NATO’s 28 leaders took decisions to bolster the Alliance’s deterrence and defense at the first working session of the Warsaw Summit on Friday. The leaders decided to send more forces to the eastern part of the Alliance, declared a milestone for Ballistic Missile Defence, and decided to recognize cyberspace as an operational domain. Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg welcomed the result, saying “the decisions we have taken today will help keep our nations safe in a more dangerous world.”

The leaders agreed to enhance NATO’s military presence in the east, with four battalions in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania on a rotational basis – to be in place starting next year. The Secretary General welcomed that Canada will lead the battalion for Latvia, Germany will lead in Lithuania, the United Kingdom will lead in Estonia, and the United States will lead in Poland. He also commended other Allies for announcing contributions to these battalions, and thanked the host nations for their support. Allies further agreed to develop a tailored forward presence in the south-eastern part of the Alliance.

Leaders also decided to declare Initial Operational Capability of NATO’s Ballistic Missile Defence.

“This means that the US ships based in Spain, the radar in Turkey, and the interceptor site in Romania are now able to work together under NATO command and NATO control,” said Stoltenberg.

Leaders pledged to strengthen their own cyber defences, and recognized cyberspace as a new operational domain. “This means better protecting our networks and our missions and operations, with more focus on cyber training and planning,” the Secretary General said.

Leaders also reviewed and reconfirmed the importance of spending more and spending better on defence. The Secretary General welcomed that 2015 was the first year in many with a small increase in defence spending, and that estimates for 2016 show a further increase of 3%, or US $8 billion. “We still have a long way to go, but I believe that we have turned a corner,” he said.

The Secretary General stressed that “NATO poses no threat to any country,” and continues to seek constructive dialogue with Russia. Calling the NATO-Russia Council “an important tool to manage our relationship,” Stoltenberg recalled that a new meeting of the NATO-Russia Council will be held at ambassadorial level in Brussels on 13 July.

NATO leaders will further discuss current security challenges this evening, joined by their counterparts from Finland and Sweden, and the Presidents of the European Council and the European Commission.

The US military conducted two counterterrorism strikes this month against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula near Shabwah Governorate in central Yemen, according to a US Central Command news release issued Friday.

A strike on July 1 killed two al-Qaeda operatives, and a strike on July 4 killed two al-Qaeda operatives, the release said.

Strikes against al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in Yemen put consistent pressure on the terrorist network and prevents members from plotting and executing attacks against U.S. persons, the American homeland and U.S. allies, the release said.

A Significant Regional Threat

AQAP remains a significant threat to the region, the US, and beyond, the release said.

Al-Qaeda’s presence has a destabilizing effect on Yemen; it is using the unrest in Yemen to provide a haven from which to plan future attacks against our allies as well as the US and its interests, the release said.

The US will not relent in its mission to degrade, disrupt and destroy al-Qaeda and its remnants, the release said.

The US remains committed to defeating AQAP and denying it safe haven regardless of its location, the release added.

Strikes conducted by the US in Yemen continue to diminish AQAP’s presence in the region, the release said.

By Col. Robert E. Hamilton*

(FPRI) — At the recent Georgian Defense and Security Conference, Western policymakers expressed strong support for Georgia’s accession to NATO, and Georgian policymakers reiterated that there was no turning back from their country’s western course. Neither of these statements is necessarily true: Georgia is not likely to be admitted to NATO in the near future and Tbilisi’s westward course is not irreversible. These facts are regrettable, since Georgia has done more than enough to qualify for Alliance membership, and since most Georgians do see themselves as belonging to the European family of nations.

The problem, of course, is Russia. Leaders of NATO countries have so far been unwilling to risk Moscow’s wrath by inviting Georgia to join the Alliance, and Russia has mounted a relentless propaganda campaign to convince Georgians that they are unwanted in Europe, and that in any case they share more common values with Russians than they do with Europeans. Breaking this stalemate – inviting Georgia into NATO without further destabilizing the region – can and should be done.

Doing so, however, will require from Western policy-makers both the courage to invite Georgia into NATO over the inevitable Russian threats and the empathy to understand and – to the extent possible — mitigate the source of Russian resistance to NATO’s further enlargement. Two of the standard and oft-repeated lines from Western leaders about NATO enlargement have been that every country has the right to choose its own alliances and that Russia sees no threat from NATO enlargement, but simply carps about such a threat for propaganda value.

The first of these statements is at best aspirational and the second is simply untrue. After all, if every country really had the right to choose its own alliances, Georgia would already be a NATO member. It has done everything NATO has asked and more; the resistance of some NATO members to admitting Georgia has nothing to do with the country’s readiness for Alliance membership and everything to do with Russia’s presumed reaction to it. As long as Russia is willing to use military force to derail the NATO aspirations of some of its neighbors, stating that every country has the right to choose its own alliances is meaningless. While these countries may have the theoretical right to do so, they do not have the actual ability. Second, Russia is willing to use military force to prevent NATO’s further enlargement for two reasons. First, it does see a threat from Georgian membership in NATO, and second, the West has made no real attempt to deter Russian use of force against Georgia. Only by understanding the nature of the threat Russia perceives from NATO can the Alliance design an effective deterrent strategy towards Russia and thereby move forward on Georgia’s application for membership.

Does NATO Threaten Russia?

Most Western policymakers dismiss Russia’s assertions that NATO’s enlargement threatens it. While it is true that nothing in NATO policy or strategy can reasonably be seen as threatening Russia, this does not mean that NATO enlargement is not threatening to Russia. This is a key distinction and one often overlooked or dismissed in NATO capitals. It is true that admitting Georgia to NATO will not appreciably change the military balance between NATO and Russia. However, Georgia’s accession to NATO would complicate Russian efforts to support its ally Armenia and – in the Russian mind, at least – potentially serve to undermine its efforts to stabilize its restive North Caucasus.

But these are minor security complications, not rising to the level of a military threat. Indeed, the threat Russia perceives from Georgia’s accession to NATO and Alliance enlargement in general is not a military one. Instead, the threat is of a political nature.

The prospect of a ring of liberal democracies with open societies around Russia is seen as threatening to the Kremlin, especially since Russia believes the West is actively promoting the overthrow and enforced democratization of regimes friendly to it. In the past the Kremlin based its legitimacy with the Russian people on its demonstrated ability to deliver economic growth, often at rates higher than the reformed economies and political systems of its former satellites. But the recent oil price crash revealed that this growth was predicated on a single commodity, not a diverse and resilient economy, and Western sanctions over Russia’s intervention in Ukraine exacerbated Russia’s economic pain.

With the basis of its legitimacy thus threatened, the Russian regime has switched to basing its legitimacy on its ability to protect Russia from the political, economic and cultural threat allegedly posed by the West. Politically, Moscow portrays the West as trying to destabilize Russia through “color revolutions” and “Maidans”; economically it alleges that West is trying to keep Russia dependent; and culturally it plays up the supposed incompatibility of Western attitudes toward homosexuality, gender roles and other social issues as a threat to traditional Orthodox Christian values.

NATO must understand this view and take it into account when making decisions. This does not mean that NATO should end enlargement because of these (largely unfounded) Russian fears. As Olga Oliker of the Center for Strategic and International Studies has remarked, Russia will continue to have a definition of its minimal security requirements that is out of sync with what the West can deliver and with what is normal for a 21st century European state. But it also does not mean NATO should discount or minimize what are genuine Russian fears of isolation from and destabilization by Western powers. As Oliker also says, these fears are real, which will make Russia difficult to reassure and easy to escalate with.

Ignoring or discounting these fears has the potential to lead to disaster, as the 1983 Able Archer incident shows. In this incident, Soviet fears that NATO was preparing a nuclear first strike against it were uncovered by British intelligence but discounted as Soviet propaganda by the U.S. intelligence community. As a result, NATO went ahead with its annual Able Archer exercise in November of 1983. This exercise simulated a Soviet conventional attack on Europe and a NATO nuclear response, and Soviet interception of communications from the exercise caused it to put its nuclear forces on alert. Only later did the Reagan administration learn how close the Soviets were to misperceiving NATO’s intentions and starting a nuclear war. This realization was a critical component in Reagan’s reassessment of the Soviet-American relationship. Now as in 1983, failing to understand the source of Moscow’s fears can potentially lead to destabilization and miscalculation.

Should Georgia Be Accepted into NATO?

There are three main arguments against accepting Georgia into NATO: that it is not defensible militarily, that it has unresolved territorial issues that make it unsuited for Alliance membership, and that the Georgian political leadership is rash and unpredictable, making Georgia a liability to NATO. None of these arguments stand up to scrutiny. First, no NATO state bordering Russia is defensible individually. This applies to all three Baltic states and Norway now, and it applied to Norway and Turkey during the Cold War. Indeed, the entire idea behind collective defense is that states that might not be able to resist an aggressor individually can do so collectively. In order to deter aggression, NATO doesn’t have to make Georgia (or other front line states) able to prevail in a conventional military conflict against Russia. However, it does have to make NATO as an alliance able to prevail in that conflict, and it must have a potent, credible and clearly communicated threat to Russia that if it attacks a NATO state it is in a war with NATO as an alliance, not only with that state. Instead of asking whether Georgia is defensible we should be asking if NATO as an alliance can defend itself against Russia and whether adding Georgia to the Alliance will enhance or detract from NATO’s deterrence and defense capabilities. Asking if Georgia, Norway or the Baltic states are defensible individually is similar to asking if West Berlin was defensible in the Cold War. Clearly it was not, but the assurance that a Soviet attack on it would provoke a response not only from Germany but also at a minimum from the US, France and the UK – all of which had forces stationed there — served to deter Soviet aggression against Berlin even at times of exceptional tension.

The next argument against Georgia’s NATO membership is that it has unresolved territorial disputes. NATO’s policy on enlargement states that countries that have “ethnic disputes or external territorial disputes, including irredentist claims, or internal jurisdictional must settle those disputes by peaceful means in accordance with OSCE principles. Resolution of such disputes would be a factor in determining whether to invite a state to join the Alliance.”[1] There are three main points here. First, NATO policy is often misquoted by opponents of Georgia’s NATO accession. As NATO’s policy makes clear, resolution of territorial disputes is a factor to be considered in evaluating a new member’s suitability for Alliance membership, not a pre-condition for Alliance membership.

Next, there is precedent for admitting new members with territorial disputes: when the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) was admitted in 1955, about a third of German territory was under Soviet occupation and calling itself the German Democratic Republic (GDR). Not only did the FRG refuse to acknowledge the GDR in 1955, but it threatened to break off diplomatic relations with any country that did. Finally, the Georgian government has issued a unilateral non-use of force pledge with respect to its separatist territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, and it regularly reiterates this pledge.

The third argument against admitting Georgia to NATO, often only implied not stated, is that its government is unpredictable, rash, unreliable and would be a liability for NATO. This argument has its roots in the 2008 Russia-Georgia war, and it misreads the start of that war as due to Georgian overconfidence, allegedly brought on by a perception that the U.S. would support it in a war with Russia. This view overlooks the long period of Russian escalation in Abkhazia and South Ossetia designed to either provoke a Georgia reaction or to gradually establish effective control over those areas in the event Georgia did not react.

While the war took place between Russia and Georgia, its larger causes were geopolitical and largely outside of Georgia’s control. First, Russia was provoked by Kosovo’s unilateral declaration of independence in February 2008, which was seen in Moscow as a blow to Russian ally Serbia and a potential harbinger of NATO intervention elsewhere. The forcible separation of Kosovo from Serbia by NATO served as an excuse for Russia to do the same to Georgia, and Russia repeatedly made clear that it saw Kosovo as a precedent for Georgia in the spring of 2008. Next, the April 2008 NATO Bucharest summit served to both provoke Russia and to signal to it that it still enjoyed a window of opportunity to derail Georgia’s NATO accession. At that summit, NATO member states were unable to agree on how to treat the membership applications of Georgia and Ukraine. One camp led by the U.S. advocated for these countries to be formally invited into NATO and to be issued a Membership Action Plan (MAP). Another camp led by Germany resisted a formal invitation. In the end, the language in the summit communique reflected an uneasy compromise between these views. The communique reads, “NATO welcomes Ukraine’s and Georgia’s Euro-Atlantic aspirations for membership in NATO. We agreed today that these countries will become members of NATO.”[2] By formally stating that Ukraine and Georgia would become NATO members but declining to offer them a MAP or to signal they had any special status with the Alliance, NATO left the door open for Russia to intervene militarily in these states to attempt to prevent their integration with the West.

This view of Georgia as unpredictable and therefore as a potential liability to NATO also ignores the period of Russian escalation of tensions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia that occurred throughout the spring and early summer of 2008. In the end Georgia understood that Russia was determined to either provoke a showdown over Abkhazia and South Ossetia or to engage in a process of “creeping annexation” both as reaction to Kosovo and to disrupt Georgia’s movement to NATO. Georgia’s decision to launch a military operation in South Ossetia in August 2008 was an obvious mistake, but this decision was taken out of fear and not out of brashness and overconfidence.

In summary, NATO need not worry about Georgia drawing it into a war with Russia over Abkhazia and South Ossetia. First, as already noted, Georgia has issued a non-use of force pledge, and even if it were to violate that pledge a Georgian intervention there would no more oblige NATO to defend it against a Russian attack than the U.S. intervention in Iraq obliged NATO to assist the U.S. or the UK’s war with Argentina over the Falklands obliged NATO to assist it. NATO’s Article V obliges member states to consider an attack on one as an attack on all, but does not dictate how each state should respond and does not oblige NATO members to assist each other in so-called “wars of choice.”

Finally, there are those who argue that instead of inviting new members to join NATO, the Alliance should focus on ensuring it can defend its current members, particularly the Baltic states of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. This is a false dichotomy: NATO can and should continue to enlarge as it strengthens its forward deterrence. First of all, a Russian attack on the Baltics is exceptionally unlikely. Rather than directly test Article V through an armed intervention in the Baltics, Russia is likely to attempt to destabilize these states through cyber-warfare, propaganda and low-level subversion. While certainly an annoyance, this type of activity is something the governments of the Baltic states have been highly effective at countering in the past. Increased NATO assistance in these domains – along the lines of the Cyber Center of Excellence in Estonia – is prudent. Also prudent are more conventional forms of deterrence such as the stationing of ground forces in the Baltics, a step that NATO may approve at the Warsaw summit.

Another reason that the Baltics are unlikely future targets of Russian intervention is that their Russian-speaking populations are not as restive as that of eastern Ukraine. As an example, my research among the Russian-speaking population of eastern Estonia, which included interviews with several political leaders, convinced me that although political grievances exist, Russian-speakers generally feel that they do have a voice in their government, especially at the local level. Furthermore, the level of economic development in eastern Estonia is significantly higher than that just across the Russian border, and economic success can act as a palliative for political grievances. As a final counter to the argument that a threat to the Baltics makes a NATO membership invitation to Georgia unwise, it is important to note that Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia are among the strongest supporters of inviting Georgia into the Alliance.

How to Bring Georgia into the Alliance

This paper has argued that Georgia should be invited to join NATO, but that in doing so NATO must account for Russian threat perceptions. The key question, of course, is how to do both of these at the same time. To answer this question, this paper makes two assumptions, both of which can be supported by examining Russian history. The first of these is that Russia is a rational and calculating state. In other words, Russia has usually practiced and continues to practice Realpolitik; the periods in Russian history when Russia pursued a messianic or purely ideologically-based foreign policy are few. Even in the Soviet period, when it formally espoused world revolution, Moscow more often acted on the basis of material costs and benefits than it did on the basis of furthering Marxist ideological goals. Next, Russia is more likely to be provoked by vacillation and weakness than it is by strength and resolve. Where it perceives Western inattention or indecisiveness, as it did in Georgia in 2008, Ukraine in 2014 and Syria in 2015, Russia is likely to use military force to achieve its goals. However, where it perceives strength and resolve on the part of the West, Russia is far more likely to calculate that non-military instruments of power are better suited to achieving these same goals.

With these assumptions in mind, a move by NATO to admit Georgia must have the following components. First, the temporal gap between the announcement of Georgia’s acceptance into NATO and its actual accession should be as short as possible, since Russia will try to use the period before Georgia is covered by Article V to escalate tensions and possibly provoke a conflict. Next, the U.S. should consider guaranteeing Georgia’s security against external attack in this period between the announcement of Georgia’s invitation to join NATO and its actual accession into the Alliance. Third, for Georgia at least, NATO should dispense with the MAP process; it is outdated and Georgia has met all MAP requirements already. It has an imperfect but functioning democratic system of government, an open society, a market-based economy, and has already contributed far more to NATO military operations than most long-time Alliance members. As a senior U.S. military leader recently remarked, Georgia has met all NATO requirements for military interoperability and contribution to alliance combat operations, and has “nothing left to prove” to NATO.[3] Fourth, in order to mitigate the concerns of those who are concerned that Georgia will represent a liability for NATO, the Alliance should reiterate that while it recognizes Georgia within its internationally recognized boundaries, Article V only applies to areas outside Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Finally, NATO must deal with Russian fears of its further enlargement. As noted, these fears revolve principally around the political threat that Moscow perceives in a group of liberal democracies on its borders and – however unfounded – the Russian perception that NATO’s true goal is the political destabilization of Russia itself. To mitigate these fears, NATO and its members should state clearly that while they believe democracy is a superior form of government, they will respect the sovereign decisions of non-members in how they politically order their societies. While Western governments should reserve the right to critique human rights violations in other states, they should pledge not to attempt to change their systems of government either by subversion or by force.

Western governments should also make clear the distinction between governmental and non-governmental activities abroad. While it may be self-evident to Westerners that human rights Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are not tools of their governments, it is widely believed in Russia that they are, and that their activities there are designed to subvert the Russian political system on the orders of their sponsors in Western capitals. The most recent U.S. National Security Strategy (NSS) makes progress in this regard, recognizing that the emergence of democracy is a positive event, but one that has to occur organically instead of being imposed from outside. While the 2010 NSS listed among its objectives, “promote democracy and human rights abroad,” the 2015 version changes this objective to “support emerging democracies.” This might seem like a case of minor wordsmithing, this change is significant because it implies that imposing democracy from outside is not U.S. policy.

Conclusion: What Georgia Brings to NATO

Georgia belongs in NATO. It has met every benchmark that NATO has established and is currently more prepared for NATO than the majority of post-communist countries were at time of their admission.

Next, NATO declared eight years ago that Georgia would be a member of the Alliance. Instead of repeating empty slogans about the theoretical right of every state to choose its own alliances while allowing Russia to prevent its neighbors from exercising this right, the time has come for NATO to find the courage to invite Georgia into the Alliance and the empathy to do so while mitigating Russian concerns.

Georgia, Ukraine and Moldova are critical to the geopolitical future of Europe. They are the only three states that have shown sustained interest in integrating into the Euro-Atlantic community, have taken most or all of the steps necessary to do so, are geographically positioned to join Europe and yet have to this point been excluded from NATO and the EU. They are also the only three post-Soviet states that have territory under Russian military occupation. The fate of these three states over the next decade or more will determine whether the rules-based order among democracies in the Euro-Atlantic world continues to grow or retrenches.

Inviting Georgia into the Alliance at the Warsaw NATO summit would be a key step in advancing the geopolitical prospects of these states, since it would prove that sustained effort in integrating with NATO can be rewarded even over Russia’s objections. Georgia needs a positive sign; continued rebuffs by NATO support the Russian narrative that the West does not want and will never accept Georgia. The Russian soft power onslaught in Georgia has been relentless, and to this point Georgian support for NATO membership has held steady at around 70%, but there is no guarantee that this support will be perpetual. Georgia has met the political benchmarks for NATO accession, it has undertaken reforms of its economy that make it among the most open and liberal in Europe, and its soldiers have fought and died alongside NATO forces in Afghanistan. It is time for this effort to be rewarded by an invitation to join NATO at the Warsaw summit.

Inviting Georgia to join NATO would not be a case of elevating values over security interests, or comprising NATO’s security in the name of “doing the right thing” by a reliable partner. There are also purely instrumental reasons for bringing Georgia in to NATO. In short, NATO and EU conditionality were factors in the liberalizing reforms that Georgia has undertaken in the past decade-plus. Research in political science has shown repeatedly that liberal democracies are more predictable, stable and peaceful in their relationships with other democracies. In fact, the observation that democracies do not fight each other has been called “the closest thing we have to an empirical law in the study of international relations”.[4] However, heightened external threats are often correlated with retrenchment into more autocracy. Guaranteeing Georgia’s security by bringing it into NATO is the best way to ensure it consolidates its democratic transition. On the other hand, allowing it to succumb to Russian pressure ensures that Ukraine and Moldova will do so as well and entrenches the zone of autocracy and instability in Europe. It is this, and not the further enlargement of NATO, that is most likely to lead to a new Cold War.

The views expressed are the author’s own and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army War College, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

About the author:
* U.S. Army Colonel Robert E. Hamilton is an Eurasian area specialist. His current assignment is as a professor in the Department of National Security and Strategy at the U.S. Army War College. He has served as a strategic war planner and country desk officer at U.S. Central Command, as the Chief of Regional Engagement for Combined Forces Command-Afghanistan, and as the Chief of the Office of Defense Cooperation at the U.S. Embassy in Georgia and as the Deputy Chief of the Security Assistance Office at the U.S. Embassy in Pakistan. Colonel Hamilton was a U.S. Army War College fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, DC, where he authored several articles on the war between Russia and Georgia and the security situation in the former Soviet Union. Colonel Hamilton holds a PhD in International Relations from the University of Virginia.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

Notes:
[1] “Study on NATO Enlargement”, internet resource at: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_24733.htm, accessed 1 June 2016.

[2] “Bucharest Summit Declaration”, online resource at: http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/official_texts_8443.htm, accessed 1 June 2016.

[3] Senior U.S. military leader at the 2016 Georgian Defense and Security Conference, Tbilisi, Georgia, 24-25 May 2016.

[4] Jack S. Levy, “Domestic Politics and War,” in Robert I. Rothberg and Theodore K. Rabb, The Origin and Prevention of Major Wars (New York, Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 88.

By Hashi Kenneth Tafira*

South African colonial modernity fabulously benefited those who prosecuted cruel adventuring; their descendants still enjoy the ill-gotten social wages. 1994 didn’t usher a new society, so decolonisation remains an unfinished undertaking. A national project that rehabilitates and restores the full humanity of the victims of racism is an urgent necessity now.

The end of juridical apartheid in 1994 brought hope to many, especially those who had suffered centuries of racial subjugation and exploitation. The much vaunted rainbow nation and the narrative of a non-racial society spelled a new beginning. With this mantle came the rather premature optimistic expectation of improved race relations and, of course, ethnic tolerance given apartheid’s cultural relativism and ethnos; an official policy that masked its insidious virulent racial social engineering project.

In 1994 attempts were made to transcend the past and craft the future, a future where all races and all ethnicities would live in harmonious, tolerant environs characterised by lofty ideals of reconciliation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) headed by cleric Desmond Tutu epitomised this principle. Of course the commission has been subjected to critique and battery from different angles. Recent incidents of white anti-black racism (which are not new in post-1994 anyway) demand renewed appraisal of the postapartheid reconciliation and rainbowism agenda.

The career of post-1994 white supremacist racism shows that attempts at improving race relations and efforts to transcend the concept of race remain a pipedream. There are mainly three reasons my presentation makes to show that South Africa’s racial problem cannot easily be solved without asking fundamental historical questions while at the same time critically examining the country’s social structure, its historical social formation and the historical demands of masses of the black populace.

Firstly, I would begin by declaring that South Africa’s race and racial problem is a colonial problem which cannot be peremptorily overcome without rethinking and reconsidering decolonisation. South Africa’s colonial modernity was founded on genocidal impulses, epistemological erasures, rape, murder, chivalrous plunder, confiscation of indigenous land and livestock. South African colonial modernity which spans five hundred years has been a long gory story that is etched in blood, sweat, tears and suffering for those who have been subjected to its vicious machinations. South African colonial modernity has immensely and fabulously benefitted those who prosecuted cruel adventuring; their descendants still enjoy these ill-gotten social wages. 1994 didn’t usher a new society congruent with the principles of the liberation struggle, implying that decolonisation remains an unfinished undertaking. I argue, in finality, that a new humanity, that not only rehabilitates but restores the ontological personality and the humanity of victims of South African modernity, is an urgent necessity today.

The first step is restoration of land to its rightful owners which helps in recreating a new personhood. Secondly decolonial ethics must be part of the official agenda whereby it’s not enough to deracialise society but decolonise it including its institutions, its framework of value systems and importantly the psyche and minds of both black and white South Africans.

My second observation is that race/racism denialism and colour-blindness has been a bane to efforts towards harmonious racial relations. Race denialism which runs deep in the country’s historiography, from apartheid ethnos to the dominant liberation movement, has had a far-reaching impact. Worse still South African social formation has been analysed in rather dishonest academic and defective analytical tools. Class rather than the race question has been privileged in this schema. The result is that we live in a society where there is racism without race, racists without racism. An abhorrent narrative that has emerged from all this has been white racists and the general white population accusing those blacks (who historically are victims of racism) speaking out on the racial issue and calling for racial justice, black racists. Whites have suddenly become victims of reverse racism. The tag “racist” apportioned to blacks shows the extent of the dishonesty of South African white racists. With regards to the American experience, Hoyt .W. Fuller observes:

“Consider: America is a racist society. That is, opportunity and rewards are apportioned, for the most part, according to race and colour. The preferred and the privileged are white; the rejected and the degraded are non-white…The non-whites understand that much of the “the good life” for white Americans is bought at the price of their continued subjugation.” [1]

Similarly, the age-old biological racism is still apparent. Referring to black people as primates is inherent in any racist project. It is part of the image making, a binary representation of black as evil and ugly; white pure and clean. Carolyn .F. Gerald captures this essence perfectly well:

“If it is someone else’s reshaping of reality which we perceive, then we are within that other person’s sphere of influence and can be led to believe whatever he wishes us to believe; that a rosebush is pleasant because it has a fragrant smell, or that it is unpleasant because it has thorns.” [2]

Gerald continues:

“We are black people living in a white world. When we consider that the black man sees white cultural and racial images projected upon the whole extent of his universe, we cannot help but realize that a very great deal of the time the black man sees a zero image of himself.” [3]

In post-1994 it has become taboo and criminal to insist that racism is alive. Recently there has been rather encouraging efforts to acknowledge that white anti-black racism in South Africa is healthy, hearty and hale. Opening up a robust conversation on this topic shows that society is coming to terms with this rather reprehensible problem. After years of denial the bubble is now bursting. White culpability and responsibility for the current Black Condition is huge. White South Africans have to sign an admission of guilty and accept that they are continued beneficiaries of an unjust system. In the same vein it doesn’t help matters for anybody, black or white, to insinuate that the apartheid/colonial discomfiture is a thing of the past; that we should forgive and forget and move on, that those who hanker on the past are inimical to progress. This has been the fate of reconciliation efforts – plastering over cracks. Acknowledging and recognising a problem is a step towards crafting solutions.

Thirdly, I advocate for pluri-culturalism, in other words a pluri-cultural society. Here are the reasons why. Pluri-culturalism is an anti-dote to rainbowism/non-racialism. The latter two, as we have witnessed have been proven failures, have neither succeeded to improve South African racial tensions nor ease ethnic differences. They are founded on a false premise; on rather awe-inspiring jeremiads about reconciliation; on an untenable hope that beneficiaries of South African racism would be ready to live with other people in peace and harmony; on victims forgiving perpetrators who are not prepared to ask for atonement of their sins nor acknowledge the humanity of blacks. Rainbowism/non-racialism is silent on the historical facts which point out how South African social formation came to be. It neither suggests reparations for the victims of South African colonial modernity nor call for social justice. Rainbowism/non-racialism is premised on liberal, rather than liberation, notions of democratic citizenship.

Many black South Africans are still proscribed outside the nation and its fruits. Black African migrants are victims of black-on-black-anti-black-racism, itself a historical accrual and a historical white anti-black-racist depository. On the other hand pluri-culturalism is antithetical to rainbowism/non-racialism. It calls not for a non-racial society but an anti-racist society where the citizenry is made conscious of the evils of racism, that erstwhile racists and imperialists have no place in our midst; is equipped with a moral responsibility that calls for an equal society where equal rights and justice are ideals that are upheld with conviction.

Pluri-culturalism is insistent in an uncompromising manner on social justice. It is a commitment to the idea of the human, whereby in society a human being and his/her needs take precedence. It calls for an analysis of the objective and material conditions of a people. It critically reviews the “death-zones”, the spaces engineered and spatially formulated for those proscribed outside the human. It calls for their dismantlement and unapologetically says the people must get food, shelter and enjoy the gift of life.

Pluri-culturalism is driven by truth and relentlessly pursues it to its core and to its logics. It is driven by African humanist ethos that sees the human in the other human. It is inspired by African ancient values of sharing. It doesn’t see a stranger as alien but one of the cosmopolites and planetary universes. It recognises the cosmological and the spiritual disposition of African people. It is from these considerations that a pluri-cultural society impinges on.

Finally pluri-culturalism is founded on Pan-African ethos that reneges on artificially imposed colonial borders and refuses to acquiesce to colonial crafted differences.

It would be important that the conversation on race relations in South Africa be continued and insisted upon without fear of consequence. Of course the racial issue is world-wide, white supremacy is global, and the assault on the black body is global. This is an opportune moment for all committed to the idea of the human to begin to take a responsibility and say the decolonisation project is an unfinished business of the liberation struggle.

* Dr Hashi Kenneth Tafira is the author of Black Nationalist Thought in South Africa: The Persistence of an Idea of Liberation, 2016, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Endnotes:
[1] Hoyt. W.Fuller.1972. The New Black Literature: Protest or Affirmation.in Addison Gayle.Jr.,ed.The Black

[2] Carolyn .F. Gerald. 1972. The Black Writer and his Role. In Addison Gayle .Jr., ed. The Black Aesthetic. New York: Anchor Books, p350.

[3] Ibid: 352.

On June 22, France’s outspoken ambassador to the United States, Gérard Araud, said: “The next President will face a multipolar world where the U.S. will be the main but not the only power. Realism is the only possible agenda.” It is unusual for such a close ally of the U.S. to make this statement. After all, it has been one of the pillars of the U.S.’ self-identification that it is the major force in the world. Political leaders in the U.S. routinely speak of the country as the greatest in the world, the only country with truly global ambitions and with global reach. U.S. military bases litter the continents of the world, and U.S. warships move from ocean to ocean, bearing terrifying arsenals. When the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) collapsed in 1991, it became self-evident that the U.S. was the sole remaining superpower. Unipolarity defined the world order. So what is it that makes the French ambassador speak of a multipolar world?

Araud is not alone in his realism. Some years ago, former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger alerted the political elite against its belligerent rhetoric about China. In his 2011 book On China, Kissinger wrote of the need for the U.S. and China to form a partnership which would be “essential to global stability and peace”. Confrontations over the shipping lanes in the South China Sea and disputes over currency manipulation dangerously flirt with the language of war. “Relations between China and the United States need not—and should not —become a zero-sum game,” wrote Kissinger. China had become too important for the U.S. to indulge in Cold War theatrics. It was far more important, Kissinger noted, for the two powers to come to an understanding on how to confront global imbalances—whether economic or political.

The Republican nominee for President, Donald Trump, not known for his political sobriety, is running on a campaign slogan that admits to today’s reality. “Make America Great Again!” says the slogan, which acknowledges the weaknesses of the U.S. at this present time. At least Trump admits to this, although he hastily suggests that somehow his presidency, miraculously, will transform the vulnerabilities of the U.S. into strengths. Trump blames the presidency of Barack Obama for the collapse of the country’s strength. He condenses the right-wing antipathy to Obama in his belief that it is Obama who has brought the U.S. into disrepute. Racism feeds into this rhetoric, but so does masculinity. Obama is too dark and too feminine to keep the U.S. great. It requires the machismo of Trump to do the job. What Trump does not see, but what Araud and Kissinger recognise, is that the current weakness of the U.S. is not somehow because of the policies of Obama.

Trump would like to channel Ronald Reagan, who said during his presidency in the 1980s: “Let’s reject the nonsense that America is doomed to decline, the world is sliding toward disaster no matter what we do.” But Reagan came to power in a different era. Then the USSR had been deeply weakened by economic crises, China had not yet emerged as a serious economic powerhouse and few other “rivals” threatened American supremacy. Reagan could afford to junk the “false prophets of decline”. The U.S. could take advantage of its financial power to reshape world affairs in its image. But times have changed. No longer does the U.S. have the economic and political power to thrust its “tremendous heritage of idealism” (as Reagan put it in 1981) onto the world. It is not the U.S. culture and character that produced its supremacy in the 1980s. It is not enough, as Trump does, to lean on culture and character for another thrust towards world leadership.

Reagan could pillory President Jimmy Carter, a soft-spoken Democrat, for the weakness of the U.S. Machismo came easily to Reagan. He had played enough cowboys in the movies. Obama is not Carter. He has been President for eight years, during which he has found that U.S. power has been depleted. What has led to this “decline of America”?

First, the great social process of globalisation allowed U.S. firms to move their production sites around the world. The “global commodity chain” provided benefits to the owners of ideas and capital. This “1 per cent”, as the Occupy movement called them, was able to earn ferocious returns on investment, while the workers of the U.S. found themselves unemployed, underemployed and certainly underpaid. Income inequality increased and access to basic social goods declined for the bulk of society. Bank credit allowed the workers to take enormous loans so as to manufacture a life along the grain of the American Dream. What these workers received was not “credit” but “debt”—debt rates on home mortgages, credit card, and college tuition rose astronomically. The bursting of the home mortgage balloon in 2007 set off the global credit crisis, which is one of the great indicators of the fragility of U.S. power.

Second, at the same time as the U.S. struggled with its financial crisis and its military overextensions in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Western alliance system frayed. The most important emergence, under the shadow of the Western alliance system, was the rapid growth of the German economy, which essentially absorbed major gains from European unity. German banks dominated the continent, as German firms took advantage of labour costs and its technological advancement to make the most of the common market. Southern Europe, from Portugal to Greece, suffered from the German success. European unity was threatened by this disparity.

At the same time, France made a dash to reclaim its central role amongst its old colonies, particularly in Africa. French military intervention in West Africa came alongside attempts to undermine the growth of a new African currency, the Afric. It was Araud, after all, who persuaded U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to pursue the war against Libya in 2011. Meanwhile, the United Kingdom wheezed itself into isolation from the European Union, as the Conservatives became churlish about the utility of Brussels. Brexit indicates the end of “European unity” as a dream, a major partner of the U.S. The old Western alliance system—the G7 and NATO—might well become collateral damage in this debate around “Europe” and in the rise of the old European imperial powers towards illusions of greatness.

Third, as Europe implodes, China’s rise seems secured by a crafty new relationship with a defensive Russia. The attempt by the West to encage both Russia and China seems to have failed. Europe’s gambit in Ukraine will fall apart as its own energy needs imperil a reconsideration of the sanctions against Russia. Meanwhile, on the eastern flank, China’s economic dominance has broken into the Western alliance system, with countries from Japan to Australia eager for trade with China rather than to remain as ramparts for a Western military project. Economic and military arrangements between Russia and China seem to increase as each month goes by. The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation’s (SCO) expansion into becoming a major Asian bloc, now including India and Pakistan, is an indicator of regionalism that has kept the West out. The Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC), created in 2010, pioneered this approach, since it actively saw itself as an alternative to the Organisation of American States, which was a U.S.-driven regional body. Both the SCO and CELAC have kept the U.S. and its major allies outside their decision-making process. It is a sign of the emergence of global multipolarity.

Raised on a diet of “American exceptionalism”, the U.S. public was unprepared for the compromises essential to Obama’s presidency. The deal with Iran and the inability to pursue regime change in Syria are two graphic indications of Obama’s sobriety. The Russian intervention in Syria, the first major one since the Soviet entry into Afghanistan and the Cuban entry into Angola, demonstrated the limitations of U.S. power. In February, two aid workers corralled U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry at a meeting in Istanbul. They wanted to know why the U.S. had not been more robust against the government of Bashar al-Assad. Kerry, irritated, replied: “What do you want me to do? Go to war with Russia?” These are important questions, a measure of the reality faced by the Obama team. A frazzled West and a defensive Russia-China alliance provide a new balance to the world order. The days of cowboy diplomacy are long gone. That is what Gérard Araud implies with his message.

This article originally appeared in Frontline (India).

July 14 marks the first anniversary of the historic Iran nuclear agreement that, by all accounts, represents a net plus for both regional and global peace as well as nuclear non-proliferation. Achieved through marathon, both open and secret, marathon negotiations, the agreement, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), is a complex international agreement that denotes international cooperation to bring to an end a vexing, and potentially dangerous, crisis, one that had resulted in comprehensive punitive sanctions on Iran crippling its economy. It is, by all accounts, in the interest of the international community, worth saving and defending — against its various opponents, including the hawkish anti-Iran lawmakers in US Congress, who are now keen on scuttling a major commercial deal between US and Iran permitted under the deal.

The latter refers of course to the nearly $18 billion dollar deal between Iran Air and Boeing, covering 109 aircraft for Iran’s sanctions-hit airline industry, maliciously misinterpreted by the Republican lawmakers as a means of “weaponizing the Iranian regime.” That is sheer nonsense and a clear sign of the degree to which Iran’s opponents are willing to twist the facts in order to torpedo any tangible progress in the troubled US-Iran relations.

Few, if any, of the Iran-bashing US lawmakers are willing to concede the merits of the JCPOA, according to which Iran agreed to substantially reduce its civilian nuclear program, adopt the intrusive Additional Protocol, and allow extensive monitoring of its nuclear activities on a long-term basis, in exchange for the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions. According to the various reports by the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Iran has fully complied with its obligations under the JCPOA, even though the other side, i.e., mainly the US, has dragged its feet and fell short of full compliance, thus instigating loud complaints from Tehran.

During this past year, Iran’s missile program has been a focus of controversy, with the US slapping new sanctions on Iran over Iran’s multiple test-firing its conventional missiles, which it insists are purely conventional and fore deterrent purposes, although both sides have been careful not to let this spoil the agreement, which went into effect in mid-January, 2016.

As the New York Times editorial on July 5, 2016 rightly put it, “It’s important that Iran benefit from meetings its commitments.” Unfortunately, the move by the US Congress to prevent the Boeing deal with Iran, which will have direct ramifications for the related $27 billion dollar Iran deal with Airbus, threatens the well-spring of the JCPOA and, should it pass both houses, then it ought to be vetoed by President Obama, who counts on the JCPOA as one of the shining examples of his legacy.

On the other hand, if the Boeing deal is blocked as a result of the Congressional meddling, then we are likely to witness a strong backlash against the agreement in Iran, in light of the strong criticisms of the US’s inaction with respect to its obligations under the agreement. Chances are that Iran would retaliate by engaging in selective non-compliance, in order to send a strong signal to Washington regarding the rule of reciprocity. Bottom line, the JCPOA will go to waste if the Iranophobic politicians in US gain the upper hands in dictating the nature of US’s compliance with its (international) obligations.

Hopefully, the US realizes the risks to the JCPOA if Iran continues to be deprived of harvesting the economic benefits of the JCPOA, which has also benefited the cause of broader US-Iran diplomacy, such as with respect to anti-terrorism and the conflict in Syria.

Two major news stories here in the U.S., both chilling, point out how readily U.S. authorities will murder people based on race and the slightest possibility of a threat to those in places of power.

On July 5, Baton Rouge police killed Anton Sterling in a Louisiana parking lot. Sterling was a 37-year-old Black father of five selling CDs outside of a local storege. As captured on widely seen cellphone video, two officers tased him, held him with their hands and knees down on the ground and then shot him multiple times at close range. The officers pulled a gun out of Sterling’s pocket after they had killed him but witnesses say Sterling was not holding the gun and his hands were never near his pockets. The situation might have escalated further but clearly little concern was shown for the sanctity of a human life deemed a threat to officers. In the witness-recorded video one officer promises, “If you f—ing move, I swear to God!”

Police departments in the U.S. often arrest and all too often kill citizens on U.S. streets based on “racial profiling,” Young men of certain demographics are targeted based on their “patterns of behavior” for confrontations in which officers’ safety trumps any concern for the safety of suspects, and which easily ramp up to killing.

And so it is abroad. The week’s other chilling news involved the long-promised release of U.S. government data on drone strikes and civilian deaths. The report covered four countries with which the U.S. is not at war. From 2009 through 2015 in Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Libya the U.S. admits to its drone strikes having killed between 64 and 116 civilians, although these numbers are only a small fraction of even the most conservative estimates on such deaths made by credible independent reporters and researchers over the same period. With U.S. definitions of a “combatant” constantly in flux, many of the 2,372 to 2,581 “combatants” the government reports killed over the same period will have certainly been civilian casualties. Few eyes in the U.S. watch for cellphone video from these countries, and so the executing officers’ versions of events are often all that matters.

In June 2011 CIA Director John Brennan stated there hadn’t been “a single collateral death” caused by drone strikes over the previous eighteen months. Ample reportage showed this statistic was a flat lie. Marjorie Cohn notes that what little we know of President Obama’s 2013 policy guidelines (still classified) for decreasing civilian deaths is inconsistent even on the point of a known target having been present. Many strikes are targeted at areas of suspicious activity with no idea of who is present.

As Philip Giraldi notes, a March 2015 Physicians for Social Responsibility report claims that more (perhaps far more) than 1.3 million people were killed during the first ten years of the “Global War on Terror” in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. Adding Syria, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen, he finds the current total might easily exceed 2 million with some estimates credibly going to 4 or beyond. He fears the data released July 1st will end up normalizing the drone program, writing: “The past 15 years have institutionalized and validated the killing process. President Clinton or Trump will be able to do more of the same, as the procedures involved are ‘completely legal’ and likely soon to be authorized under an executive order.”

The July 1st data minimizes civilian deaths by limiting itself to countries with which the U.S. is not at war. But the United States’ drone arsenal is precisely designed to project violence into areas miles from any battlefield where arrest, not assassination would before have been considered both feasible and morally indispensable in dealing with suspects accused of a crime. U.S. figures do not count untold numbers of civilians learning to fear the sky, in formerly peaceful areas, for weapons that might be fired without warning. The drones take away the very idea of trials and evidence, of the rule of law, making the whole world a battlefield.

In the U.S. neighborhoods where people like Alton Sterling most risk summary execution, residents cannot be faulted for concluding that the U.S.’ government and society don’t mind treating their homes as warzones; that lives of innocent people caught up in these brutal wars do not matter provided the safety and property of the people outside, and of the people sent in to quell disorder, are rigorously protected.

My friends and sometime hosts in Afghanistan, the Afghan Peace Volunteers, run a school for street kids, and a seamstress program to distribute thick blankets in the winter. They seek to apply Mohandas Gandhi’s discipline of letting a determination to keep the peace show them the difficult work needed to replace battlefields with community. Their resources are small and they live in a dangerous city at a perilous time. Their work does little, to say the least, to ensure their safety. They aim to put the safety of their most desperate neighbors first.

It makes no-one safer to make our cities and the world a battlefield. The frenzied concern for our safety and comfort driving so much of our war on the Middle East has made our lives far more dangerous. Can we ask ourselves: which has ever brought a peaceful future nearer to people in Afghan or U.S. neighborhoods– weaponized military and surveillance systems or the efforts of concerned neighbors seeking justice? Gigantic multinational “defense” systems gobble up resources, while programs intended for social well-being are cut back. The U.S. withholds anything like the quantity of resources needed for the task of healing the battle scar the U.S. and NATO have inflicted on so much of the Muslim world. If our fear is endless, how will these wars ever end?

We have to face that when the U.S. acts as self-appointed “global policeman,” what it does to poor nations resembles what those two officers did to Alton Sterling. We must temper selfish and unreasonable fears for our own safety with the knowledge that others also want safe and stable lives. We must build community by lessening inequality. We must swear off making the world our battlefield and be appalled to hear the U.S. government seem to tell the world “I will kill you if you f—ing move.”

The tectonic plates of American politics are no longer moving along the old fault lines of “left” versus “right” or even Democrat versus Republican.

As we’ve seen this bizarre political year, the biggest force welling up is rage against insider elites in both parties, and against the American establishment as a whole – including the denizens of Wall Street, large corporations, and the mainstream media.

Now, with Bernie Sanders essentially out of the race, Donald Trump wants Americans to believe he’s the remaining anti-establishment candidate.

It’s smart politics but it’s a hoax.

Trump is even more of an establishment figure than Hillary Clinton – inheriting a fortune from his father, spending years bribing politicians to subsidize his hotels and casinos, and repeatedly using bankruptcy to shield his money while leaving creditors and workers holding the bag.

But Trump is also a brilliant huckster who knows his mark.

“Bernie Sanders and I are in complete accord [on] trade,“ Trump said last week in Ohio. ”[Sanders] said we’re being ripped off and I say with being ripped off. I’ve been saying it for years he’s been saying it for years. I think I am saying it even louder …. Globalization has made the financial elite who donate to politicians very wealthy. But it has left millions of our workers with nothing but poverty and heartache.”

By putting opposition to trade at the center of his economic agenda, Trump gets a twofer – landing blows against big American corporations and Wall Street, and also against the Clintons (he traces America’s economic problems to the North American Free Trade Agreement that Bill Clinton signed in 1993, and the entry of China into the World Trade Organization, which Bill Clinton supported, and says Hillary “voted for virtually every trade agreement.”)

It’s pure demagoguery. Trade isn’t to blame for the declining wages and job security of most Americans.

The real problem has been the unwillingness of the biggest beneficiaries of trade (and also of job-displacing technologies) to share the gains with the rest of America – through larger wage subsidies, stronger safety nets, better schools, and easier access to higher education. Trump’s Republican Party has been the main culprit.

Trump vows to cancel the pending Trans Pacific Partnership – “another disaster done and pushed by special interests who want to rape our country” – which Hillary Clinton praised in 2012 as “set[ting] the gold standard in trade agreements,” and then reversed herself after Sanders came out strongly against it.

Too bad Clinton delegates on the Democratic Party’s platform committee muddied the waters last week by voting down a proposal by Sanders delegates to put the party on record as opposing the TPP, noting instead that “there are a diversity of views in the party” on this matter.

The central problem with the TPP is it would penalize member nations for raising health, safety, environmental, and labor standards. But this aspect of the TPP doesn’t trouble Trump, who calls America “overregulated.”

Trump’s faux populism extends to “powerful corporations, media elites, and powerful dynasties,” who, he said last week in Pennsylvania, again echoing Sanders, have “rigged the system for their benefit will do anything and say anything to keep things exactly as they are.“

Unwittingly, the GOP establishment seems intent on proving Trump’s point. Mitt Romney condemns him, conservative media pundit George Will is deserting the Republican Party because of him, big business groups like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Association of Manufacturers blast him, Republican mega-donors like Paul Singer rebuke him, and Wall Street Republicans like former Goldman Sachs CEO and Bush Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson (who initiated the Wall Street bailout) announce they’re voting for Hillary Clinton.

“It’s almost – in some ways, like, I’m running against two parties,” Trump crowed recently. “The people who rigged the system are supporting Hillary Clinton.”

It’s all an act. The real Donald Trump thinks U.S. wages are too high, and has fought against the unionization of his hotel employees.

His businesses outsource abroad like mad. Most of the suits, ties and cuff links he peddles are made in China; his luxury line of furniture comes from Turkey; the crystal for his Trump Home line is produced in Slovenia.

And the real Trump is on the side of the super wealthy. He proposes to cut taxes on the rich from 39.6 percent to 25 percent, and reduce taxes on all business income to 15 percent (thereby slashing the top tax rate of hedge fund and private-equity managers from the current 23.8 percent to 15 percent).

The real Trump isn’t a populist. He’s a plutocrat. Above all, he’s a con man. And the people being conned are average working Americans who are buying Trump’s ruse of being a man of the people.

The Neanderthals displayed great variability in their behaviour and one of the aspects in which this becomes clear is their relationship with the dead. There is evidence on different sites (e.g. Chapelle-aux-Saints in France, and Sima de las Palomas on the Iberian Peninsula) that the Neanderthals buried the dead.

Yet other sites show that the Neanderthals ate the meat and broke the bones of their fellow Neanderthals for food. Evidence of this cannibal behavior has been discovered at various sites in France (e.g., Moula-Guercy, Les Pradelles) and on the Iberian Peninsula (Zafarraya, El Sidrón).

However, there are very few sites with Neanderthal remains north of latitude 50º, as only two of these sites have provided information on possible funerary treatment. Partial skeletons have been found in Feldhofer (Germany) and in Spy (Belgium), and the study of them as well as that of their context allows one to deduce that they were interred. In fact, the excavation notes on the Spy II individual indicate that it was a complete skeleton found in a contracted position.

A new study, led by Dr Hélène Rougier, and which the Ikerbasque researcher at the UPV/EHU Asier Gómez-Olivencia has participated in, has discovered the largest number of Neanderthal human remains in northern Europe, not only in terms of the number of remains but also in terms of the number of individuals represented, a total of five: four adolescents or adults and one child. The site is the “Troisième caverne” in Goyet (Belgium).

A third of the Neanderthal remains on this site display cut marks, and many remains bear percussion marks caused when the bones were crushed to extract the marrow. The comparison of the Neanderthal remains with other remains of fauna recovered on the site (horses and reindeer) suggests that the three species were consumed in a similar way. This discovery enables the range of known Neanderthal behaviour in northern Europe with respect to the dead to the expanded.

What is more, five human Neanderthal remains display signs of having been used as soft percussors to shape stone. The Neanderthals used boulders to shape stone tools and also used bone in some cases to sharpen the cutting edges (one example closer to home can be found in the bone retouchers, mainly belonging to deer, recovered on the Azlor site in Dima, Bizkaia).

So far, there have been three sites in which the Neanderthals are known to have used the bones of a fellow Neanderthal to shape stone tools: a femur fragment in the case of Krapina in Croatia and Les Pradelles, and a skull fragment at La Quina in France. Goyet has provided 5 sets of human remains used as retouchers, which almost doubles the record known so far on a single site.

It has also been possible to date this collection of Neanderthal remains. It has been revealed that these Neanderthals lived between 40,500 and 45,500 years ago. The exceptional preservation of the collection has also enabled the mitochondrial DNA of these remains to be recovered, which when compared with that of other Neanderthals, reveals that genetically the Neanderthals at Goyet resembled those of Feldhofer (Germany), Vindija (Croatia) and El Sidrón (Asturias, Spain). This great genetic uniformity, notwithstanding the geographical distances, indicates that the Neanderthal population that inhabited Europe was small.

Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men continue to have disproportionately high burdens of HIV infection in countries of low, middle and high income around the world, a new study led by the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health suggests.

The findings, published in The Lancet, come four years after the same group of researchers issued a call to action, laying out an ambitious plan to curtail HIV epidemics in gay men, setting targets for policy reform, funding and improvement in effective HIV prevention and treatment services, including expanded access to pre-exposure prophylaxis (PrEP) which has been highly effective in dramatically reducing transmission among this population.

“While HIV rates have flattened overall in recent years, we’re really concerned that the HIV epidemic is continuing among gay men and we’re going in the wrong direction,” said study leader Chris Beyrer, MD, MPH, the Desmond M. Tutu Professor of Public Health and Human Rights at the Bloomberg School and president of the International AIDS Society. “It’s a tragic situation and it’s painful that the history of AIDS is looking like its future, but that’s actually where we are. But the first step in taking on a problem is recognizing and articulating it and we’ve really done that here.”

Beyrer will oversee the 21st annual International AIDS Conference from July 18 through 22 in Durban, South Africa where failure to meet the needs of gay men will be one of many topics.

HIV is no longer the death sentence it once was and many are living long lives with the virus carefully controlled with antiretroviral treatment. But while new HIV infection rates are falling among heterosexual men and women in many countries, that is not the case with gay men.

For their study, Beyrer and his colleagues analyzed published medical research from January 2007 through October 2015, to identify which elements of their call to action from 2012 had been achieved. They found a few successes. A new $100 million investment fund from the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) has been set up for key populations affected by the virus, including gay and other men who have sex with men. Several nations have either approved or initiated PrEP projects to facilitate its use by gay men after research studies have proven its effectiveness in preventing HIV infection.

But for the most part, Beyrer says, the failure to get PrEP to the people who need it most –those who are HIV negative and are at high risk of infection — and the backsliding in terms of civil liberties for the gay community in nations such as Russia, Nigeria and Uganda have contributed to the continued high HIV rates among gay men. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, for example, estimated that in the United States a 20-year-old gay black man has a 50 percent chance of becoming infected with HIV in his lifetime.

While PrEP is available in the United States, Beyrer said it is accessible only when people have health insurance to pay for it, and there are real racial and economic disparities when it comes to who actually gets it. Beyrer says in low-income, predominantly minority communities – particularly in the South, where in most states Medicaid has not been expanded to provide wider health coverage – epidemics continue. He said the United Kingdom refuses so far to cover PrEP, despite evidence of its effectiveness.

And despite its availability in poor nations for pennies on the dollar, Beyrer said often the politics of providing medical care to gay men are difficult in many countries. While many nations have made great strides in the past four years in terms of gay marriage, in other nations sodomy remains a crime and other discriminatory policies remain in place, making even getting tested for HIV a potentially dangerous ordeal. In Russia, for example, HIV information websites have even been shut down in the wake of new propaganda laws.

He pointed to a case in Malawi where a man being tested for sexually transmitted diseases was arrested after it was clear he contracted the infection from another man, frightening other gay men away from being screened for HIV and other infections.

“Stigma and discrimination continue to play a very big role in these epidemics,” Beyrer said. “In many countries, these men are just not welcome in health clinics and the fear of discrimination stands in the way of not only treatment, but even just the testing that can go a long way toward stemming the spread of disease.”

Beyrer sees some good news on the horizon. He said he expects Mexico and other nations such as Argentina and the Netherlands to expand the use of PrEP. He said he hopes to see some nations repeal their anti-gay laws.

“The global epidemic of HIV in gay men is ongoing and efforts to address it remain insufficient,” he said. “This must change if we are ever to ever truly achieve an AIDS-free generation.”

By Balasubramaniyan Viswanathan

In May 2016, Islamic State released a 22-minute video featuring at least six Indians. Open source reports indicate that at least four of them in the video have been positively identified as Sajid Bada, Abu Rashid from Azamgarh, Aman Tandel, and Fahad Shaikh from Maharashtra. Sajid Bada and Saheem Tanki were reported to have been killed in Syria way back in 2015. Interestingly, both of them have featured prominently in the latest video, generating doubts about the actual veracity of the earlier reports claiming them to be dead. However, the Indian government was quick to dismiss this latest video as being shot 10 months back, sometime in September 2015.

It would be quite intriguing to understand the reasons behind the delayed release of the video in May 2016, which was shot in 2015 itself. Islamic State, unlike many other terrorist groups, considers propaganda as a part of its strategic program and uses it as a tool to draw recruits from different parts of the world. To this effect, Islamic State runs an unrivalled media apparatus which is known for its creative, blitzkrieg propaganda using social media platforms like the Twitter and slick magazines like the Dabiq and Istok. Given the intent of the Islamic State and its ability to disperse propaganda at a faster rate to a much wider audience, the delayed release of this particular video, which is quite uncharacteristic of Islamic State, only adds to the mystery. Studying the contents of the messages propagated in this video would be germane to understanding the current thinking of the Islamic State towards India, and it would possibly help find some answers to this mystery. And more importantly, the timing of the delayed release of this video – 10 months later – raises its own interesting questions.

Firstly, the video features Abu Amr al Hindi, the nom de guerre of Aman Tandel, one of the four youngsters from Mumbai who travelled to Iraq in May 2014 to join the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria. Aman Tandel along with Fahad Tanveer Shaikh who also features in the video, was a part of the four-member group which travelled to Iraq in 2014. Shaikh was handling a pro-Islamic State Twitter account @magnetgas and propagating the terror group’s ideology. Another member of the group, Saheem Tanki, is believed to have been killed in Iraq.

Interestingly, Areeb Majeed, who was also part of this small coterie, returned to India claiming that life is difficult under the Islamic State and is presently in the custody of the National Investigation Agency. This notion is precisely the one which the Indians members of the Islamic State wanted to dispel. According to Indian Express, Tandel calls on young Muslim men in India to come to Syria for Hijrah (migration to the Islamic State) allaying fears about difficult life with Islamic State, the very reason for which one of his accomplices returned to India. Tandel states: “We are doing just fine and not at all distressed in the Islamic State. This land provides dignity to Muslims. We won’t leave this land.”

Secondly, this video has been released at a time when the Islamic State has seen severe setbacks in Syria and Iraq on the military front. According to IHS Janes, Islamic State has lost around 22% of its territory to its rivals which were earlier under its control. And its monthly revenue has almost dropped from $80 million in June 2015 to $56 million as of March 2016. This setback for Islamic State on the global stage has forced it to rearrange its focus in South Asia, especially towards India.

The Islamic community in India, which is Islamic State’s target segment for recruitment, have largely ignored Islamic State. As a result, Islamic State has not been able to attract large number Indians into its fold from the country’s large Muslim population base. As of June 2016, only 27 Indians have managed to travel to Syria and Iraq and an equal number of Indians have been stopped from travelling to Syria from India. And its efforts to set up a local franchise in India, namely Junood-ul-Khalifa-e-Hind, also has not borne fruit as around 25 operatives, including its Ameer Mudabbir Mushtaq Shaikh, have been arrested by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) in India.

Thirdly, and more importantly, Islamic State has released this video in order to ramp up its recruitment by touching on sensitive issues which have in the past fomented violent extremism in India. The message in the video is more India centric relating to issues pertaining to Babri Masjid and riots in Gujarat, Uttar Pradesh (UP). and Kashmir. According to Indian Express, Tandel vows: “We will return, but with a sword in hand, to avenge the Babri Masjid, and the killings of Muslims in Kashmir, in Gujarat, and in Muzaffarnagar.”

This statement is echoed by another Indian who also figures in the video. Abu Rashid states that they will avenge every crime that has been committed against Muslims in India. By touching upon the demolition of Babri Masjid and the communal pogrom against the Muslims in Gujarat, Muzaffarnagar (UP), Islamic State has attempted to ignite and plant the idea of atrocities being committed against the Muslims in India. In this way, Islamic State is trying to attract more Indian youngsters into its fold.

This is the first instance where Indian members of the Islamic State have commented on highly sensitive issues in India, which in the past have impacted the communal atmosphere in India. In a direct message, one of the Indian operative states that the Indians are left only with three options: embrace Islam, pay the Jizya (a form of tax for non-practitioners of Islam), or be slaughtered. The video also chastises local Muslim politicians and clerics in India for not standing up against the atrocities committed against the Muslim community in India.

Given the backdrop of Islamic State’s steady deterioration in Syria and Iraq, it would not be an exaggeration to state that the Islamic State is hunting for greener pastures in South Asia, more so in India. The delayed release of this video featuring Indians who are already dead and the messages with more India specific focus only shows that Islamic State is attempting to orchestrate or engineer a groundswell of pro-Islamic State sentiment in India, similar to the “Anwar al-Awlaki” moments for Al Qaeda whose video sermons inspired many even after his death. This sudden transition to an India centric approach which is more prominent compared to the usual call or cries to the broader idea of the Caliphate, could possibly reflect a sense of desperation on the part of Islamic State.

This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

By Jim Garamone

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said the North Atlantic Council has approved forward presence along the alliance’s border with Russia.

The secretary general briefed the press following the first day of North Atlantic Council deliberations at the July 8-9 Warsaw Summit. President Barack Obama leads the U.S. delegation.

NATO heads of state agreed to send reinforced, multinational battalions to the eastern part of the alliance. “These battalions will be robust and multinational,” Stoltenberg said. “They demonstrate the strength of the transatlantic bond, and they make clear that an attack on one ally would be considered an attack on the whole alliance.”

Multinational Battalions

Canada will be the framework nation for the battalion in Latvia, Stoltenberg said. Germany, he said, will lead in Lithuania, the United Kingdom will be in Estonia and the United States will take the lead in Poland.

“I also welcome that many other allies announced during our meeting that they will contribute in different ways,” Stoltenberg said.

The battalions will be in place next year, the secretary general said.

NATO leaders also agreed to declare initial operational capability of the NATO Ballistic Missile Defense system. “This means the U.S. ships based in Spain, the radar in Turkey and the interceptor site in Romania are now able to work together under NATO command and control,” Stoltenberg said.

He emphasized the system is entirely defensive in nature and is not aimed at Russia and its strategic nuclear defense.

“Today, we also recognized cyberspace as a new operational domain — joining land, air and sea,” Stoltenberg said. “This means better protection of our networks and missions and operations with more focus on cyber training and cyber planning.” He said the decision is a clear sign to all that the alliance is strengthening its defense in all areas.

NATO’s security depends on all nations being prepared, he said. Nations agreed to boost resilience and improve civil preparedness. They also agreed to invest in new capabilities needed to meet new threats, including hybrid warfare.

“Modern challenges require a modern alliance and they require the right resources,” Stoltenberg said.

Defense Investment Pledge

The leaders reviewed and reconfirmed the defense investment pledge made at the last NATO Summit in Wales. Last year was the first year in many with a small increase in defense spending across NATO, Stoltenberg said. Estimates for 2016, he said, show a further increase across the European allies and Canada.

“This amounts to $8 billion,” he said, noting, many allies are increasing their readiness and the ability to deploy their forces.

“We still have a long way to go, but I believe we have turned a corner,” he added,

Stoltenberg stressed that NATO is a defensive alliance. None of the 29 nations in the group — now including Montenegro, which formally joined today — want confrontation, he said.

“As we continue to strengthen our deterrence and defense, we continue to seek a dialogue with Russia,” he said. “Russia cannot and should not be isolated. Furthermore, with increased military activity in and around Europe we have an interest in agreeing about the rules of the road with Russia. We need to avoid miscalculation and accidents.”

Stoltenberg said he will convene a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council next week to brief Russia on the decisions from the Warsaw Summit.

“NATO’s greatest responsibility remains the protection of our almost 1 billion citizens,” he said. “This fundamental fact informs everything we do. The decisions we have taken today will help keep our nations safe in the more dangerous world.”

A team of scientists has developed a system that can forecast the outbreak of dengue fever by simply analyzing the calling behavior of citizens to a public-health hotline. This telephone-based disease surveillance system can forecast two to three weeks ahead of time, and with intra-city granularity, the outbreak of dengue fever, a mosquito-borne virus that infects up to 400,000 people each year.

“Thousands of lives are lost every year in developing countries for failing to detect epidemics early because of the lack of real-time data on reported cases,” said Lakshminarayanan Subramanian, a professor at New York University’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences and part of the research team. “We think our technique can be of use to public-health officials in their fight against the spread of crippling diseases.”

The work is described in the journal Science Advances.

The system measures the number of calls received at a health hotline facility to forecast the number of dengue cases at a block-by-block level.

“Instead of allocating a large work force to collect block-by-block level data on disease incidences, we crowdsource these data using citizen inquiries and feedbacks,” said Umar Saif, the Vice Chancellor of Information Technology University, Punjab and Chairman of the Punjab Information Technology Board, which implemented the system in Pakistan. “This makes health hotlines ideal for resource-constrained environments in developing countries.”

Collecting disease surveillance data traditionally requires a huge infrastructure to collect and analyze disease incidence data from all healthcare facilities in a country. Whereas, the primary appeal for this system is its capability to closely monitor disease activity by merely analyzing citizen calls on a public-health hotline.

“Early warning systems in the past only generate alerts of disease outbreaks on a city or state level,” said Nabeel Abdur Rehman, a doctoral student in computer science and engineering at NYU and one of the project’s researchers. “Alerts are often of little significance given that governments don’t have enough resources to allocate to large geographical units. Our goal was to develop a system that could pinpoint the location inside a city where disease activity has increased so the government could perform targeted containment of a disease.”

The efforts to develop the system started in the aftermath of the 2011 dengue outbreaks in Pakistan, which infected over 21,000 people and took 350 lives. Because there is no known cure or vaccine for treating different stages of dengue fever, most public health efforts focus on prevention through disease surveillance and vector control methods–i.e., eliminating the carriers of a particular disease, such as mosquitoes.

The team used more than 300,000 calls to the health hotline, set up in the aftermath of the 2011 outbreaks, to forecast the number of dengue cases across the city and at a block-by-block level over a period of two years. The researchers then matched their predictions with the actual number of cases reported in public hospitals. The results showed a high level of accuracy for the model’s predictions: the system not only flagged an outbreak, but also made an accurate forecast of both the number of patients and their locations two to three weeks ahead of time.

“To the best of our best knowledge, this system is the first to demonstrate, with significant empirical evidence, that an accurate, locality-specific disease forecasting system can be built using call volume data from a public health hotline,” said Subramanian.

“This simple technology can save thousands of lives in the developing world,” added Saif.

Ten states have announced that they are suing the federal government over a rule that would allow students to use the restrooms and locker rooms of their choice, rather than those that match their biological sex.

The July 8 lawsuit was filed in Nebraska federal court. In addition to the state of Nebraska, Arkansas, Kansas, Michigan, Montana, North Dakota, Ohio, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Wyoming joined in the legal challenge.

Friday’s lawsuit follows an earlier lawsuit by 11 states challenging the same federal directive.

“When a federal agency takes such unilateral action in an attempt to change the meaning of established law, it leaves state and local authorities with no other option than to pursue legal clarity in federal court in order to enforce the rule of law,” said a statement by Nebraska’s attorney general, announcing the new lawsuit.

“Current state law and federal regulations allow schools to maintain separate facilities based upon sex,” the announcement said.

“The recent action by these two federal agencies to require showers, locker rooms, and bathrooms be open to both sexes based solely on the student’s choice, circumvents this established law by ignoring the appropriate legislative process necessary to change such a law. It also supersedes local school districts’ authority to address student issues on an individualized, professional and private basis.”

In May, the Department of Justice and Department of Education sent a letter to all U.S. school districts announcing a new federal guidance, which instructed every public school in the country to allow students who identify as transgender to use the facilities – including restrooms and locker rooms – that match their self-determined “gender identity.”

“A school may not require transgender students to use facilities inconsistent with their gender identity or to use individual-user facilities when other students are not required to do so,” the directive said. It added “a school must not treat a transgender student differently from the way it treats other students of the same gender identity.”

The federal guidance may also affect sex-segregated athletics and roommate assignments on trips.

Although the directive does not have the force of law, it implicitly threatens schools that do not comply with lawsuits or a loss of federal aid, according to the New York Times.

For the purpose of Title IX compliance, the federal departments said they “treat a student’s gender identity as the student’s sex.” The guidance said gender identity is “an individual’s internal sense of gender” that may differ from “the person’s sex assigned at birth.”

In the last two months, the federal guidance has sparked controversy, with critics warning that it has a wide potential for abuse and endangers the safety and privacy of students.

The U.S. bishops responded to the “deeply disturbing” federal guidance by warning that it “contradicts a basic understanding of human formation so well expressed by Pope Francis: that ‘the young need to be helped to accept their own body as it was created’.”

The bishops’ May 16 statement was authored by Bishop Richard Malone of Buffalo, chairman of the bishops’ Committee on Laity, Marriage, Family Life and Youth, and by Archbishop George Lucas, who chairs the bishops’ Committee on Catholic Education.

“Children, youth, and parents in these difficult situations deserve compassion, sensitivity, and respect,” they said. “All of these can be expressed without infringing on legitimate concerns about privacy and security on the part of the other young students and parents.”

However, the federal guidance fails to achieve this balance, the bishops said, citing Pope Francis’ caution that “biological sex and the socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated.”

They stressed that the Catholic Church “consistently affirms the inherent dignity of each and every human person and advocates for the wellbeing of all people, particularly the most vulnerable.”

“Especially at a young age and in schools, it is important that our children understand the depth of God’s love for them and their intrinsic worth and beauty. Children should always be and feel safe and secure and know they are loved,” they added.

The United States said Friday it welcomes the announcement by La Mesa de la Unidad Democrática, the coalition of opposition parties in Venezuela, reiterating its desire to participate in a serious, constructive dialogue with the executive branch.

“We continue to support the efforts by former Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, former Panamanian President Torrijos and former Dominican President Fernandez to advance such a dialogue,” said John Kirby, Assistant Secretary and State Department spokesperson in a statement, adding, “We strongly urge both sides to participate constructively to address peacefully the serious challenges facing the Venezuelan people.”

Kirby said the US continues to join with countries in the region and around the world to call on the Venezuelan government to release all political prisoners, respect the constitutional role of the National Assembly, and allow the Venezuelan people to have their voices heard through constitutional mechanisms, such as the recall referendum, without delay.

A prominent Islamic cleric in the Indian city of Lucknow says the so-called the Islamic State terrorist organization is “anti-Islam,” reports The Hindu.

“ISIS is an anti-Islam and anti-human outfit,” said Maulana Rashid Farangi Mahali, imam of the Aishbagh Eidgah mosque.

“People connected to ISIS cannot be called Muslims and terror-related activities are completely anti-Islam,” the imam said in response to recent terror attacks committed in Dhaka.

The cleric made the comments during a gathering on Eid ul-Fitr where he also offered prayers that called for the end to acts of terror.

(Civil.Ge) — NATO and Georgia have agreed on “new steps” to strengthen country’s defense capabilities, among them in air defence and surveillance, foreign ministers of the Alliance said after meeting with Georgian counterpart at the NATO Warsaw summit on July 8.

In a joint statement after a meeting at the level of foreign ministers, the NATO-Georgia Commission said that “new initiatives” also include increased support for Georgia’s training and education and strategic communications.

The NATO foreign ministers “welcomed Georgia’s engagement in strategic discussion on Black Sea security” and also said that the Alliance will deepen its focus on security in the Black Sea region.

Noting “significant progress” in implementing the Substantial NATO-Georgia Package, endorsed by the Alliance at the Wales summit in 2014, the NATO-Georgia Commission’s joint statement then lists measures undertaken in this regard over the past two years.

Those steps include launch of the Joint Training and Evaluation Center (JTEC) in Georgia – Allied Command Transformation has been tasked to affiliate the center with NATO’s training and exercise work; presence of more than 30 Allied and partner security experts in Georgia to support the country in security reform efforts, including in areas such as cyber defence, aviation and logistics; the inauguration of the Defence Institution Building School in Georgia, which will provide a first pilot course this month; holding of NATO-Georgia exercise, open to partners, with the next joint drills planned in November.

“We have also decided on new steps to intensify our cooperation, to help strengthen Georgia’s defence capabilities, interoperability and resilience capabilities. These initiatives include increased support for Georgia’s Training and Education, including through a possible trust fund project, and Strategic Communications. Allies will provide support to the development of Georgia’s air defence and air surveillance,” reads the NATO-Georgia Commission statement.

“Both the existing and new initiatives aim to strengthen Georgia’s defence and interoperability capabilities with the Alliance and are helping Georgia, an aspirant country, progress in its preparations towards membership,” it said.

Like in December 2015, NATO foreign ministers again reiterated that Georgia’s relationship with the Alliance “contains all the practical tools to prepare for eventual membership”, but also reaffirmed that before joining the Alliance the country should go through a Membership Action Plan (MAP) phase, which Georgia has been denied since 2008.

Granting MAP to Georgia at the Warsaw summit was not expected.

The foreign minister also reiterated 2008 NATO Bucharest summit decision that Georgia will join the Alliance.

‘Steady Progress towards Stronger Democracy’

NATO foreign ministers “commended the steady progress made by Georgia towards stronger democracy, economic development and more effective defence institutions and modernised armed forces.”

They also “encouraged Georgia to sustain the momentum in its overall reforms, which NATO will continue to support.”

“NATO ministers looked forward to the October 2016 Parliamentary elections being conducted in accordance with the highest democratic standards,” reads the statement.

It also says that ambassadors from NATO member-states from the Alliance’s political decision-making body, North Atlantic Council (NAC), will visit Georgia this autumn.

It will be NAC’s fourth visit to Georgia; the first one took place in September, 2008, when NATO-Georgia Commission was launched, and then in November, 2011 and June, 2013.

The Alliance reiterated that it highly appreciates Georgia’s “significant contribution” to the NATO-led operations in Afghanistan and said that this, as well as Georgia’s contribution to the EU-led operations, demonstrates country’s “commitment and capability to contribute to Euro-Atlantic security.”

With 861 soldiers Georgia is the third largest troop contributor to NATO’s Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan after the United States (7,000 troops) and Germany (980 troops).

The NATO foreign ministers also reiterated their “full support to the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Georgia” and called on Russia to reciprocate Tbilisi’s unilateral non-use of force pledge.

NATO also reiterated its call on Russia to “reverse its recognition of the South Ossetia and Abkhazia regions of Georgia as independent states and to withdraw its forces from Georgia.”

The Georgian delegation at the Warsaw summit is led by President Giorgi Margvelashvili, who met NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on July 8.

Capitalist expansion and the explosion of class struggles in Mexico follow a very distinct trajectory. Large scale, long-term foreign investment in minerals and land from the late 19th to early 20th century based on high intensity exploitation, set the stage for the Mexican Revolution.

The correlation of forces shifted dramatically in favor of peasant armies, led by Emilio Zapata and Pancho Vila. The subsequent counter-revolution, from the 1920’s to mid-thirties temporarily reversed the process and witnessed the rise of a new post-revolutionary elite, allied with the US petroleum multi-nationals.

The second social upheaval began in the mid-1930’s to the end of the decade. Large-scale movements of class conscious oil workers and landless rural peasants expropriated and nationalized oil fields and landed estates establishing indigenous rural co-operatives, “ejido’.

By the early 1940s the class struggle from below was contained by the corrupt political leadership of the PRI the self-styled ‘revolutionary party’.

From the early 1940’s to the late 1960’s, Mexico was ruled by a business elite which deepened its ties and dependency on the US while retaining some of the social advances of the earlier revolutionary wave.

The balance of power shifted dramatically to the elite in the 1980’s. The class struggle from above gained ascendancy and proceeded to reverse the entire past revolutionary legacy.

Oil was privatized; co-operatives were dissolved; labor unions were ‘incorporated’ by the state; Mexico’s entire market came under US control through NAFTA.

In the face of the capitalist offensive, labor, the peasantry and the indigenous communities revolted in a wave of regional, sectoral and popular revolts.

Electoral contests were successful but the elite denied the victorious outcome.

Peasant army uprisings gained rural communities but were violently repressed or ‘contained’ when they spread.

Multitudinous marches, protests and barricades by students and professors in Mexico City successfully challenged the President’s dictatorial prerogatives but they were quelled by mass killings by the army and its death squads.

Trade unions led by electoral workers, teachers, oil and factory workers advanced social agendas but suffered massive expulsion and state intervention.

The class struggle in Mexico retains a powerful capacity to engage millions in direct action but lacks the national political and social unity to seize state power.

Mexico is the Latin American country with the greatest number of popular struggles but has the least capacity to mount a unified revolutionary movement.

The class struggle in Mexico is very fragmented, even as it undertakes heroic efforts to engage in regional, factory and provincial social struggles.

In Mexico, the alliance between foreign investors, business billionaires and the state machine controls state power; the workers, peasants and popular movements exercise hegemony at the local and sectoral level.

The correlation of forces between ‘capital and labor’ remains subject to permanent contestation. History and current practice tells us that the ebb and flow of class struggle is still indeterminate.

In our last chapter on the reign of the Trudeau dynasty, we saw Trudeau jr at what may prove to be his high point, a coveted state visit to Washington, feted by Americans besotted with royalty, a warmed over 1970s Trudeaumania.

No substance, but lots of pretty selfies and photo ops of North America’s ‘bromance’.

Syrian scam I

But already worrying signs are surfacing. Even as Obama addressed Canada’s parliament last month, another prominent America, ‘gay international’ activist Scott Long, told Torontonians about his nightmare three years in Egypt, where dictator Sisi has launched a high profile campaign to arrest and torture gays. (The later Mubarak regime and the short-lived Muslim Brotherhood interlude did not persecute gays).

At the meeting, I met a Syrian fresh off the refugee ‘boat’. He explained (in perfect English) that he had arrived from Egypt, where he and his other gay Syrian friends were given priority in processing their applications for Canadian immigration.

I expressed surprise, as the original refugee policy was not to give visas to any single men, on the pretext that they might be terrorists. “Yes, that was the first batch. I’m part of the second batch,” Raad glowed. “My poor Egyptian friends were very jealous. It is impossible for them to get the precious Canadian visa, even though they are really being persecuted now. They live in terror.”

So while straight Syrian guys are spurned, their gay brothers are given the coveted top place on the lists of thousands of families, violating stated Canadian policy.

Syrian scam II

No need to bribe whomever to get to the top of the list, as rich Syrians have done. The going rate is $30,000 in Jordan, as one refugee sponsor in Toronto found out. Latif, himself an immigrant, patriotically jumped on Trudeau’s well-meant bandwagon and put up the $20,000 to sponsor a family. He rented a large home for them, and prepared a program to help them integrate.

Latif  was shocked when they refused to move into their new home, not wanting to abandon their clan at the homey hotel room provided by the Canadian government. They whined that they expected better,  that they were promised a swimming pool. Latif handed them back to the government, hurt by their ingratitude, suspecting they were bogus refugees, cutting his losses.

Assad – friend of gays

There is no question that gays nabbed by Daesh et al are bona fide claimants for refugee status. But the motley opposition in Syria  are our ‘friends’, and the legitimate President Bashar Assad is our ‘enemy’.

Don’t try to tell a Syrian gay that. Contrary to the western media image of a blood-thirsty dictatorship, “the Syrian Arab Republic has never persecuted anyone for motives concerning their private life,” writes Thierry Meyssan. The Lebanese daily L’Orient-Le Jour, financed by the European Union (i.e., anti-Assad), slammed the Lebanese government for persecuting gays, but admitted that “under the régime of Bashar Assad, the gay community was enjoying a peaceful existence.”

L’Orient-Le Jour was told by a gay Syrian refugee that his period of military service was “the most wonderful years of my life”, and that they had “parties in reception halls rented by gay couples to celebrate their union”. It was only when Daesh arrived that he was obliged to “hide his pink and yellow pants and practice walking in a more masculine way.”

There are 31,340 Syrians already approved. Harper was condemned for only promising 1,300 refugees, none gay. Maybe his niggardliness would have allowed more careful vetting of bogus claimants, and saved both us and Syrians from future (expensive) problems?

Maybe making peace with Assad, rather than trying to assassinate him, would allow Syrian gays to be protected by the legitimate Syrian government,  pick up where they left off in 2011, and these ‘refugees’ could stay at home, where they belong?

Let’s hope that these two troubling trends among the refugees are not indicative of a wider misuse of what was supposed to be an altruistic, if poorly thought-out, embrace of those suffering from the West’s obsession with destroying the only gay-tolerant Muslim regime.

Syria, coincidentally, is just about the last holdout against the West’s neoliberal nightmare systematically being inflicted on one and all, Muslim and non-Muslim. Along with Iran, Assad’s Syria iis the only country doing anything concrete to oppose Israel’s crimes. Is it perhaps for those reasons that the West had/has Assad in their target range?

Promises withering on the vine

But there are many other disturbing signs that Justin’s beanstalk is already suffering from rot. First to raise the alarm bells was the decision to go ahead with Harper’s swan song, the $15-billion arms deal with Saudi Arabia, selling weaponized armoured vehicles to Saudi Arabia, despite strong public opposition and the obvious discomfort of  his ‘messenger’, Foreign Minister Stephane Dion.

Dion was also forced to hold his nose on another indefensible, the Conservative motion targeting the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign,  now in its eleventh year, and wildly popular among western students and people of all ages who have bothered to study the facts about Israel. Trudeau’s ‘brave’ move was actually denounced in parliament by Dion (this time not the messenger).

The only real effect  was to lose Trudeau his many student supporters, including his fellow Quebeckers, who are the strongest supporters of the Palestinian struggle in Canada. Just try to tell an idealistic student “No!” and see how far you get.

Then there’s the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which Obama urged Trudeau to sign, even though 75% of Canadians oppose it.
Trudeau’s surprises

It was a bit of a surprise that the Palestinians should be treated no better than under Harper. Poor Russia is also unpleasantly surprised to be getting the Harper treatment. Justin loudly insulted Putin during the election campaign and has not changed since, despite macho Putin graciously turning the other cheek. Canada will send hundreds of troops to ‘protect’ Latvia from the nasty Russians.

From the start, Trudeau has surprised, even shocked, many old-fashioned Canadians. He appointed four Sikhs and a Muslim Afghan woman to his Cabinet. “I have more Sikhs in my Cabinet than [Indian PM] Modi,” he bragged. Not a very diplomatic comment, considering the delicacy of balancing an Indian Cabinet, where Sikhs conjure up the tragic assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi.

Then there’s Trudeau’s brash promise in 2013 to a Kelowna BC crowd (“I’m actually not in favour of decriminalizing cannabis. I’m in favour of legalizing it.”). This shocked many, but made him an idol for youth, who made sure to come out to vote last October. A long overdue reform, one that dates from the 1972 Le Dain Report commissioned by Trudeau sr, buried in embarrassment.

But the Toronto police brought the policy crashing down, raiding half the 83 marijuana dispensaries in Toronto, confiscating legal supplies, declaring the hash brownies a “health hazard” (which you can be sure they proceeded to consume with relish). Vancouver closed 30 without the police raid fanfare. Nary a peep from Parliament Hill. Hundreds of Trudeau’s most devoted followers lost their investments. Cowardly bungling big time.

Trudeau in Toronto’s Gay Pride parade

Then there’s upcoming Bill C-16 that would “ensure that Canadians will be free to identify themselves and to express their gender as they wish while being protected against discrimination and hate,” according to Justice Minister Jody Wilson-Raybould in May. Such a radical change to Canadian laws was not part of the Liberal election package, and was not debated. It ventures into controversial territory which is still not understood.

Storm clouds

Muslim Canadians are concerned about the potential of the Syrian refugee project turning sour. Says legitimate Muslim immigrant Munib, “I came here 30 years ago with $100, and worked hard. I made a life and didn’t ask for any special treatment. There was none anyway.

“I worry that many of these Syrians have come on false pretenses and will create ill-will towards millions of honest, hard working immigrants, who are the backbone of Canada. They will be fuel for those who are against Muslims. Look at Trump and how he manipulates the immigrant issue.”

Is Justin’s beanstalk a mirage? Will Canadians soon be nostalgic for penny-pinching, honestly bigoted Harper? At least we knew what to expect. Hey, is Trudeau just Harper lite? There are too many lurches and gaffes so far for Canadians to “feel free”, as Wilson-Raybould opines. Still on his agenda are electoral reform and the tar sands. Let’s hope for some backbone.

By Rahul Krishna*

In a decision that has caused a political stir, the United States on May 12, 2016, decided to activate  new missile shield in Deveselu, Romania. The new shield, the Aegis Ballistic Missile Defense Program, has sparked off a major controversy with Russia which has viewed it to be an effort to hamper its nuclear deterrence and denounced the decision voraciously.

However, most indicators show that with the current system, or with potential upgrades, the NATO, technologically speaking, does not have the capability to intercept Russia’s longer range missiles. Why then such strong and aggressive reactions from Moscow criticising the US for taking this step? Also what sort of strategic advantage, if any, does the NATO gain by deploying this shield in Eastern Europe?

Moscow’s stance in the past

The US and the Soviet Union had signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 1972. This limited the number of BMD sites each nation could maintain and was signed in an attempt to curb the growing tensions around nuclear deterrence during the Cold War.

In 2001, Washington expressed its desire to leave the ABM treaty and officially withdrew from it in 2002. Its argument was that while the ABM treaty ensured deterrence between the US and Russia, it did not protect the US from states like North Korea or Iran who were developing increasingly long range missile capabilities. President Putin believed that the withdrawal was not something that threatened the national security of Russia. The subsequent negotiation on the START-II front as well as for the formation of the NATO-Russia Council gave reassurances that Moscow was still willing to cooperate with Washington on key initiatives.

This changed over the past few years. One of the major flashpoints occurred in 2008, when the US decided to move ahead with the construction of a missile defense site in Poland. Russia reacted sharply by threatening Poland with a nuclear strike. They made it clear that Russia would not tolerate the construction of any missile shield in eastern or central Europe.

In 2009, then newly elected President, Barack Obama, announced a major decision by the US government to halt construction on the missile defense site in Poland as well as the radar in Czech Republic. The White House had chosen to implement a sea based missile defense system, the Aegis BMD. While reset relations with Moscow was an important factor, it was also true that the Aegis system seemed to be more effective in protecting Europe from the Iranian ballistic missile threat than the one earlier proposed. Nevertheless, the decision was welcomed by then Prime Minister Putin and relations between the two countries looked to be improving.

Since then, the US and other NATO allies have deployed the Aegis BMD program on ships before they decided to initiate a land based variant of the program.

The current standoff

The major question that arises from this situation is whether Russia overreacting to a seemingly non-existent threat?

In the current state, the Aegis BMD system in Romania cannot intercept Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), that is, Russia’s nuclear deterrent. Upgrades have been planned for both the current site in Romania, and the one under construction in Poland, so that the BMD systems will have a limited capability to intercept ICBMs. This still is not a major threat to Russia’s nuclear deterrent however, as Russia possesses ICBMs that cannot be intercepted even with the upgraded Aegis system and the number of Russian ICBMs can easily overpower the limited capabilities of the interceptor. In 2007, Russia also claimed to have successfully tested a missile that could penetrate any proposed American BMD system. Why, then is Russia antagonised over the BMD sites?

The issue here is not one directly related to BMDs at all. The issue is that the US has promised boots on the ground to Poland for setting up and operating the BMD system. There has already been deployment in Romania for the same purpose. Rammstein Air Base in Germany is being used to coordinate the entire missile shield in Europe with heavy participation from the US.

All of this comes at a time of tense, strained relations. NATO allies and partner countries, 20 of them to be exact, launched a large scale military exercise in Poland recently. Several NATO countries have called for deployment of a new NATO ‘Black Sea Fleet’. The Baltic nations want NATO to increase deployment in and around the Baltic Sea, and even the traditionally neutral Finland is now hosting exercises with the NATO. In what is a direct and obvious message to Moscow, three of the major NATO powers, UK, Germany, and US held talks recently over establishing a NATO force on the borders of Russia.

Even though Russia may never display it, this reaction from NATO has made Russia jittery and uncertain. The bear does feel threatened. Every action that the NATO takes in the region, whether aimed at Russia or not, will not go down well with the Kremlin and the BMD shield case is one of the prime examples of that.

The path forward

NATO does not appear to be backing down from completing the missile shield in Poland. Russia too seem to be prepared not to back down with reports coming of planned strategic movement of their nuclear arsenal. Another major concern is that tension in Europe could lead to a collapse of negotiations regarding cooperation in the Middle East to combat the threat of ISIS and dealing with the situation in Syria.

It is imperative that the NATO takes Russian insecurity into account while planning for the coming year, as repeatedly showcasing strength in Eastern Europe could only make the bear more nervous and that is not good for the NATO on any front.

*The author is Research Intern at Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi.