coalition of fighters they dominate and which controls a large chunk of northern Syria.

The regime side is slightly more cut and dried. Syria’s ambassador to the UN, Bashar al-Jaafari, is lead negotiator. At Geneva II, he memorably called the opposition “traitors” and angrily spoke past his allotted time in the opening statements. If the regime intended to strike a deal, Jaafari is an odd choice.

But it also makes perfect sense. Neither side, if the fragmented opposition can be called that, has indicated a real willingness to negotiate. They are coming, in short, because their financial backers have told them to.

“Assad is not going because he wants to negotiate, and not because he thinks the opposition can deliver [on unity],” Joshua Landis, a Syria expert and director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, told IRIN. “He’s going because his major sponsor, Russia, has told him to.”

It’s much the same for the opposition. In fact, opposition officials have complained that the United States is pressuring them to attend without preconditions.

“These sides are there, not to sit down and talk face to face with their opponents… they are there because they are trying to please their sponsor powers,” Landis continued. “In some ways it is about the sponsor powers talking to each other, that is where the dialogue is going to go on.”

Might they actually talk to each other?

There won’t be any face-to-face conversations at this stage. These are proximity talks, with the UN shuttling messages between the parties.

The past two rounds have failed to make any noticeable difference on the ground, and de Mistura has made it clear that he wants to try a different tack.

In the past, discussion has hinged on a key demand from the opposition and the United States: Assad must go. But with Russia now in the fray and the regime making gains on the ground, the position of US President Barack Obama and his Secretary of State John Kerry appears to be evolving.

This may anger the opposition, but de Mistura has made it clear that any first steps must be towards a ceasefire, not any grand plans for a political transition.

Hang on, what about so-called Islamic State?

There’s an obvious hitch in this plan – neither the so-called Islamic State nor the powerful rebel Nusra Front will be in Geneva. The UN labels both terrorist groups. Without their presence, it is difficult to imagine any large-scale ceasefire holding.

But there might be room for smaller, piecemeal deals, locally across the country. This has happened already in a reported 30 or so towns. Some have since failed, but others have held. Notably, those truces that have lasted have been overseen on the regime side by Iran or Russia.

“I don’t think you’ll see [major] deals at Geneva, but I do think you’ll see them on the ground,” Landis said. “The regime has been making gains; [the] opposition isn’t finding the strong support it once had in the international community for a quick transition of power. If the opposition doesn’t hear ‘Assad must go,’ they might be more amenable to these deals.”

Baby steps

If any talks happen and that translates to any kind of progress, either diplomatically or on the ground, de Mistura might feel at least something has been achieved.

The veteran Italian-Swedish diplomat has said he expects this stage of the talks to last a few weeks, with a larger process expanding for some six months.

If progress is to be made, it will be painfully slow. For now, the talks are something of a diplomatic game.

“The whole process is driven basically by the United States and Russia, and [even] they don’t agree,” explained Lund. “They all realise that nothing that happens now will determine how the talks or the war end, but they are trying to squeeze every drop of opportunity out of it.”

This could mean public relations points, a chance to rub shoulders with various groups in back channel talks, or in the case of rebels – saying what Saudi Arabia wants in exchange for more and better arms.

With the main opposition group unlikely to show, and talks in separate rooms even if they do, these aren’t really peace talks at all. As Geneva prepares for this latest political manoeuvring and backroom deals, the toll from almost five years of war approaches 300,000.

America’s richest investors are betting trillions of dollars that the US economy will stay lousy for years to come.

Who are these wealthy investors?

Bondholders. And their views on the state of the economy are reflected in the yields on long-term US Treasuries. At present, the yields on long-term debt are very low which means that investors think the economy will continue to underperform while inflation remains in check.

This pessimistic outlook is not new for bondholders, in fact, yields have remained stubbornly low since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, which means that investors were never swept up in the hype about “green shoots” or an “economic recovery”. They knew it was baloney from the get-go and their opinion hasn’t changed. There’s no sign of recovery anywhere except for the fake government payroll numbers that don’t jibe with any of the other data. By any rationale measure, the economy is stuck in a long-term slump that shows no sign of relenting anytime soon. Bondholders seem to grasp that fact and have made a ton of dough betting on crappy growth and perennial stagnation, which are the logical corollaries of the Fed’s goofy monetary policies. (Stephen Roach explains low yields on 30-year USTs here.)

In any event, bond yields are a heckuva lot more helpful in forecasting the future than the cheerleading pundits on the business channel. Yields–which are the amount of return that bondholders receive for lending the government their money–reveal investors expectations of future economic activity and inflation. They are a barometer for measuring the health of the economy. If growth is strong and the future looks rosy, yields will rise as the demand for money increases and the prospects of higher inflation seem more likely. But if investors expect growth to fall-short and disappoint, then yields are going to drop reflecting lower expectations for future activity. The fact that the yields on 30-year USTs are below 3 percent at this phase of the game suggests that policymakers either don’t understand how the economy works or simply refuse to initiate the changes that will spur growth. Either way, it’s a damning indictment of the Central Bank’s role as steward of the system.

At present, (Jan 26) the yield on benchmark 10-year Treasuries is just a whisker below 2 percent at 1.98 percent. That means that investors will get 1.98 dollars annually per every $100 invested, which is nearly nothing. Think of it this way: Let’s say your buddy Ernie wants to borrow $5,000 to open a Gelato stand in Granite Falls. So you’re wondering how much you need to charge him above the price of the loan to be fairly compensated for the risk you’re taking. (since Ernie has had a few bad ideas in the past that blew up in his face.) If you decide to charge him 2 percent per year, then you’re barely making ends meet since inflation is currently running at roughly 1.5 percent. So you need to charge something above 2 percent or you won’t even break-even.

The point is, when you lend your money to the USG for a paltry 1.98 percent, you’re basically getting bupkis on your investment. The only upside to the deal is that you can be reasonably certain that the government will pay you back, unlike Ernie.

The focus on interest rates as the only means for fixing the economy should have run its course by now, but, of course, it hasn’t because the Big Money that runs the country likes things the way they are. Low rates and easy money mean bigger profits for Wall Street regardless of their impact on the real economy. What matters most to bondholders is not growth or inflation, but policy. That’s what keeps the boodle flowing into the coffers. Policy. And as long as they’re confident that the Fed’s “accommodative” policies are going to be coupled with fiscal belt-tightening (which has been adopted by both Dems and Republicans), then they can rest assured that the economy will continue to sputter while bonds “rip the cover off the ball”.

But the Fed’s loosey goosy monetary policies do come at a cost, and that cost is borne by businesses and working people alike. For example, there was an op-ed in last week’s WSJ about the knock-on effects of low rates on capital investment by Michael Spence and Kevin Warsh. The title of the article tells the whole story: “The Fed Has Hurt Business Investment.” Here’s an excerpt:

“Extremely accommodative monetary policy, including the purchase of about $3 trillion in Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities during three rounds of “quantitative easing” (QE), pushed down long-term yields and boosted the value of risk-assets. Higher stock prices were supposed to drive business confidence and higher capital expenditures, which were supposed to result in higher wages and strong consumption. Would it were so.

Business investment in the real economy is weak … In 2014, S&P 500 companies spent considerably more of their operating cash flow on financially engineered buybacks than real capital expenditures for the first time since 2007 … We believe that QE has redirected capital from the real domestic economy to financial assets at home and abroad. In this environment, it is hard to criticize companies that choose “shareholder friendly” share buybacks over investment in a new factory. But public policy shouldn’t bias investments to paper assets over investments in the real economy.” (The Fed Has Hurt Business Investment, Michael Spence And Kevin Warsh, Wall Street Journal)

This is a fairly typical complaint, that the Fed’s policies have lifted asset prices but hurt business investment which requires strong demand for their products. The fact is, businesses can’t grow unless people are employed, wages are rising, and money is exchanging hands. None of that is happening currently, in fact, according to the Atlanta Fed, the Forth Quarter (4Q) GDP is expected to come in below 1 percent. (.06 percent) which means the US economy should probably be wheeled down to the morgue ASAP so the embalming process can begin pronto. For all practical purposes, the economy is kaput.

Of course, President Obama rejects that type of negativity outright. In the State of the Union Speech in January, Obama waved his finger threateningly at the teleprompter saying: “Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”

Fiction?? Not according to economist James Hamilton. Here’s what he said this week on the Oil Price website:

“The global economy is slipping into recession. The evidence is showing up in all the usual ways: slowing output growth, slumping purchasing-manager indexes, widening credit spreads, declining corporate earnings, falling inflation expectations, receding capital investment and rising inventories. But this is a most unusual recession– the first one ever caused by falling oil prices.” (Could Low Oil Prices Cause A Global Recession?, Oil Price)

And then there’s this from the Wall Street Journal:

“Every U.S. recession since World War II has been foretold by sharp declines in industrial production, corporate profits and the stock market. Industrial production has declined in 10 of the past 12 months, and is now off nearly 2% from its peak in December 2014. Corporate profits peaked around the summer of 2014 and were off by nearly 5% as of the third quarter of last year. The Dow Jones Industrial Average is down 7.6% so far this year…

unlike past declines in industrial production, today’s decline has been driven primarily by the collapse in the oil industry…. mining output has fallen over 10%, driven by a 62% decline in oil- and gas-well drilling…

“Manufacturing tends to lead the economic cycle and it tends to be an indicator of the swings,” said Thomas Costerg, senior economist at Standard Chartered. “Manufacturing is struggling.” (Recession Warnings May Not Come to Pass, Wall Street Journal)

The truth is that the economy is still very weak and the Fed’s monetary hanky-panky hasn’t produced the credit expansion that was expected. Adding excess reserves at the banks was supposed to boost lending which would lead to stronger growth, but it hasn’t happened mainly because households and consumers aren’t borrowing like they did before the crisis. Instead they’re setting more money aside and trying to pay down their debts. Take a look at the chart on bank loans which illustrates how lending is basically flatlining. (See here.)

No bank loans means no borrowing. No borrowing means no credit expansion. No credit expansion means no new activity, no new spending, no new hiring, no new business investment, no stronger growth. Nomura’s chief economist Richard Koo summed it up succinctly saying, “When no one is borrowing money, monetary policy is largely useless.”

Bingo. It is useless. We know that now. Neither QE nor zero rates promote growth. The ‘Grand Experiment’ has failed. Keynes was right and (Milton) Freidman was wrong. Here’s Keynes:

“For my own part I am now somewhat skeptical of the success of a merely monetary policy directed towards influencing the rate of interest. I expect to see the State, which is in a position to calculate the marginal efficiency of capital-goods on long views and on the basis of the general social advantage, taking an ever greater responsibility for directly organizing investment; since it seems likely that the fluctuations in the market estimation of the marginal efficiency of different types of capital, calculated on the principles I have described above, will be too great to be offset by any practicable changes in the rate of interest.” (John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, marxists.org, 2002)

Keynes is just stating the obvious, that you can’t pull the economy out of a severe slump by tinkering with interest rates or pumping up bank reserves. It doesn’t work. What’s needed is ‘good old fashion’ fiscal stimulus mainlined into the economy through ambitious federal infrastructure programs that stimulate activity, boost employment and keep the economy moving forward until private sector balance sheets are repaired and personal spending returns to normal.

The Fed has wasted the last seven years trying to reinvent the wheel when the solution was always right under its nose. Are we really going to waste another seven implementing the same failed strategy?

The Local reports: Sweden plans to charter aircraft to send back as many as 80,000 rejected asylum seekers in what the country’s interior minister is calling “a very big challenge”.

Interior minister Anders Ygeman told Sweden’s Dagens Industri newspaper that he believed that at least 60,000, and possibly as many as 80,000 of the 163,000 who sought asylum in Sweden last year would have their applications rejected, meaning they will be returned either to their home countries or to the European country responsible under EU rules.

“The first step will be to go with voluntary return, and to create the best conditions for that,” Ygeman said. “But if that doesn’t work, we will need to have returns backed up by force.”

“I think we will have to see more chartered planes, particularly in the EU-region.”

He said that the Swedish government hoped to strike deals with other EU countries — in particular Germany — over coordinating flights to return asylum seekers.

It is also seeking return agreements with countries such as Afghanistan and Morocco.

But Victor Harju, Ygeman’s press secretary, on Thursday told The Local that the headlines were “a bit exaggerated”.

“Due to the fact that we received so many people in Sweden last year, we have to face the reality that more people will also not fulfil the needs within the asylum programme and will not get a permit to stay,” he said.

However, immigration lawyer Terfa Nisébini criticised Ygeman’s plan, saying that by giving an estimate that roughly half of applications would be rejected, telling Expressen newspaper that it risked influencing the way the Swedish Migration Agency assesses cases.

Swedish opposition parties also questioned whether the government would be able to successfully carry out Ygeman’s plan. [Continue reading…]

If Ygeman’s press secretary thinks the headlines are a bit exaggerated (BBC News is similar to most others: “EU migrant crisis: Sweden may reject 80,000 asylum claims”) there is nevertheless no reason to doubt that the minister’s statement was designed to generate exactly this kind of reporting. In other words, Sweden wants prospective asylum seekers to assume they will be unwelcome and thus set their sights elsewhere.

As individual European countries each engage in their own poorly conceived forms of crisis management, what is increasingly evident is that this crisis is itself the product of a policy vacuum.

As George Soros said recently:

we don’t have a European asylum policy. The European authorities need to accept responsibility for this. It has transformed this past year’s growing influx of refugees from a manageable problem into an acute political crisis. Each member state has selfishly focused on its own interests, often acting against the interests of others. This has precipitated panic among asylum seekers, the general public, and the authorities responsible for law and order. Asylum seekers have been the main victims.

Al Jazeera reports:

A “race to the bottom” on asylum policy among European Union countries is exposing more than 360,000 child migrants to greater risk of harm as the bloc struggles to cope with a surge of refugees, rights watchdogs said on Monday.

European children’s agencies issued the warning in a report released in Amsterdam, where the EU’s interior ministers were meeting to discuss how to deal with the influx of people fleeing war in Africa and the Middle East.

One of the main concerns is that EU countries, from Sweden to Britain, have implemented measures limiting family reunification rights — which risks separating children from their parents after they survive perilous journeys.

“It seems as if European countries are in a contest to win the title of ‘least willing to accept asylum seekers,’” said the report from the European Network of Ombudspersons for Children, which represents 41 independent children’s rights institutions in 34 European countries.

A new design for gigantic blades longer than two football fields could help bring offshore 50-megawatt (MW) wind turbines to the United States and the world.

Sandia National Laboratories’ research on the extreme-scale Segmented Ultralight Morphing Rotor (SUMR) is funded by the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy program. The challenge: Design a low-cost offshore 50-MW turbine requiring a rotor blade more than 650 feet (200 meters) long, two and a half times longer than any existing wind blade.

The team is led by the University of Virginia and includes Sandia and researchers from the University of Illinois, the University of Colorado, the Colorado School of Mines and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Corporate advisory partners include Dominion Resources, General Electric Co., Siemens AG and Vestas Wind Systems.

“Exascale turbines take advantage of economies of scale,” said Todd Griffith, lead blade designer on the project and technical lead for Sandia’s Offshore Wind Energy Program.

Sandia’s previous work on 13-MW systems uses 100-meter blades (328 feet) on which the initial SUMR designs are based. While a 50-MW horizontal wind turbine is well beyond the size of any current design, studies show that load alignment can dramatically reduce peak stresses and fatigue on the rotor blades. This reduces costs and allows construction of blades big enough for a 50-MW system.

Most current U.S. wind turbines produce power in the 1- to 2-MW range, with blades about 165 feet (50 meters) long, while the largest commercially available turbine is rated at 8 MW with blades 262 feet (80 meters) long.

“The U.S. has great offshore wind energy potential, but offshore installations are expensive, so larger turbines are needed to capture that energy at an affordable cost,” Griffith said.

Barriers remain before designers can scale up to a 50-MW turbine — more than six times the power output of the largest current turbines.

“Conventional upwind blades are expensive to manufacture, deploy and maintain beyond 10-15 MW. They must be stiff, to avoid fatigue and eliminate the risk of tower strikes in strong gusts. Those stiff blades are heavy, and their mass, which is directly related to cost, becomes even more problematic at the extreme scale due to gravity loads and other changes,” Griffith said.

He said the new blades could be more easily and cost-effectively manufactured in segments, avoiding the unprecedented-scale equipment needed for transport and assembly of blades built as single units.

The exascale turbines would be sited downwind, unlike conventional turbines that are configured with the rotor blades upwind of the tower.

SUMR’s load-alignment is bio-inspired by the way palm trees move in storms. The lightweight, segmented trunk approximates a series of cylindrical shells that bend in the wind while retaining segment stiffness. This alignment radically reduces the mass required for blade stiffening by reducing the forces on the blades using the palm-tree inspired load-alignment approach.

Segmented turbine blades have a significant advantage in parts of the world at risk for severe storms, such as hurricanes, where offshore turbines must withstand tremendous wind speeds over 200 mph. The blades align themselves to reduce cantilever forces on the blade through a trunnion hinge near the hub that responds to changes in wind speed.

“At dangerous wind speeds, the blades are stowed and aligned with the wind direction, reducing the risk of damage. At lower wind speeds, the blades spread out more to maximize energy production.” Griffith said.

Moving toward exascale turbines could be an important way to meet DOE’s goal of providing 20 percent of the nation’s energy from wind by 2030, as detailed in its recent Wind Vision Report.

The Nakhchivan Autonomous Republic of Azerbaijan is the birthplace of world renowned architects such as Amiraddin Masud Nakhchivani, as well as a world renowned region of many archeological and cultural monuments that embody a special importance in the ancient history of the World and Azerbaijani nation.

Amiraddin Masud Nakhchivani was a XII Century influential architect of Azerbaijan who lived in the palace of Eldanizlar in Nakhchivan. As an architect and scholar, Masud, pursued the perfection of the Ajami architectural style and played a fundamental role in the strengthening of religious, cultural and memorial architecture of Nakhchivan. His contributions have made a great impact in the Caucasus region and have been adopted by many other architects during the course of the XIV-XVI centuries. The monuments build by Masud are used as an important reference as well as influential objects of study by many other international scholars of culture and archeologists.

Nakhchivan is also home of Farhad House, an archeological monument located in Batabat Summer Grazing valley, to the East of Bichanak Village, in the region of Shahbuz. It is located at the right side of the Nakhchivan – Lachin – Yevlakh main highway, in about one mile to the East from Zorbulag.

The Farhad House has four rooms cut by a hack typed metal tool in an native rock. They are connected with a straight passage that has only one direction. The ceilings are spanned and shaped in very unique forms; the floors have an oval shape. Little stands were carved on the walls in order to install lamps or candles. Along the walls a pavement was built and a fire place was built at the right side of the first room. According to the “Encyclopedia of Nakhchivan Monuments”: “the height of its entrance door is over 2.2 meters; its width is 1.3 meters; a man with a long hair is carved in the rock surface to the right side of the entrance, meanwhile in the left is pictured a woman engraving on the rock.”

Based on a study conducted by the scholars of Nakhchivan Academy of Sciences, Farhad House has “a pavement of two meters in height, 5 meters in length, 80 cm in width, 30 cm in depth. The route from the city of Nakhchivan to Farhad House was an important segment of the medieval commercial routs in the region, which connected Europe with the Central and Eastern Asia. There was built an important transit station in Batabat summer valleys, where a large number of international visitors and scholars have been able to further appreciate and study such an important asset of Azerbaijani Culture, and a series of rare archeological monument. This location has been called by the local population as the Shah Abbas convoy station. The recent investigations conducted by international expeditions and local scientists have given us confidence to confirm that Farhad House was built at the end of the First Millennium B. C.; meanwhile the locals have inherited many mythological stories about Farhad House.

Another location with unique features is the Haggikhlig Necropolis , with significant archeological treasures; built on the II Millennium B.C. on the lefts banks of Kuluschay, near the village of Kulus, in Shahbuz region. This majestic monument is situated at the top of a hill, surrounded by high mountains from the North East and South East it also consists of square stone graves. In Haggikhlig, research and excavations have begun in early 1990, as a result many new discoveries have emerged and this location has proved to be an important treasure of humanity’s cultural assets.
According to the Nakhchivan Monuments Encyclopedia, in Haggikhlig, there have been discovered “Human skeleton remnants, drawings of animal and bird figures and pieces of pink and grey color clay tableware.” According to Professor Novruzlu A. I., there were discovered “a bronze dagger, agricultural items with arrow point, animal bones, and plenty of precious globes, bracelets, ear rings, bronze ring and scaled hooks (designed with scrapes and crossing) pots, bowls, glass and mug shaped clay tableware.”

Heydar Aliyev, the National Leader of the People of Azerbaijan, was absolutely correct when he once stated that: “[in] the territory of Nakhchivan, there exist historical – architectural monuments that have a world – wide scale importance…each of them is a monument reflecting the history, culture and customs of Azerbaijani people, before the world. Each stone and rock of Nakhchivan has a peculiar role in the political, economic, cultural and scientific life of Azerbaijan as a living witness of history.”

The recent report by the Sir Robert Owen inquiry came out with a decidedly known report that it was at the behest of the Kremlin; Alexander Litvinenko was murdered in London in 2006. The facts of the case are this. Litvinenko was a former KGB officer turned Putin critic who was living in London and was in a moderate stipend by the MI6 for his expertise in understanding the Russian mafia in Europe. The British and Spanish intelligence were working at the same time jointly to unearth Russian mafia ties with the populist parties and the mafia in Spain, and Litvinenko was providing valuable information regarding that. In 2006, Litvinenko was visited by his two former colleagues; one of them is a current MP in Russian Duma, and both of them former intelligence officers. After drinking from a poisoned cup of tea, Litvinenko started vomiting and the rest, as they say, is history.

Litvinenko was a fierce critic of the current Russian president Vladimir Putin, and even claiming rather bizarrely the Putin was a deviant, to put it mildly. He also was critical of the Russian coterie of former intelligence officials who surround Putin. He was therefore poisoned by Polonium, a highly radioactive substance, with alpha radiation qualities, which are extremely hard to determine, and died subsequently a horrible, slow and painful death. His wife Marina Litvinenko and his son carried on the fight, which resulted in this enquiry and subsequent finding of the crime. The operatives accused of killing Litvinenko apparently irradiated and left a trail of radioactivity near the British embassy, in London, which is almost similar to a minor scale nuclear warfare.

The enquiry said that there is no doubt, that Putin “probably” ordered the murder, although the evidence for this assertion is circumstantial at best. While there is a certainty that Litvinenko was murdered by former intelligence officials, who are now extremely close to Putin, Litvinenko in his lifetime manages to cheese off a lot of his former colleagues, and any of them could have ordered the hit. But it highlights another important paradox in UK Russia and in broader aspect the EU Russia relations.

Readers know, and I have written about it before, how Europe is facing a dilemma in dealing with Russia. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the end of the Cold war, Russian and European relations have been decidedly confusing and mixed. The global economy is entwined and Russia and Europe has now business ties which run in billions. A case in point here is Germany, which is surprisingly finding it difficult to deal with Russia having a major business relationship with its former adversary. German business class is against sanctions against Russia, having ties that run deep, and the latest evidence is the Nordstream pipeline. If Germany being the mightiest economic power in the entire EU has problem in deciding how to deal with a revanchist Russia, one can only imagine how Britain will fare?

Britain under both the Labour and Conservatives were skeptical of being too harsh to Russia, and the reason is again economic. London is flooded with Russian money, and the English real estate is essentially controlled by oligarchs and Russian billionaires. From English football clubs, to English food packaging, Russian oligarchs are major players. And among these oligarchs are both Russian billionaires who are extremely close to Kremlin and Putin, and those who are viciously critical of the Russian regime.

That has resulted in a kind of turf war in the middle of England, which the British government is now being unable to control. For the sake of economic benefits and investments, they once let in dodgy characters from both sides, and now are reaping what they sow. The situation is now paradoxical. Imagine if the British government goes after perpetrators of this crime, it risks earning the ire of Russia which will stop the flow of Russian money, on which a huge part of London economy is dependent. If on the other hand, they don’t do anything, they lose credibility in the eyes of the World. But more importantly they lose something else as well. The Russian dissident oligarchs, and other capitalists who are investing in London, goes to London because it is a country with a rule of law, which gives them guaranteed safety. If London seems unable to provide that, then these oligarchs will stop coming to London. That itself makes this seemingly insignificant single murder of a former intelligence officer in the middle of London so pivotal.

This article appeared at Bombs and Dollars.

President Xi Jinping went from Riyadh to Iran this month to become the first foreign leader to do so following the lifting of international sanctions against the Islamic republic. Saudi leaders could not have been pleased. To be sure, China and Saudi Arabia (and Egypt) signed US$55 billion worth of cooperation agreements during Xi’s visit, including a nuclear cooperation pact. Yet Xi’s determination to gain a first mover advantage in Iran at a time that Saudi Arabia is seeking to increase rather than reduce the Islamic Republic’s international isolation suggests that more than commerce is at play here.

Xi’s visit to the kingdom was accompanied by talk of brotherly relations and strategic cooperation. The rhetoric however did little to mask serious differences on issues ranging from Syria to Saudi propagation of Wahhabism, a puritan interpretation of Islam that many fear breeds jihadism, and a relative decline in Chinese reliance on Saudi oil.

At odds over Syria

Chinese officials worry that alleged Saudi funding of Islamic schools or madrasahs in Xinjiang may be encouraging Uighur militants who have staged several attacks in a low intensity campaign for equal rights and autonomy, if not independence. Saudi officials have assured their Chinese counterparts that they do not support the violence despite the fact that the Uighurs, some of whom have joined Islamic State (IS), are Turkic-speaking Sunni Muslims.

Those assurances appear to have done little to put Chinese concerns to rest. “Our biggest worry in the Middle East isn’t oil – it’s Saudi Arabia,” a Chinese analyst told the Asia Times. Religious affinity is however not something China has to worry about with Shiite-majority Iran, which has long projected itself as a revolutionary rather than a sectarian power.

China supports the Iranian-backed regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and favours Russian intervention in Syria to prop up the Assad regime – a position that puts it at odds with Saudi Arabia that backs the rebels and has hinted at intervening militarily on their behalf.

Russian and US airstrikes against Saudi-backed Islamist rebels have allowed Syrian and Kurdish forces to gain increasing control of much of Syria’s borders, making it more difficult for Uighurs to find their way to Syria. Several hundred Uighurs are believed to have joined IS, which recently released its first Chinese-language recruitment video. This adds to China’s concerns about Xinjiang.

Redressing balances

In anticipation of the lifting of the sanctions, China has furthermore stepped up naval cooperation with Iran. A visit to Iran last October by Chinese Admiral Sun Jianguo, who is widely seen as the People’s Liberation Army Navy’s (PLAN) next naval commander, produced a draft memorandum of understanding for closer cooperation in counterterrorism, cyberwarfare, and intelligence sharing.

Sun’s visit followed joint Chinese-Iranian search-and-rescue naval exercises and training exercises in 2014 in the Gulf. The exercises, involving two Chinese warships were held close to the base of the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain at a time of tension between the United States and Iran over the Islamic republic’s nuclear programme.

The visit built on a long-standing security and military relationship that China was forced to temporarily curtail as a result of the sanctions. Nonetheless, China sold Iran anti-riot gear and tracking technology in 2009 which were used to counter anti-government protests against the allegedly fraudulent election of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The protests coincided with riots in Xinjiang.

Chinese-Iranian military relations date back to the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s when China was the Islamic republic’s main military hardware supplier. Those supplies caused tension with the United States when in 1987 Iran fired Chinese-made Silkworm missiles at Kuwaiti vessels in the Gulf.

Forced to halt the supply of sophisticated weaponry, China helped Iran kick start the development of an indigenous military-industrial sector evident in the design and technology of Iranian-made missiles.

Shifting oil relationships

Similarly with regard to Chinese oil purchasing, Iran is determined to win back Chinese market share with the lifting of the sanctions. Iran expects to boost oil exports by 500,000 barrels a day, much of which it hopes will go to China. Iran’s oil plans put it in direct competition with Saudi Arabia, which had long been one of China’s largest suppliers.

That picture has however begun to change with China apparently shifting its reliance on oil away from Saudi Arabia. Chinese oil imports from the kingdom rose a mere two percent last year while its purchase of Russian oil jumped almost 30 percent. The shift is likely to create an opening for Iran at Saudi Arabia’s expense.

The shift could not come at a worse moment with Saudi Arabia being forced to tighten its belt as a result of low commodity prices and high expenditure on wars in Yemen and Syria and the propping up of autocratic regimes like that of Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi.

All in all, President Xi returned to Beijing from his trip to the Middle East maintaining his emphasis on non-interference and harmony, with commerce, trade and infrastructure investment as part of his One Road, One Belt initiative. Reading the tea leaves however tells a different story.

China has increasingly significant interests in the Middle East that impact not only its energy security but also its efforts to pacify Xinjiang and patch together a Eurasian land mass that is linked through infrastructure. Iran’s geography bordering on the Caucasus, Central Asia, Turkey, and the Middle East makes it a far more important link than Saudi Arabia in China’s Silk Road plans.

As a result, Chinese interests are gradually forcing it to realign its policies and relationships in the region. To do so, China will ultimately realise that it no longer can remain aloof and will have to become a player in the Middle East and North Africa.

This article was published at RSIS

India’s merchandise exports have now contracted for 13 months in a row, reflecting the global slowdown and impact of China’s economic recalibration. But, therein lay new opportunities and challenges for India’s economic diplomacy

By Rajrishi Singhal*

India’s exports of goods have now shrunk for 13 months in a row. Even as this presents a threat to the government’s “Make in India” programme, it also provides some clues to future focus areas for India’s economic diplomacy.

Data for December 2015^[i] shows merchandise exports at $22.29 billion, 14.75% lower than exports booked in December 2014. Cumulative exports for the first nine months of 2015-16 (April-December 2015) amounted to $196.6 billion, down 18% over the comparable period of 2014-15. There is one silver lining though: the trade deficit for the first nine months of 2015-16 ($99.2 billion) is lower than the deficit in 2014-15 ($111.68 billion). This is primarily due to lower oil prices.

There are two ways of slicing this data to understand incipient trends; locating the geographical source of this demand compression and looking at performance of specific commodities.

According to Commerce Ministry’s database on exports by region^[ii], in dollar terms, the three destinations showing maximum contraction in Indian exports (or areas that are buying much less from India than in the previous year) are Latin America (down by 36.73%), Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) & Baltic region (down 32.4%) and Africa (25.59%). Clearly, India’s foreign policy practice and economic diplomacy needs to expend greater energy on these areas.

Granulated regional data provides better insights. In Asia, for instance, the sharpest fall in absolute terms has been in exports to the West Asian countries that are members of the Gulf Cooperation Council (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates). The second largest drop in absolute terms has been exports to the ASEAN countries, followed by North East Asia (which includes China). While the GCC phenomenon can be ascribed to shrinking oil revenues, leading to diminution of demand for Indian goods, it is the slowing of the Chinese economy that explains the North East Asian drop and a second round impact leading to dwindling of ASEAN demand.

Examining trade data through the lens of performance of specific commodities highlights stasis in India’s manufacturing industry and the need for providing stimulus. This can be either through “Make In India” initiative or through additional investments. The data clearly shows slowing demand overseas for agricultural (rice, other cereals, oil cakes and oil seeds) and oil-related commodities. However, more importantly, import data shows a huge spike in purchases of pulses, gold and silver–indicating higher consumption–but demand for fuel, mineral ores and metals, machinery and equipment remained in negative zone, reflecting static industrial and manufacturing demand.

Yet, there are some oases of optimism— India’s trade in services for the first eight months of 2015-16 (April-November) showed a positive balance of $48.047 billion. In fact, this is one area in which India not only fares better than China (which has traditionally suffered a negative trade balance in services) but has also been able to stave off the China slowdown factor more effectively that merchandise trade.

This, then, points to another focus area for India’s future economic diplomacy, including its bilateral engagements with China or European Union (EU) and regional arrangements like Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) or Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP).

The India and China example are instructive. India and China have multiple grounds for disagreement which occasionally drives a wedge between the two countries in multilateral negotiating forums. China’s overwhelming trade surplus with India and the festering border dispute are some of the legacy issues. Thesehave been joined by new contentions, such as India’s lack of response to China’s generous offer of building critical infrastructure.

But a common grouse should be uniting both countries’ interests at global negotiating platforms: services exports. This is because multilateral trade negotiations — such as those under World Trade Organisation (WTO) — or regional trade arrangements (examples being RCEP) and even bilateral agreements focus overly on goods trade. This is disadvantageous for India, which has competitive advantage in services but is denied level playing field in trade negotiations. China is likely to be in a similar situation when contracting exports of manufactured products forces its hand to provide a greater thrust to service exports.

India’s service sector has been a saviour for both domestic economic growth and for overall balance of payments. China’s trade in services is in negative zone because it’s a net spender on tourism and education: its trade balance was a negative $159.9 billion in 2014. This is ripe for change — a Chinese government policy document released in February 2015 set a target of $1 trillion of services trade by 2020, including accelerating services exports^{[iii] [iv]}.

With China expected to refocus economic efforts on strengthening its services sector and increasing its share in exports, both India and China need to coordinate their strategies and act in concert during multilateral trade and investment negotiations.

In fact, the UNCTAD Handbook of Statistics 2015, released recently^[v] by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), shows that services bailed out global trade during 2014. Data also shows the criticality of services exports for India, and its negative impact on China’s balance of payments. Given this strategic importance of services for both countries trade, and the continuing slowdown in demand for goods, overall global trade patterns are pointing towards the need for greater India-China cooperation in services trade.

About the author:
*Rajrishi Singhal is Senior Geoeconomics Fellow, Gateway House. He has been a senior business journalist, and Executive Editor, The Economic Times, and served as Head, Policy and Research, at a private sector bank, before shifting to consultancy and policy analysis.

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

References:
^[i] Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, India’s Foreign Trade (Merchandise): December, 2015;; <http://commerce.nic.in/tradestats/PressRelease.pdf>

^[ii] Department of Commerce, Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, December, 2015;<http://commerce.nic.in/ftpa/rgn.asp>

^[iii] The State Council; The People’s Republic of China, New guideline on boosting trade in services, ; 15 February, 2015; <http://english.gov.cn/policies/latest_releases/2015/02/15/content_281475056101818.htm>

^[iv] Gerry Shih; China’s economic planners aim to boost service exports; Reuters, 14 February, 2015<http://www.reuters.com/article/china-exports-idUSL1N0VO09W20150214>

^[v] UNCTAD;,International trade in services was main driver of growth in global trade in 2014 ; <http://unctad.org/en/pages/newsdetails.aspx?OriginalVersionID=1149&Sitemap_x0020_Taxonomy=UNCTAD%20Home>

As Secretary of State John Kerry visits East Asia in search of a solution to the South China Sea imbroglio, analysts debate whether new ways out should be explored. One proposal is to change the name of the contested body of waters.

By Ellen Frost*

US Secretary of State John Kerry’s current trip to East Asia aims to pave the way for an eventual solution to the region’s maritime territorial disputes. As he discussed the South China Sea question with ASEAN leaders to prepare for their summit with President Obama in the United States next month, analysts debated whether alternative solutions should now be explored.

One idea is to rename the South China Sea to “Southeast Asia Sea”, as proposed in an RSIS Commentary (South China Sea: Time to Change the Name, 28 April 2015 by Yang Razali Kassim). This idea coincided with, and lent support for a similar initiative by the Vietnamese Nguyen Thai Hoc foundation. It is a refreshing idea; it could also be problematic. East Asia’s new prosperity owes much to the unifying power of oceans and the expansion of seaborne trade as well as cross-border investment. Relabeling the South China Sea the “Southeast Asia Sea” symbolises the opposite.

Revising English language names

In the modern world, geographic names symbolise geopolitical, economic, and strategic relationships between or among littoral states. Pinning the name of one neighbouring country on a body of water connotes influence and even control over the others. Modern technology has developed to the point where maritime resources can be measured and harvested on a large scale. That is why the time to re-examine the name of the South China Sea is now, before the competition for resources escalates – and before land reclamation goes much further.

Re-naming a geographic entity requires international approval and dissemination. UN peacekeeping personnel, disaster relief teams, and maritime rescue squads from different member states need a shared understanding of where they are going. A committee called the United Nations Conference on the Standardisation of Geographical Names (UNCSGN) attempts to identify and apply consistent geographic labels. The UNCSGN has stated explicitly that its purpose is not to settle political disputes between states on the use or non-use of particular geographical names.

Perhaps a “South Sea,” but not a “Southeast Asia Sea”

East Asia’s new prosperity owes much to the unifying power of oceans and the expansion of seaborne trade and cross-border investment. It is true that the South China Sea laps the shores of maritime Southeast Asian countries, but the real purpose of the proposed new name is not to promote cartographic accuracy but rather to rebut and invalidate China’s “nine-dash line”. The UNCSGN would probably reject the idea (as it did when Korea attempted to re-name the Sea of Japan).

Calling the South China Sea the “Southeast Asia Sea” would meet with intense resistance from China, thereby perpetuating current divisions and escalating disputes. One of the political arguments in ASEAN’s favour is that China’s maritime claims are easily ten times the size of those put forward by ASEAN claimants; the idea of a “Southeast Asia Sea” would erode that advantage.

Except for Vietnam and maybe the Philippines, reactions to the name “Southeast Asia Sea” within ASEAN would probably be negative. ASEAN members have important economic ties to China and are therefore likely to call the idea of a “Southeast Asia Sea” premature, if not counter-productive. They might argue that one wrong (China’s insistence on the validity of the “nine-dash line”) should be resisted but not automatically mirrored by another.

Symbolising the unifying power of the Sea

Hypothetically, Southeast Asians could copy the example set by China in the East China Sea and declare an Air Defence Identification Zone (ADIZ). Although Beijing has thus far refrained from establishing an ADIZ in the South China Sea, it could do so—and perhaps even try to enforce it by forcing non-compliant aircraft down.

Would ASEAN follow suit and declare its own ADIZ in a re-named “Southeast Asia Sea?” Not likely. Since ASEAN members have been unable to agree to establish an ASEAN-wide security force for far less controversial purposes (anti-piracy and anti-trafficking, for instance), a proposal to declare a Southeast Asian ADIZ is virtually certain to fail.

Moreover, ASEAN members have no credible capacity to sustain and enforce a vast ADIZ. The Philippines and Vietnam, breaking ranks with ASEAN, might call for assistance from the US. But since Washington opposes the very idea of an ADIZ in the East China Sea, it would surely refuse to help in the case of the South China Sea. Avoiding this whole scenario is why the US is likely to oppose the name “Southeast Asia Sea” in the first place.

A far better choice would be a name that symbolises the unifying power of the sea and highlights Asia’s vast maritime network. The simplest – and probably most acceptable – name for a re-named South China Sea would be the “South Sea”. This is a direct translation of the centuries-old Chinese-language term (Nanhai), so it would be hard for Beijing to argue against it on historical or linguistic grounds. Provided that the re-naming initiative came from ASEAN or an ASEAN member, Chinese hardliners and ideologues could not claim that the choice of “South Sea” revealed a nefarious American plot to “contain” China.

Why “South Sea” is preferred

Probably the strongest argument against re-naming the South China Sea is the likely need to avoid insisting on too many concessions during wider negotiations. A comprehensive settlement of maritime claims would require the Chinese to explicitly or implicitly agree that the nine-dash line has no meaning except as a historical vestige. Chinese acceptance of the name “South Sea” or something equally neutral might be too much to expect.

On the other hand, Chinese leaders might quietly decide that the costs of insisting on the legitimacy of the “nine-dash line” and carrying out land reclamation on claimed islets outweigh the benefits. Such costs already include closer security ties between the US and Indonesia, Singapore, the Philippines, Vietnam, Japan, and others. The communique issued by ASEAN foreign ministers in August 2015 stated that land reclamations “have eroded trust and confidence, increased tensions and may undermine peace, security and stability in the South China Sea”. Harsh Chinese criticism of ASEAN’s concerns will sound increasingly off-key.

Whatever form a settlement takes, a new English-language name for the South China Sea could be incorporated in the text or in the annexes. In the context of a wider settlement, renaming the South China Sea would be timely, but a new and widely accepted name – perhaps the “South Sea” – would signal a small, seemingly technical, but meaningful contribution to peace.

*Ellen Frost is a Senior Adviser at the East West Centre and a Visiting Distinguished Research Fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies, National Defence University. The views expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official policy or position of the National Defence University, the Department of Defence, or the US government. She contributed this specially to RSIS Commentary.