By Elise Harris

When Pope Francis spoke out sharply against the “virus of polarization,” three new American cardinals saw a chance for a serious examination of conscience.

“I thought it was very timely, what the Holy Father said,” Cardinal Joseph Tobin told journalists Nov. 19.

He said that for him, the first thing to do in response is “to examine ourselves in the Church, to see whether we have unconsciously appropriated this virus” or somehow justified it “when it actually serves to divide.”

To do this, he said, could likely be considered “a resistance to the acts of the Holy Spirit.”

Cardinal Tobin was among 17 priests and bishops who came to St. Peter’s Basilica from around the world to receive a red hat from Pope Francis Saturday during a special consistory set to coincide with the end of the Jubilee of Mercy.

The cardinal is currently Archbishop of Indianapolis but will head the Archdiocese of Newark to take over for retiring Archbishop John Myers.

Pope Francis gave a homily during the consistory earlier in the morning, saying that we live in an age “of grave global problems and issues,” and in which “polarization and exclusion are burgeoning and considered the only way to resolve conflicts.”

“How many situations of uncertainty and suffering are sown by this growing animosity between peoples, between us,” he said, stressing that this attitude also infiltrates the Church in her communities, meetings and even priests.

“The virus of polarization and animosity permeates our way of thinking, feeling and acting,” the Pope said, stressing to the cardinals that “we are not immune from this and we need to take care lest such attitudes find a place in our hearts.”

Another U.S. bishop elevated alongside Tobin was Irish-born Cardinal Kevin Farrell, who was previously the Bishop of Dallas until the Pope in August tapped him as the head of the Vatican’s new Dicastery for Laity, Family and Life.

In response to the Pope’s homily, Cardinal Farrell told journalists he thinks the message Francis wants to convey is that “we all need to be a little more concerned and merciful and compassionate to each of our brothers and sisters” as the Year of Mercy comes to an end.

“We all need to learn how to respect each other. We can disagree on many points, but we need to enter into dialogue and conversation with each other. That’s what I believe the Holy Father wanted and that’s what I believe the Year of Mercy is all about,” he said.

He said mercy must continue “and we must live it”

People can talk “all they want to about every theological problem we have in the world,” but if it isn’t done in a spirit of charity, it’s empty, he said.

Similarly, newly-elevated Cardinal Blase Cupich of Chicago told journalists after getting his red biretta that the Pope’s use of the word “virus” was spot-on, “because animosity can be contagious and it can be enflamed with circumstances that would allow it to be so.”

The cardinal said he believes this does happen and that this virus “does feed on itself,” but he also noted Francis’ insistence that “each one of us have a responsibility to break that cycle of animosity.”

When it comes to his own personal ministry in the Chicago archdiocese, Cardinal Cupich said he is inspired by Pope Francis “to see the world like he does, to have that more global outlook,” giving more attention to poverty and persecution.

He noted that in a brief conversation with Pope Francis before the consistory, he assured the Pope of his obedience to the Church and to the Petrine ministry.

In addition to Cardinals Tobin, Farrell and Cupich, 14 other priests and bishops were elevated to the cardinalate.

Many of them come from the world’s peripheries.

As in previous years, Francis has stuck close to his vision of having a broader, more universal representation of the Church in the College of Cardinals. He has elevated many bishops from small countries or islands that have never before had a cardinal, as well as from countries which present particular challenges in terms of pastoral outreach, such as those suffering violence or persecution.

Out of the Pope’s new nominations, seven come from countries that have previously never had a cardinal, including: the Central African Republic, Bangladesh, Mauritius Island, Papua New Guinea, Malaysia, Lesotho and Albania.

Cardinal Sean O’Malley of Boston, who attended the consistory, told CAN that while the Pope frequently speaks about the need to go out to the world’s peripheries, “these one have done it.”

He noted that there are “many people in the Church that don’t know about the existence of these places,” so now to now have a cardinal there is “an indication of the vision of the Holy Father for the universality, the catholicity, of the Church.”

The cardinal also spoke about the new cardinals’ brief encounter with Benedict XVI after the consistory, explaining that “all of them are very happy.” He said to see Benedict now is “a joy.”

Cardinal O’Malley said the Year of Mercy has been the most successful Holy Year he has ever experienced.

“It touched the batteries of the entire world,” he said, adding “thousands of people returned to the sacraments, they understood how to practice mercy, how to forgive one another. It was really a spiritual success.”

Connective tissue cells in the heart turn into bone-producing cells in response to injury, University of California, Los Angeles scientists report in Cell Stem Cell. The discovery helps explain why some people who survive heart damage develop abnormal calcium deposits–the main component of bone–in the valves or walls of the heart. The researchers also show that heart calcification can be prevented in mice by blocking an enzyme that regulates bone mineralization with small molecules.

Tissues outside of the bones don’t naturally calcify, yet mineralization of organs, including the heart, blood vessels, and kidneys, occurs with age and is exacerbated in people with diabetes or kidney disease. In the heart, calcification can disrupt electrical conduction and lead to heart blocks. Once the calcium deposits form in tissues, there are currently no treatments to break them down.

“Heart calcification has been understudied and underreported,” said senior author Arjun Deb, of the Eli and Edythe Broad Center of Regenerative Medicine and Stem Cell Research based at the University of California, Los Angeles. “We asked the question, ‘What are the cells in the heart that cause calcification?’ and given the strong association between tissue injury, fibrosis, and calcification, we hypothesized that maybe it is cardiac fibroblasts [cells that give rise to scar tissue after injury] that are contributing to the calcification process.”

To find out, Deb and his co-authors genetically tagged cardiac fibroblasts in mice and watched as they transitioned into bone-forming, osteoblast-like cells after heart injury. The researchers transplanted the cardiac fibroblasts isolated from the region of calcification under the skin of healthy mice and observed soft-tissue calcification similar to that seen in the donor mice. Human cardiac fibroblasts were also observed to be capable of forming similar calcium deposits in a laboratory dish.

Deb and his team then asked whether heart calcification could be prevented or treated using small molecules. Their best lead for a drug target was a protein called ENPP1 that seemed to be overexpressed by the heart, and specifically by cardiac fibroblasts, in response to injury. The researchers injected several different small molecules that could disrupt the activity of ENPP1 and observed a decrease of 50% or more in the extent of calcium deposition. Injection of a drug called etidronate led to a 100% rescue with no calcification after injury.

“We now want to see whether this is a common pathway to calcification regardless of etiology and if what we found can be broadly applied to tissues across the body,” said Deb, who also holds several posts at the UCLA David Geffen School of Medicine.

His research group has already begun looking in patient cells to see whether blood vessel calcification can be prevented using the small molecule approach. They also want to explore potential drugs that could render calcification reversible, as the ENPP1 approach only worked to prevent calcium deposits when injected in advance of injury.

Florida State University researcher Joseph Franklin made a startling discovery during an exhaustive examination of hundreds of suicide prediction studies conducted over the past 50 years:

Science is still not very good at predicting who will kill themselves.

In a new study published today in the journal Psychological Bulletin, Franklin and his colleagues found traditional risk factors — such as depression, substance abuse, stress or previous suicide attempts — were not good predictors of suicide.

“Nothing was better than chance,” said Franklin, assistant professor of psychology at Florida State. “It’s like you guessing, or flipping a coin, is as good as the best suicide expert in the world who has all the information about a person’s life. That was pretty sobering for us and sobering for the field because it says all the stuff we’ve been doing for the past 50 years hasn’t produced any real progress in terms of prediction.”

That lack of progress is highlighted by the facts: Suicide rates in the United States are at their highest levels in 30 years. More than 40,000 Americans will kill themselves this year. Every day, 117 people take their own lives.

If you compare historical rates for suicide, homicide and car deaths, you find a disturbing truth: In the 1970s, you were more likely to be killed by someone else or in a car crash than to kill yourself. Today, with tougher crime laws and better car safety features, the opposite is true. You are far more likely to die by your own hand.

Franklin’s project — a meta-analysis of 365 suicide studies — found past research was flawed because it typically focused on a single risk factor, such as depression or low serotonin in the brain, and then followed patients over a decade. That type of long-term approach produced incomplete risk factors that did not accurately identify who needed mental health assistance.

Franklin completed the research as a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University. He and his colleagues — Jessica Ribeiro, faculty researcher in FSU’s department of psychology and Colin Walsh, assistant professor at Vanderbilt University — want to change the way someone is determined to be at risk for suicide. They think a shorter-term method, using artificial intelligence, will produce more accurate risk factors.

That’s why they are testing a “machine-learning” method employing algorithms to identify risk factors for suicidal behavior.

Franklin compared it to the Google search algorithm that combines hundreds of factors based on personal search history, and more, to find accurate results. The machine-learning method combines hundreds of factors from a person’s health history to improve the accuracy of suicide prediction. This method can easily be implemented across large hospital networks with millions of patients.

“This work is still in progress, but it represents a huge advance in a short amount of time,” Franklin said. “We believe this line of work will take us from ‘I have no idea’ to ‘I can tell you pretty strongly that this is going to happen.'”

Then, once more accurate risk factors are identified, Franklin hopes to expand the use of new technology to battle suicide and mental illness on a large scale.

The team of researchers has already developed a free web app that’s proven effective in trials at reducing suicidal behaviors. The app, called “Tec-Tec,” is available on iTunes and Amazon right now. Franklin hopes millions of people will eventually use it.

“Our studies so far have shown that the app alone reduced suicidal behaviors by about 50 percent over the course of a month in hundreds of people,” Franklin said. “And it’s free, so anyone can have access to this treatment that can work pretty well at no cost. It’s an example of something you can create that may be effective and could be available to anyone with internet access.”

Franklin brings a can-do attitude to these goals: Better understand the causes of suicide and predict who will develop suicidal behaviors with an accuracy rate near 100 percent.

“If you can do that with millions of people, then you can make population-level impacts on these things,” he said.

As for current suicide risk factors, Franklin warned against discarding them. He recommended therapists continue using the guidelines but said there’s an urgent need to re-evaluate them.

By Tridivesh Singh Maini*

One of the encouraging aspects of India-Sri Lanka relations is the fact that both sides are working to strengthen the economic and strategic relationship and address some of the major irritants in the relationship.

Only recently for instance during talks between External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Mangala Samaraweera in New Delhi it was agreed to set up a Joint Working Group (JWG) on Fisheries. Both sides also agreed to set up a hotline between Coast Guards of both countries to deal with the long-standing issue of fishermen from the state of Tamil Nadu being arrested by Sri Lankan authorities.

In recent years, two issues which cast a negative shadow over the bilateral relationship were the Tamil issue and the increasing presence of China in Sri Lanka. There has been a significant shift, however, with the change of guard in Sri Lanka as the current government is keen to reduce its dependence upon China. India, on its part, realises the economic potential of the island nation as well as its strategic location.

If one were to look at the current level of bilateral trade between both countries, it is estimated at $4.6 billion as of 2014. The FTA in 2000 gave a strong fillip to economic relations between both countries. Indian investments in Sri Lanka are estimated at $844 million and are in a number of sectors such as petroleum, IT, financial services, glass manufacturing and infrastructure. Some of the key investors include Lanka IOC (Indian Oil Corportation), Tata Communications, Axis Bank, ICICI Bank and Piramal Glass.

Sri Lanka, however, has not been able to access the Indian market.

During a visit to Colombo, Indian Commerce Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stated that Indian investments over the next 4 years are likely to rise to $2 billion.

The Economic and Technology Cooperation Agreement (ETCA), which both sides are expected to sign by the end of the year, is likely to further bolster the economic relationship between both sides.The ETCA will enable Sri Lankan businesses to get greater access to the Indian market. While speaking at the Indian Economic Summit in October 2016, Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe referred to the immense possibilities if South Indian states with a GDP of $450 billion and Sri Lanka with a GDP of $50 billion could create a sub-regional economy of $500 billion.

It is not just the economic sphere but even in the area of tourism where cooperation between both countries has witnessed an increase. In July 2016, both countries signed an MOU to help each other in promotion of mutual tourism. While Sri Lanka will encourage Indian tourists keen to visit sites which are part of the Ramayana trail, the Indian government will encourage tourists from Sri Lanka interested in visiting Buddhist sites.

In the context of enhancing economic ties and tourism, India’s state governments are an important stakeholder. Indian state governments should reach out to Sri Lankan investors and encourage them to invest in India.

Even in the context of tourism, it is important for more and more state governments to reach out to Sri Lanka. A number of Sri Lankans visit Buddhist sites such as Sarnath (13 kms from Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh) , Sanchi and Bodh Gaya (Bihar) .

Last year, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena visited Ujjain for the Vichar Mahakumbh and also unveiled the statue of Dhammapathik Anagarika Dharmapala, a Sri Lankan Buddhist revivalist and writer who was one of the pioneers of non-violent Sinhalese Buddhist nationalism, at Sanchi.

Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan announced the setting up of a friendship park at Sanchi which will strengthen friendship and cultural bonds between both countries. Delegates from Sri Lanka also attended the Buddhist conferences organised by the government of Orissa in 2013 and 2015.

To give a fillip to economic ties as well as tourism, a number of steps are required. First, connectivity needs to be enhanced. Currently, Sri Lanka is looking more at Southern India due to better connectivity. A number of other states in Western and Northern India too can emerge as important markets. An important step in this direction could be to further increase the number of direct flights between both countries.

Second, state governments which have been reaching out to countries in East Asia and South East Asia should seek to capitalise on the location of Sri Lanka, which has the possibility of emerging as a gateway between South Asia and South East Asia.

Third, the fears of Sri Lankans need to be dispelled that closer economic ties will only benefit India. India needs to send a clear message, that a robust bilateral relationship between both sides will be a win-win for both sides.

In conclusion, while irritants do remain in the bilateral relationship, there is a clear understanding of the need to overcome these and involve more stakeholders.

*Tridivesh Singh Maini is a New Delhi-based Policy Analyst associated with The Jindal School of International Affairs, Sonipat.

By Rakesh Sood

Earlier this month, President Pranab Mukherjee concluded a successful three-day state visit to Nepal (2 -4, November). The last presidential visit was 18 years ago, by K.R. Narayanan in 1998, and the visit was long overdue. Mr. Mukherjee is no stranger to Nepal’s politics. For decades, he has been the ‘go-to person’ for Nepali politicians visiting Delhi. This added greater political significance to the visit.

The Nepali authorities pulled out all the stops to ensure that the visit was a success. Mr. Mukherjee’s itinerary included visits to Janakpur and Pokhara, and civic receptions in both Kathmandu and Janakpur. In Pokhara, he addressed a large gathering of Gurkha ex-servicemen of the Indian Army. These public events provided suitable platforms which he used in a statesmanlike manner to restore a degree of balance in India-Nepal relations that have been through a turbulent period since Kathmandu’s adoption of the new constitution in September last year.

A troubled period

From the beginning, it was clear that the Madhesis were unhappy with the new constitution but at that time, the Pahadi leadership of the three main parties — Nepali Congress (NC), CPN(UML) and Maoists — were in a hurry to wrap up the seven-year-long exercise. By the time India reacted, it was too late and the new constitution was promulgated.

Meanwhile, unrest and agitations gripped the Terai. The government, headed by the then Prime Minister K.P.S. Oli, made little effort to engage in a dialogue with the agitating groups. Instead, it blamed India for imposing an economic ‘blockade’ to pressure the government to accede to Madhesi demands. Eventually, after harsh rhetoric, both sides pulled back but the damage was done. An anti-Indian sentiment had been fanned. Mr. Oli’s coalition collapsed, and he finally resigned in July, once again blaming India for his ouster.

Maoist leader Pushpa Kamal Dahal Prachanda struck a deal with the NC to take over as Prime Minister for a period of nine months after which the Maoists will support NC leader Sher Bahadur Deuba as PM for a similar period till the next elections in January 2018. To his credit, Mr. Prachanda set about trying to repair relations with India with a successful bilateral visit in September. In the near future Nepal President Bidhya Devi Bhandari is expected to visit India. All this should mark a return to normal in the relationship between the two countries. Yet such was the damage done during Mr. Oli’s tenure that even during President Mukherjee’s visit, #PranabDaSaySorry was trending on social media. The Nepal government had declared November 2 a public holiday amid innuendoes that this was done to keep roads clear and prevent any embarrassing demonstrations.

A presidential message

During his visit, virtually every Nepali political leader met President Mukherjee. In public, his message was consistent and unambiguous: Nepal needs to complete the political transition that began a decade ago when the Maoists came overground and agreed to join the democratic political process; and secondly, in order to consolidate the gains of multiparty democracy, all sections need to be brought on board for the new constitution to succeed.

In addition, he highlighted the historical and civilisational links between the people of the two countries and linked the destinies of the two countries by emphasising that they have a “vital stake in each other’s well-being and security”. He praised the people of Nepal for their achievement in the quest for peace and stability, describing it as a “historic undertaking”. In Janakpur, he talked of the spiritual ties among the people by invoking Ram and Sita but without mentioning either Hinduism or secularism, a sensitive issue in the new constitution. His visit to Pokhara to address the ex-servicemen was tribute to the bravery of the 32,000 Gurkhas currently serving in the Indian Army and the 126,000 pensioners.

Even in Nepal, not many are aware that in addition to the Nepali Rs.4,000 crore that is now disbursed annually after the OROP implementation in terms of pensions, India has substantial welfare schemes covering solar electrification and drinking water supply to ex-servicemen’s villages, medical care and provision of ambulances to their associations, and education and scholarships for their children. In Pokhara, he highlighted the advantages of the 1950 Treaty of Peace and Friendship that enables Nepali citizens to find easy employment in India.

Mr. Mukherjee was not expected to announce any major projects though the announcements about renovating the ghats along the Bagmati river just below Pashupatinath temple and the construction of two dharamsalas adjoining the Janaki Mandir in Janakpur address long-standing Nepali requests. More significant was that Nepali students will now be eligible to sit for the entrance examinations for the IITs and the additional scholarships for postgraduate studies in water resources management and hydel power at IIT, Roorkee.

Prachanda’s challenges

PM Prachanda has his hands full. A third of his nine-month tenure is over and the dialogue with the Madhesi groups has not made any discernible progress. Without forward movement, it will be difficult for him to have the local body elections during his stint. The issue pertaining to the number of parliamentary seats from the Terai had been resolved in January by a constitutional amendment restoring ‘population’ as the key criteria in delimiting electoral constituencies though the Madhesis have yet to accept closure on it. Issues pertaining to provincial demarcation, restrictions on appointment to high-level constitutional positions for naturalised citizens, status of Hindi and other languages and composition of the upper house are still pending.

These are contentious and require a degree of political consensus which is still missing. The NC and the Maoists do not have complete agreement between themselves yet and neither do the Madhesi groups have a unified negotiating position. Consequently, the dialogue has been desultory so far.

Of these, provincial demarcation is possibly the most complex but if movement is registered on the others, it would create a positive climate in which to devise a mechanism for the demarcation. The second difficulty will be to get the two-thirds majority necessary for a constitutional amendment. For this, the CPN(UML) will need to be brought on board, and Mr. Oli is not showing any signs of relenting though there are others who may be more amenable to a compromise.

Mr. Mukherjee’s successful visit, coming after Mr. Prachanda’s official visit to India in September followed by a second visit to Goa for the BRICS-BIMSTEC outreach summit, has helped stabilise India-Nepal relations. This has provided Mr. Prachanda with much-needed political room for manoeuvre; he now needs to use his considerable negotiating skills to make progress on the pending constitutional issues during the remaining part of his short tenure.

This article originally appeared in The Hindu.

By Anand Kumar*

When Chinese President Xi Jinping visited India for the BRICS summit in Goa (October 15-16, 2016), he chose to come here via Bangladesh. Interestingly, now it appears that what happened in Dhaka was actually geo-politically no less important than the outcome of the 8th BRICS summit.

This was the first visit by a Chinese President to Bangladesh in the last 30 years. During this visit, China tried to display its economic might. This has made many people wonder whether that would also affect close India-Bangladesh relationship.

The most important development of the visit was a $24 billion credit line that China has offered to Bangladesh. This is the highest credit line Bangladesh has received from any foreign country. This leaves far behind India’s credit line of $2 billion. Bangladeshi and Chinese firms also signed trade and investment deals worth $13.6 billion.

Bangladesh was waiting with lot of optimism for Xi Jinping’s visit. And the outcome of the visit left Bangladeshis only further elated. Abdul Matlub Ahmad, head of the Federation of Bangladesh Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FBCCI) said the deals reflected Dhaka’s improving security situation after Bangladesh launched a crackdown on Islamist extremists. He also observed that these agreements indicate that Bangladesh is a safe investment destination.

The investment of the Chinese firms, to be done mostly in investment parks, would be in infrastructural development, leather and readymade garments, pharmaceuticals, automobiles and other sectors. Bangladesh has agreed to set up industrial parks exclusively for Chinese investors near the strategic Chittagong port. It hopes that the Chinese industries in these sectors would shift to Bangladesh to take advantage of cheap labour.

China is the largest trading partner of Bangladesh. But this trade is heavily skewed in favour of China. Bangladesh is exporting goods worth about $808 million while imports from China are valued at more than $10 billion. To correct the situation, Bangladesh has been demanding greater access to the Chinese market. Though China has given some facility, this is not sufficient to bridge the gap.

Interestingly, despite this trade gap, both China and Bangladesh have signed an agreement to conduct a feasibility study on China-Bangladesh free trade agreement. Dhaka has so far been reluctant to sign a bilateral FTA with China. Instead, it has sought unilateral duty-free and quota-free access for its products in the Chinese market.

Besides deepening of economic ties, China has also decided to turn the bilateral relationship into a strategic partnership. This was once again seen as a Chinese effort to step up competition with India for regional influence.

Most importantly, Bangladesh backed Xi Jinping’s Belt Road Initiative. Dhaka thinks that it would boost trade and transport and provide better connectivity across Asia into Europe. India, however, has reservations about this project and thinks that it is a Chinese attempt to build a vast zone of Chinese influence.

Actually, Bangladesh has been a strong supporter of the Kunming initiative now known as the Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar (BCIM) Economic Corridor. The region for supporting BCIM and the Belt Road Initiative are the same. In fact, the BCIM project could be seen as part of the larger project Belt Road Initiative. In that sense, the Bangladeshi support for the Belt Road Initiative was nothing new, but it has important geo-political implications.

In recent times, Indian diplomacy has been somewhat successful regionally, especially in its effort to isolate Pakistan. The India-Bangladesh bilateral relationship is at a new high. This kind of bonhomie has not been seen between the two sides in the past. India received strong support from Bangladesh in the wake of the September 18, 2016 Uri attack.

Bangladesh, along with Afghanistan, also boycotted the SAARC summit in Pakistan, though each had their own reasons. Bangladesh boycotted because Pakistan was critical of war crime trials going on in that country and Dhaka perceived it as an interference in its internal affairs. Though the boycott of other countries was not necessary, as SAARC remains a consensus-based organisation, their unwillingness to attend the summit indicated that they also view Pakistan as a problem in attending the goal of regional peace and cooperation.

This small diplomatic gain of India could vanish swiftly if China’s economic and political influence continues to rise in South Asia. To dominate South Asia, China is keen to get into SAARC and some of its strongest votaries are Pakistan, Nepal and the Maldives. As China is trying to engage South Asian countries into bilateral free trade agreements, it might also ask them to support its cause of full membership of SAARC. It may also influence them to adopt a pro-Pakistan approach.

In short-term, however, this is unlikely to happen in the case of Bangladesh as Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina expressed her disappointments with Pakistan publicly on several occasions.

Countries like Afghanistan also see Pakistan as a source of their problems. But growing Chinese influence could change this situation, especially as the economic dependence of these countries on China increases.

The Chinese are capable of springing surprises. They have done it in Southeast Asia where the Philippines recently changed side and joined China despite its aggressive posture in the South China Sea.

India has to carefully watch China’s moves in South Asia where Beijing would like to deepen its influence.

*Anand Kumar is an Associate Fellow at the Institute for Defence Studies & Analyses (IDSA), New Delhi. He can be contacted at emails: anand_rai@hotmail.com; and anandkmrai@gmail.com

A newly discovered giant valley on the planet Mercury makes the Grand Canyon look tiny by comparison. Located by scientists at the University of Maryland, the Smithsonian Institution, the German Institute of Planetary Research and Moscow State University, the expansive valley holds an important key to the geologic history of the innermost planet in our solar system.

Discovered using stereo images from NASA’s MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft, the “great valley” lies in the planet’s southern hemisphere and overlaps the Rembrandt Basin–a large crater formed by a relatively recent impact from an asteroid or other such body. But the “great valley” formed in a much different way, according to a research paper published online November 16, 2016 in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.

Unlike Earth, which has a crust and upper mantle (collectively known as the lithosphere) divided into multiple tectonic plates, Mercury has a single, solid lithosphere that covers the entire planet. As the planet cooled and shrank early in its history, roughly 3-4 billion years ago, Mercury’s lithosphere buckled and folded to form the valley, much like the skin of a grape folds as it dries to become a raisin.

“This is a huge valley. There is no evidence of any geological formation on Earth that matches this scale,” said Laurent Montesi, an assistant professor of geology at UMD and a co-author of the research paper. “Mercury experienced a very different type of deformation than anything we have seen on Earth. This is the first evidence of large-scale buckling of a planet.”

The valley is about 250 miles wide and 600 miles long, with steep sides that dip as much as 2 miles below the surrounding terrain. To put this in perspective: if Mercury’s “great valley” existed on Earth, it would be almost twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and reach from Washington, D.C. to New York City, and as far west as Detroit.

More notable than its size, according to Montesi, is how the valley most likely formed and what that reveals about Mercury’s geologic history.

The valley’s walls appear to be two large, parallel fault scarps–step-like structures where one side of a fault moved vertically with respect to the other. Both scarps plunge steeply to the flat valley floor below. According to Montesi and his co-authors, the best explanation is that Mercury’s interior cooled rapidly, forming a strong, thick lithosphere. The entire floor of the newly discovered valley is one giant piece of this lithosphere that dropped between the two faults on either side.

This would make sense if, like most planets, Mercury has been steadily cooling since its formation. But Montesi notes that there are several clues to suggest that Mercury went through a more recent period of warming. This analysis, if true, would upend some time-tested assumptions about Mercury’s geologic past.

“Most features on Mercury’s surface are truly ancient, but there is evidence for recent volcanism and an active magnetic field. This evidence implies that the planet is warm inside,” Montesi said. “Everyone thought Mercury was a very cold planet–myself included. But it looks like Mercury might have heated significantly in recent planetary history.”

By Theodoros Papadopoulos

With Donald Trump slated to take over the reins from Barack Obama in January 2017, the still incumbent president embarked on his final visit to Europe. On his first stop in Greece, Obama expressed his opinion that Trump would in fact stick with NATO, despite the fact that the president-elect had threatened to abandon the alliance over unfulfilled financial contributions. But no matter how much hope Obama tries to instill on this side of the Atlantic, Trump’s wild cognitive dissonance, lack of experience and transactional worldview could deal the death blow to an already embattled and weakened NATO.

As things stand, Trump’s official policy towards NATO can be found on his Twitter feed: NATO is “obsolete” and “disproportionately too expensive (and unfair) for the U.S.” because alliance members fail to “PAY THEIR BILLS”. It’s true that many major NATO countries such as France and Germany have repeatedly failed to spend the 2 percent of GDP on defense as stipulated by NATO guidelines, and only Greece, the UK, Estonia and Poland met the target. But the president-elect’s demand that European allies pay their fair share goes beyond the mere adherence to NATO’s spending guidelines. What Trump is really demanding is for Europe to pay a significant share of Washington’s own defense spending by covering the costs associated with maintaining American bases and troops in Europe.

And while this demand might sound sensible to an accountant’s mind, simply looking at defense spending misses the greater picture that has been underpinning US-European relations for decades: Europe’s contributions are worth a lot more than financial statements would reveal. NATO members are a central pillar upholding US global leadership. The Western security alliance bundles two-thirds of global GDP and two-thirds of global military spending, a testimony to the degree of commitment to each other’s safety, unprecedented in world history. But by calling America’s alliances into question, Trump did not stand up for fiscal fairness – he articulated his conviction that the US has no inherent strategic self-interest in Europe.

This is not to say that NATO is a perfect organization and Trump is unnecessarily rocking the boat. The true test of the organization’s continued existence won’t be found in the size of defense budgets. Instead, the organization needs a renewed purpose other than the Cold War era relic of perpetually countering Russia. In its current form, NATO is poorly equipped to deal with asymmetric threats (such as terrorism or cyberthreats) or to deploy humanitarian missions. When European defense ministers met for the very first time after Trump’s election, the main topic was not how to cobble together more cash for the military, but to sign a EU-wide defense plan. German Defense Minister Ursula von der Leyen talked about “building a common security and defense organization” which could, for example, stem the refugee flow by stabilizing African and Middle East countries.

The defense plan allows the EU to send “rapid response forces” abroad for the very first time, improving civilian response to non-conventional threats (such as terrorism and organized crime) and invest more funds into developing European drones and fighter jets. A seldom-mentioned institution, the European Defense Agency, is expected to assume a wider-mandate and oversee the public procurement effort for defense materials. And while EU leaders went out of their way to stress that NATO remains the “centerpiece” of European security, the renewed push is a painful reminder of the transatlantic organization’s shortfalls.

Secondly, Trump’s attacks on NATO unfold at a time when the organization is trying to integrate its newest members and temper their unruly tendencies. Much like the EU, NATO has grown rapidly since the late 1990s, adding 12 more members from the former Soviet bloc. But that breakneck expansion left some officials red-faced. Albania, who joined in 2009, is one of Europe’s biggest producers of marijuana as well as a major safe haven for the heroin and cocaine trade across the continent. Organized crime is rife, as the country has one of the highest rates of illegal gun ownership in the world, a fact that even sparked the interest of ISIS. The Caliphate has been aggressively recruiting followers in Albania and there are even unconfirmed reports of ISIS training camps operational on the Kosovar side of the border.

Similarly, Montenegro, which was invited to join NATO but has yet to ratify, has made headlines after long-time president Milo Djukanovic failed to win an outright majority following the country’s October elections and stepped down – but not before accusing Russian nationalists of plotting a coup. Fears are now running high that NATO could be drawn into a conflict with Moscow over the fate of the former Yugoslav republic. The only problem with that assessment is that Djukanovic, in power since the early 1990s, has a long history of cronyism and is perhaps the only head of state to battle accusations of creating an international cigarette smuggling empire in partnership with the Italian mafia. It’s not surprising that some analysts have argued that the coup could have easily been organized to ensure Djukanovic wins the election – and they have even pointed to a close associate, Radoitza Rajo Bozovic, as the main organizer.

Given Djukanovic’s own propensity for criminal activity and Albania’s burgeoning drug empire, it’s no surprise that security experts argue that it is nonsensical to extend the US nuclear umbrella to countries with a long history of corruption that could bring about major conflict. It is clear that NATO will have to reform, but Trump’s transactional worldview fails to grasp the real scale of the challenge. The US has itself benefitted tremendously from the alliance’s “absolutely unconditioned” activities in the fight against terrorism, but Donald Trump’s outlook on European defense is throwing all support out of the window.

This article was published by Geopolitical Monitor.com

By Brig Anil Gupta (Retd)*

The almost two-year-long process to elect the 45th President of the United States (POTUS) came to a dramatic end on 9/11. September 11 2001(popularly known as 9/11) is synonymous with the date that brought radical changes in the post- Cold War US, while another 9/11 (November 9, 2016) may well turn out to be a watershed date in American politics.

The campaign this time was bitter and at times personal without debating major policy issues. While Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton was a seasoned politician with huge experience in government, the Republican candidate — and now President-elect — Donald Trump is a first-time politician, new to Washington and with zero experience in the government.

Mired in one controversy or the other throughout his campaign, Trump had been declared a loser by the media and chair-borne analysts much before the American people exercised their franchise.

Back home in India, one found a lot of similarities in the Indian General Election Campaign 2014 and the US Presidential Campaign 2016. Both the campaigns were expected to lead to a very tight finish electoral battle but in the end turned out to be much beyond the predictions of the poll Pundits.

At the end of both, the ‘outsiders’ emerged victorious. Will the similarities end here itself or continue into the tenure of President-elect Trump, only time will tell.

Going by the statements made by the President-elect, the entire world is waiting anxiously for Trump to assume office so that reality can be chaffed from rhetoric.

Like the “Jumlas” used in Indian election, the world community hopes that Trump did not mean many things he said during his aggressive right-extreme campaign. That the exalted chair of POTUS may calm down otherwise aggressive and xenophobic Trump is the wish of many not only in America but world-wide.

Samuel Huntington in his book “Who Are We?” has elaborated upon the issue of American identity crisis. Millions of Americans today are asking themselves this question and trying to look for an answer. Trump stuck the chord with these Americans and endeared himself to them with the slogan of “America First.” They found in Trump a ray of hope and the silent majority backed him wholeheartedly.

Trumpian slogans like ‘Make America Great Again’ and ‘Take back your country’ mobilised the Americans who were feeling left out and let down by Obama’s pro-immigrant policies. Now that he has been given the mandate proves that identity and racial politics do exist in the US.

Americans will now expect him to fulfil their dreams thus raising their expectations from his presidency. Trump’s stunning victory is considered an all-out rejection of “establishment politics” of the Obama era by the working class and blue-collar Americans.

Trump also reached out to the Indian American voters acknowledging their strength. For the first time in America surfaced an organisation called Republican Hindu Coalition spearheaded by Chicago-based Shalabh “Shalli” Kumar on the pattern of the Republican Jewish Coalition. He coined the slogan, “Ab Ki Baar, Trump Sarkar”, which Trump proudly gave voice to while addressing the Indian community in a star-studded gathering at New Jersey.

In his brief speech, Trump praised Narendra Modi as a “great man” and said: “The Indian and Hindu community will have a true friend in White House. We will together defeat radical Islamic terrorism.” Trump was quick to recognise the potential of the over 3 million strong Indian-American community and the role it can play in his victory in the swing states.

Indian Americans are the highest earning and the most educated ethnic group in the US. The latest figures of the US Census Bureau show a median income of $100,547 for Indian Americans, compared to the national average of $51,939. Though only forming one percent of the population, they are the major financial donors for the campaign.

Kumar’s RHC turned out to be a mega donor for Trump’s campaign. Indian Americans are traditionally supporters of the Democratic Party and to woo them to his camp was a major strategic move by Trump. To allay the fears about his hate for immigrants, he clarified that he would welcome “skilled and educated immigrants” and was against only unskilled illegal and Muslim immigrants.

While the poll pundits had predicted that only 7 per cent Indian Americans will vote for Trump, the actual polling figures are vastly different. This would have a considerable influence on Trump’s mind while working out India-US ties.

The readers would also be keen to know his personal background and traits — more so because he was portrayed as a “Bad Man” during the campaign.

Born in a wealthy American family on June 14, 1946, Donald Trump will be the oldest American to enter the White House. His paternal grandparents had migrated from Germany and his maternal grandparents are from Scotland. He had his schooling from the New York Military Academy and he graduated from the Wharton School of Business with a degree in Economics.

He joined his family business of real estate. He fathered five children from three wives. His present wife, Melania, is also an immigrant from Slovenia and has been a supermodel. His eldest daughter Ivanka is a Jew. Donald Trump and the Trump Family does not drink, smoke or use recreational drugs. Trump is also not a recreational gambler.

Trump has reached the zenith in his careers as a book author, TV entertainer, sports entertainer, real estate developer and currently politician. Donald Trump’s privately held businesses have employed more than 200,000 people. His real time net worth is $3.7 Billion

Why is it that Trump’s unexpected victory has caused tremors not only in the US but across the world?

He plans to cancel the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) which will have serious ramifications for the Canadian and Mexican economies. He is against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, a trade agreement, which was signed only in February 2016 after seven years of negotiation and involving 12 Pacific Rim nations (minus China) and a pet project of outgoing President Barack Obama. Re-writing of other major trade deals is also his promise to the voters.

Building a wall along the US-Mexico border; undoing Obamacare; renewing with vigour the fight against Islamist militants and global jihadi terror organisations; and ending illegal and Muslim migration are the other issues the fulfilment of which the global community will watch keenly.

His vision for America will also be under the lens. His threat to pull out from the Paris Climate Agreement has got environmentalists worried all over the world. His supposed closeness to Russian President Vladimir Putin and how it shapes future US-Russia relations will impact the international strategic equations.

Trump’s assertion to confront China will have a significant impact on India as much as his pronouncements against Pakistan dubbing it as “a safe haven for terrorists and an irresponsible nuclear state like North Korea”.

The Republican election manifesto described India as a geopolitical ally and a strategic trading partner. India is central to the US “Pivot to Asia” doctrine and Trump’s declared fight against Islamic fundamentalist terror.

However, Trump’s protectionist trade policies with “America First” as his declared policy, ending of H1B visa, promise to reduce corporate tax from 35 per cent to 15 per cent may have an adverse impact on the Indian economy.

India has a lot to gain also from the Trump presidency. Trump wants to woo skilled Indians, Indian entrepreneurs and students to the US. His hard stance against China and terrorism and India’s fast growing economy would ensure heralding of a new India-US era changing the long-term American perception of India being a Moscow ally as a continuation of the Cold War policies.

Most of the American laws are based on this perception thus denying India access to high-end technology and weapons. It is hoped that Trump will bring in changes to help India access high-tech weaponry and remove Pakistan from the status of a “favoured nation”. The US under Trump will also continue to pursue India’s entry into the Nuclear Suppliers’ Group (NSG) and its permanent representation in the UN Security Council since India enjoys bipartisan support in the American Congress.

An indicator of shape of things to come is a statement of Alexander Gray, a senior military adviser of Trump: “The Trump administration would attempt to strengthen the defence side where it shares so much common ground with India. At a time when India’s foreign policy is changing because of China and Pakistan, because of Islamic terrorism, we need to be there to greet them with open arms. I think, the Trump Administration is ready to do that.”

The American voter — like his Indian counterpart in 2014 — has voted for radical change. To ensure that he does not betray the hopes of millions of Americans, President-elect Trump will have to walk the talk sooner than later.

*Brig Anil Gupta (Retd) is a Jammu-based political commentator and security and strategic analyst. He can be contacted at anil5457@gmail.com

Donald Trump’s First 100 Day agenda includes repealing environmental regulations, Obamacare, and the Dodd-Frank Act, giving the rich a huge tax cut, and much worse. Here’s the First 100 Day resistance agenda [with thanks to Alan Webber]:

1.  Get Democrats in the Congress and across the country to pledge to oppose Trump’s agenda. Prolong the process of approving choices, draw out hearings, stand up as sanctuary cities and states. Take a stand. Call your senator and your representative (phone calls are always better than writing). Your senator’s number: http://www.senate.gov/senators/contact/. Your representative’s number: http://www.house.gov/representatives/

2.   March and demonstrate—in a coordinated, well-managed way. The “1 Million Women March” is already scheduled for the Inauguration —and will be executed with real skill. See: http://www.commondreams.org/news/2016/11/15/counter-trump-women-are-mobilizing-massive-march-washington . There will be “sister” marches around the country—in LA and elsewhere. They need to be coordinated and orchestrated. And then? 1 Million Muslims? 1 Million Latinos? What would keep the momentum alive and keep the message going?

3.   Boycott all Trump products, real estate, hotels, resorts, everything. And then boycott all stores (like Nordstrom) that carry merchandise from Trump family brands. See: http://www.racked.com/…/136239…/grabyourwallet-trump-boycott. See also: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1vu0Y0HvadMgG_LN7dF8W7M66oPCcx_nmSARQWirV7iY/htmlview?usp=drivesdk&sle=true

4. Letters to Editors: A national letter-writing campaign, from people all over the country, every walk of life and every level of society, from celebrities to sports heroes to grassroots Americans. In most papers, the Letters to the Editor section is the most-read part of the paper.

5. Op-Eds: A steady flow of arguments about the fallacies and dangers of Trump’s First 100 Day policies and initiatives, from name-brand thinkers and doers to ordinary folk writing for their city’s or community’s newspaper.

6. Social media: What about a new YouTube channel devoted to video testimonials about resisting Trump’s First 100 Day Agenda? Crowd-sourced ideas, themes and memes. Who wants to start it?

7. Website containing up-to-date daily bulletins on what actions people are planning around the country, and where, so others can join in. Techies, get organized.

8. Investigative journalism: We need investigative journalists to dig into the backgrounds of all of Trump’s appointees, in the White House, the Cabinet, Ambassadors and judges.

9. Lawsuits: Our version of “Drill, baby, drill” is “Sue, baby, sue.” Throw sand in the gears. Lawyers, get organized.

10. Coordinated fund-raising: Rather than having every public-interest group appeal on their own, have a coordinated fundraising program to fill the coffers of the most endangered and effective opposition groups. Is there a way to do a televised fundraiser with celebrities raising money for the Resistance?

11. Symbolic opposition: Safety pins are already appearing. What else? What more? Make the resistance visible with bumper stickers, a label pin, a branding campaign that has great language, great logo, great wrist band (remember the Lance Armstrong “Livestrong” yellow wrist band—it sold millions!).

12. Intellectual opposition: Take Trump on where he’s weakest—with serious ideas. I’ll try to do my part. You do yours, too.

13. Serious accountability: Establish performance metrics to evaluate his delivery on his campaign promises. An updated web site of promises made and not kept. This is one especially suited to public policy students.

14. Your idea goes here. Call a meeting of family and friends this weekend. Come up with to-dos.

The First 100 Days Resistance Agenda. We’re not going away.

In an article for Kazan’s “Business Gazeta” today, Viktor Minin says that he is “certain that already in the course of the past year direct and serious negotiations have been going on between the teams of the present Russian leader and the newly-elected US president” (business-gazeta.ru/article/329168).

Their conversations, the Russian commentator argues, reflect the reality that “Putin and Trump are objective allies at the current historical stage” and that the Kremlin leader feared that in the event of a Hillary Clinton victory in the American elections, he might face an effort by groups inside Russia to overthrow him and his regime.

Indeed, Minin argues the recent arrest of Aleksey Ulyukayev reflects both Putin’s desire to undermine any challenge to his rule and his plans to radically change the Russian political system as the world around the Russian Federation changes to one more favorable to Moscow’s position.

Putin also wants to change the system within Russia but to do so in ways that will not frighten either the population or the elites, and consequently, the commentator continues, he will “call on their patriotism and try not to sow fear and panic … Therefore, the mass repressions which all expect (a new 1937) will not occur,” but the current arrangements will change.

All this reflects not the desires and calculations of any one individual or group of individuals but rather tectonic shifts in Russia and the world. Minin says that “a certain large historical stage of our civilization has ended” just as the USSR ended because it “completely exhausted its energy and people lost faith in it.”

That is true in Russia and it is true in the US, he says. “Americans, above all white Americans have come to understand that Russia, first of all, is not their enemy and second that America is not the first or only center of power in the world but rather one of three.” It is stronger than Russia and China but cannot function without acknowledging their status.

This means, Minin says, that “Trump, Putin ad china are serving the objective process of a change of the rules of the game and a change of elites on the planet.” When each of the three is able to recognize the power of the other two, he suggests, “then there will be as in the Bible, ‘a new heaven and a new earth.’”

Liberals in all three plays were not able to win out despite their advantages. They “weren’t able to provoke a major war.” For that they needed to replace Putin and thus “complete via globalization a new system of world colonialism.” But the resistance of the population made this absolutely impossible. That is what Trump understood and why he won, Minin says.

“I am certain,” he continues, that close aides of Putin and Trump have been talking with each other “already a minimum of a year,” something that helps explain Hillary Clinton’s attacks even though she did not provide any evidence that this was going on.

As a result, Putin and Trump and their subordinates are ever more “synchronous.” Each perfectly well understands that they are strategic partners. Each understands his tasks. Trump his, and Putin his. The American president elect understands that Russia is not opposed to the US; it simply has escaped from under US management.”

That means there will not be war between them but rather “a rapid rapprochement with America. Of course, for Trump, this rapprochement will require him to ensure that Washington follows him and no one else and that when others do things, his partner in Moscow not fall into any confusion as to what matters.

To that end, Minin suggests, Trump will act “in parallel with Putin” and “change the ruling elite of the US. But at the first stage, he will use not retirements and arrests but the natural change of command connected with a change in the presidency. [But] in succeeding stages, he too will have to change the Constitution and laws” to get rid of those who don’t agree.

Minin does not provide any evidence for his claim, but it is nonetheless a disturbing indicator of how some in Putin’s Russia see things and may help guide their reaction to what is now taking place in the US. If indeed his words serve that role, the path ahead could be far more dangerous than he appears to believe.

By Lt Gen P.C. Katoch*

China’s President Xi Jinping is seeking an early meeting with US President-elect Donald Trump. In his congratulatory message to Trump, Xi mentioned China’s keenness to move forward on a ‘new type of relationship’ with the US. Xi has also said that if US under Trump joins the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), it would be good.

Having concentrated power unto himself at par with — if not higher than — Mao Zedong, Xi is essentially playing at the businessman in Trump, concurrent to announcing creation of a multi-billion dollar investment fund for Central and Eastern Europe through an investment of $50 billion. But at the same time, Xi is acutely aware that Trump is likely to exert economic pressure on China.

Xi is also fully aware of Trump’s views on terrorism. In a media interview in September 2015, Trump had said that the US should use India’s help to deal with Pakistan if it becomes ‘unstable’ in the future, albeit qualifying that North Korea was a more immediate threat than Pakistan because it was already “a rogue group with nukes”.

This may be pre-election rhetoric but Xi will use all his charm and strategic pressure points for Trump to continue with the same benevolent posture that the outgoing Barack Obama administration maintained towards Pakistan.

Xi would be confident that the ‘H.R.6069, the Pakistan State Sponsor of Terrorism Designation Act’, introduced in the US Congress on September 20, 2016 would likely not go through, but Trump is likely to take a harder stance than Obama to Pakistan’s double game; with all the evidence and admissions by Lt Gen Ahmad Shuja Pasha, former Director-General of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence; former President Pervez Musharraf and Michael Hayden, former CIA Director expressing frustration over Pakistan’s inaction against terrorist groups, particularly against al-Qaida, Taliban, LeT and the Haqqani network.

Over the years, the China-Pakistan sub-conventional nexus has fully matured and is giving strategic dividends. China has deep links with Taliban. Recently even a Qatar-based Taliban delegation visited Beijing complaining of Taliban casualties in the Helmand region of Afghanistan because of US forces.

Pakistan has adequate grip on both Taliban through Sirajuddin Haqqani, chief of Haqqani Network. ISIS in Af-Pak is the creation of Pakistan’s ISI and, most importantly, all Pakistani proxies also are Chinese proxies. Since the strategic lodgement by the Chinese People’s Liberation Army in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir and initiation of the $46 billion Chinese investment in the ambitious China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), Pakistan-sponsored terror attacks in Afghanistan and Jammu & Kashmir have shot up exponentially, with China manoeuvering the strings from the background.

The Taliban capture of parts of Kunduz last September-October and the present Taliban offensive in Kunduz helped US interests to exert pressure on Russia through Central Asia. Russia was forced to increase its military presence in Tajikistan. Such attacks also pressure the Afghan government to acquiesce more to China-Pakistan.

The CPEC being China’s strategic highway to the Indian Ocean with Gwadar coming up as PLA Navy’s future SSBN base, no other county is as indispensable to China than Pakistan; far more vital than her other protégé North Korea. This is why China will continue to shield Pakistan’s misdeeds, terrorism and protect Pakistan-based terrorist organisations and radical-terrorist leaders like Masood Azhar.

The Pakistani objective of carving out more Afghan territory as strategic depth (implying influence at sub-conventional level) is in sync with China’s strategic designs. Pakistan’s growing hostility towards India suits China similarly. India may say that there is adequate space for both India and China to grow economically but China goes strictly by what former US National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote in his book ‘The Grand Chess Board’ published in 1997: “China and India are destined by geography to be rivals. With venerable cultures and vast populations, they are likely to compete with each other for resources and influence.”

China makes no bones about her desire for US and NATO forces to quit Afghanistan. In fact, both China and Pakistan have been working consistently towards this as members of the Quadrilateral Coordination Group (QCG) on Afghanistan — the other two members being the US and Afghanistan. That is why the façade of bringing Taliban to the negotiating table even as Pakistan accuses the US of having killed Mullah Akhtar Mansour because he was prepared to come overground and join the reconciliation process.

In March this year, China proposed a joint counter-terrorism mechanism with Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan; showcasing her efforts to bolster security in the region. This was perhaps to inject the idea that China can be central to counter-terrorism in the region ‘in lieu’ of the US. Strangely, China did not include Uzbekistan in this proposed counter-terrorism mechanism despite the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) fully aligned with the ISI and active in the Af-Pak region.

But talking of peace and development has not prevented China from using sub-conventional muscle through Pakistan to extract heavy price in terms of lives in Afghanistan, including of Americans, NATO forces and westerners.

Therefore, terror attacks like on the American University of Afghanistan in Kabul killing 12 people; on the German Consulate at Mazar-i-Sharif, capital of Balkh Province in northern Afghanistan killing six people and wounding more than 120 including 19 women and 38 children; and suicide attack at Bagram airfield killing four Americans, wounding 16 other US service personnel and one Polish soldier participating in the NATO mission are likely to increase aimed at making the presence of US and NATO forces in Afghanistan more costly.

With Trump’s pre-election ambivalence to Obama’s ‘Pivot Asia’ policy, China would hope that US-NATO forces quit Afghanistan giving her free strategic space in Af-Pak; linking up with the Indian Ocean, Iran and increasing her influence in Central Asia. China will also be hoping against any US-Russia rapprochement.

At the same time, both China and Pakistan understand that playing the ‘victim of terror’ card is essential for Pakistan since it not only evokes sympathy but helps deflect attention from the proxy wars waged on Afghanistan and India — directly by Pakistan and indirectly by China using her historical stratagem of ‘kill with borrowed knife’.

Therefore, there are repeated terror attacks in Balochistan like on the police training academy at Quetta killing 59 people and critically wounding 120; and bomb blasts at the shrine of Sufi saint Shah Noorani, some 750 kms south of Quetta killing 52 people and wounding 105, many critically.

Such attacks aid Islamabad’s designs to subdue the Baluch population and eliminate maximum non-Sunnis in the country. Terror attacks against Baluchis suit China very well too as it desists Baluch insurgents from any feeble attempts to disrupt the CPEC which anyway is guarded by the Pakistani army.

China may even offer to ‘go slow’ in Western Pacific to persuade the US in lieu of more strategic space to China in South Asia. To what extent Xi will succeed in dealing with Donald Trump only time will tell but from the face of it for the US to abandon Afghanistan would be catastrophic for Afghanistan and the entire region. Such a move would also cease US influence in the region altogether.

During the Pentagon Press Briefing in July this year, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter had said: “The United States will continue to provide military support to Afghan security forces to make sure that they were successful”, while General Joseph Dunford, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff added: “I don’t think anybody would suggest that our work is complete in Afghanistan, nor will that work be complete anytime in the near future. And our continued presence into 2017 and financial support by NATO, as approved at Warsaw (NATO summit earlier this month), will continue out to 2020.”

Afghanistan actually needs international commitment and presence of US-NATO troops far beyond 2020.

*The author is a veteran Special Forces officer of the Indian Army. Comments and suggestions on this article can be sent to editor@spsindia.in

People my age have a wider perspective than most when we think about politics and government.

When I hear young friends talking as if Donald Trump’s election portends the end of civilization and every good thing it has fostered, I recall vividly how it felt to live in the USA from 1963 to 1974, a time of mass political turmoil and conflict, of large-scale military slavery, of assassinations of a president and other leading political figures, of millions in the streets protesting a seemingly endless, terribly destructive war, of domestic violence, riots, bombings, and arson, of martial law (when I lived in Baltimore in the spring of 1968), of political leaders so heinous that they beggar the imagination.

That such terrible things happened back then does not mean that equally terrible things cannot happen again.

Of course, they might, and the U.S. government has a knack for finding a way to turn any situation into devastation and the suppression of people’s liberties.

So the future may turn out be very dark, indeed, but if so, that future will have to develop in a way that people are scarcely well justified in forecasting at the moment.

This article appeared at The Beacon.

(Civil.Ge) – President Giorgi Margvelashvili has officially named Giorgi Kvirikashvili, who has been nominated by the largest group in the legislative body, GDDG, as prime ministerial candidate after signing a relevant decree on November 18.

Kvirikashvili told reporters on November 19 that he will nominate future members of his cabinet at a news briefing on Monday.

It is unknown what changes will be made in the government, but Kvirikashvili has noted earlier that there are no plans to replace Interior and Defense Ministers.

Kvirikashvili said in late October that the portfolio of the State Minister for Diaspora Issues will be folded under the Foreign Ministry in the new cabinet and the incumbent State Minister Gela Dumbadze will continue his activities in diplomatic service.

Newly elected Parliamentary Chairperson, Irakli Kobakhidze said on Friday that the legislative body, where GDDG has a 116 seat supermajority, will discuss the issue of confirmation of the new government and its program next week. Support of at least 76 PMs is required for the cabinet to win the Parliament’s confidence vote.

Meanwhile, President Margvelashvili, new Parliamentary Chairman Irakli Kobakhidze and PM-designate, Giorgi Kvirikashvili held a meeting in the Parliament building in Kutaisi on Friday to discuss the plans of future cooperation between institutions.

US President-elect Donald Trump’s selection of Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions as United States attorney general reinforces fears that Trump’s administration will threaten human rights protections, Human Rights Watch said. Sessions has said that he supports the use of torture and has expressed a range of views inimical to the rights of racial and ethnic minorities, women, immigrants, and lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people.

Trump is also reported to be planning to nominate Representative Michael Pompeo as CIA director, despite the congressman’s history of xenophobic statements about Islam and his endorsement of the CIA’s defunct torture program.

“Senator Jeff Sessions has a disturbing record of racist statements, has said that he supports the use of torture, and has taken positions on immigration and the rights of LGBT people that pose a real threat to human rights,” said Maria McFarland Sanchez-Moreno, co-director of the US program at Human Rights Watch. “There is every reason to worry that under Sessions, the US Justice Department would simply not be in the business of protecting rights the next four years.”

As attorney general, Sessions would be the nation’s premier law enforcement official, responsible for enforcing federal law in a broad range of areas including immigration, criminal justice, LGBT equality, gender equality, and counterterrorism.

Sessions was rejected for a federal judgeship three decades ago due to multiple reports of racist comments he was said to have made, including warnings to a Black fellow prosecutor to watch how he spoke to white people. Sessions also reportedly described the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) as “un-American.”

In Congress, Sessions was one of a small minority of senators who voted against the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which barred the use of cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment against any detainee in US custody and required the Defense Department to follow the US Army Field Manual on Intelligence Interrogations when conducting interrogations.

He also was among 21 Republicans who voted against an amendment to an annual defense bill sponsored by US Senators John McCain and Dianne Feinstein that extended these rules to the CIA and other US government agencies and became law in 2015. He has repeatedly downplayed the seriousness of torture and expressed support for leaving waterboarding, a form of torture, on the table as an option for future interrogations.

Sessions has a mixed record on criminal justice issues, Human Rights Watch said. He has supported important reforms like the Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the crack and powder cocaine disparities in sentencing and introduced the Drug Sentencing Reform Act of 2001, which had similar goals. He also sponsored the Prison Rape Elimination Act, which addressed sexual assault in detention settings. But more recently, he opposed the bipartisan Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, which would have, among other modest reforms, cut the mandatory minimum sentence for a third drug offense from life without parole to 25 years.

As attorney general, Sessions would be in charge of the corps of immigration trial and appeal judges who make decisions on deportation cases. The attorney general has the authority to hire and fire these judges and alter the way they interpret immigration law, including by changing the availability of asylum or other forms of relief.

As a senator, Sessions has fiercely opposed proposals to legalize unauthorized residents and has sponsored legislation to make it more difficult for unaccompanied migrant children to ask for protection in the US. He has also supported efforts to use local police to enforce immigration law, notably Alabama’s 2011 immigrant law, which denied unauthorized immigrants equal protection in the state and required police to determine the immigration status of anyone they arrested.

Sessions has taken troubling positions on the rights of women and LGBT people, including opposing the Violence Against Women Act, supporting a constitutional amendment against same-sex marriage, opposing LGBT inclusion in hate crimes legislation, and opposing the repeal of “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” in the military.

In reference to the Access Hollywood tape in which President-elect Trump was heard bragging about grabbing women by the “pussy,” Sessions told a reporter that: “I don’t characterize that as sexual assault. I think that’s a stretch.” When the reporter asked for clarification, “So if you grab a woman by the genitals, that’s not sexual assault?” Sessions responded, “I don’t know.”

This exchange seems to betray a dismissive attitude towards sexual assault that would be deeply troubling in the nation’s top law enforcement official. The attorney general has the responsibility to enforce Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, which prohibits sex discrimination in education programs that receive funding from the federal government. The Justice Department has applied the law to ensure that university campuses seriously address cases of sexual assault and rape.

Like Sessions, Pompeo also has a record of statements expressing support for the use of torture. This raises serious questions about his selection to run a powerful and secretive intelligence agency that only recently shuttered its own torture program – a development that Pompeo has publicly lamented.

In 2013, Pompeo is reported to have criticized Muslim clerics for not sufficiently speaking out against the Boston Marathon bombings, and suggested that they would be “complicit” in the attacks if they did not do so. In fact, many Muslim community leaders had been outspoken against the Boston attacks and others.

If confirmed, Pompeo will inherit the helm of the CIA at a time when the US is carrying out lethal strikes, often through drones, in a number of Muslim-majority countries including Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen.

“Sessions and Pompeo have both taken positions that raise serious doubts about their willingness to respect rights,” McFarland said. “The Senate should take these concerns seriously, investigate their records, and press them to repudiate abusive policies.”

By Mahendra Ved*

Forget the “String of Pearls” story about how China is supposedly surrounding India on the high seas. China is not just on the sea, but also on land, in air and deeply involved in the economies of all of South Asia and beyond.

Two events in India’s neighbourhood taking place on a single day, November 14, show the extent to which the Chinese reach has extended and is expected to grow phenomenally. They need to be taken into account by India’s strategic planners.

One was Pakistan’s Gwadar port going operational and the other was the announcement in Dhaka that Bangladesh was getting its first-ever submarine from China.

Last Monday, the first major trade cargo departed from Gwadar, marking operationalisation of the port designed and built by China. That also marked the completion in just about two years of the project to feed the port under the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) under the Chinese One Belt-One Road initiative.

Flagging off the cargo, Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said the CPEC will “integrate development and commerce of various regions across Asia and Europe by increasing connectivity and Pakistan Vision 2025″. He further said that it seeks “to transform Pakistan into a regional hub of trade, commerce and manufacturing by harnessing its geo-strategic location into a geo-economic advantage”.

Taking in the big picture, he said the CPEC “will help integrate South Asia, China and Central Asia and offer opportunities for people in this region, and investors all over the world”.

The CPEC is central to the Sino-Pak vision and also to the Pakistani leadership as a panacea to all the ills affecting the country and of an acute feeling of being isolated after the United States under Barack Obama and much of Europe leaned towards India.

At the event, the Prime Minister was accompanied by the army chief, Gen. Raheel Sharif. Both have attributed Pakistan’s current tensions with India to part of the latter’s efforts to ’frustrate’ CPEC.

The November 14 departure of trade cargo from Gwadar marks a decisive arrival for China in the Arabian Sea and the Gulf region. From there, two ships — Al Hussain Zanzibar and Cosco Wellington — set sail for ports in Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, the United Arab Emirates and the European Union.

The Chinese have moved fast in Pakistan when, by contrast, there is little push on the India-Iran-Afghanistan accord to develop the Chabahar port in Iran — less than 100 km from Gwadar — and build a railway line that would link Chabahar to landlocked Afghanistan and thence to Central Asia.

The project, with the blessings of the Obama administration, was also to get Japanese participation with the likely visit to Iran of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. But a Japanese official recently said there was no word from the promoters of Chabahar seeking any financial participation.

The announcement in Dhaka about it getting its first-ever submarine from China comes a few weeks ahead of the visit to India of Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, likely in the latter half of December. A range of political and economic issues are expected to be on the agenda.

However, Bangladesh has for long placed its military eggs in the Chinese basket. Irrespective of the political colour of the regime in Dhaka, this has been a continuing and expanding process, making China the largest trade partner and the No.1 supplier of military hardware to Bangladesh.

Meanwhile, China’s deep involvement in Myanmar is a continuing story irrespective of whether the Generals rule the country or the present civil-military leadership. So is China’s commitment on several projects in Nepal, including a railway line that can be extended right up to the Nepali border with Bihar.

Nepal wants to maintain careful equidistance with India and China. Similarly, Sri Lanka, under heavy debt from China, wants to compensate the latter with several projects that the Maithripala Sirisena government has held back.

Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe in July proposed to China’s Ambassador Yi Xianliang varying degrees of control over some of Sri Lanka’s biggest infrastructure projects, including the Mattala International Airport and portions of the Hambantota deep sea port, and wondered if Sri Lanka could receive some debt relief.

China refused the suggestions saying it was not possible under the Chinese law. But it has continued to promise “fullest cooperation” and that such deals should be conducted via investors on proper commercial terms. While China’s government will not swap debt for equity, it will help clear the road for Chinese companies to take over key projects in Sri Lanka. IZP, a Chinese informational technology company, has been put forward as a potential purchaser of Mattala International Airport, while COSCO is looking into expanding operations at the Hambantota deep sea port.

The fact of the matter is that India has neither the capacity, nor the political intent, to reach out to its neighbours with investments and projects. Indeed, many of the projects awarded to it have lagged behind for several reasons.

That being the case, India has much more to worry and work on beyond countering the “String of Pearls”. The Dragon has arrived in the Indian Ocean.

*Mahendra Ved is a senior journalist and President, Commonwealth Journalists Association (CJA). Comments and suggestions on this article can be sent to editor@spsindia.in

It is now seven years since the Greek crisis began. As well as reflecting the chronic deficiencies of its own institutions, the failings in Greece also reflect substantial shortcomings in international institutions. This column argues that it is time for all sides to move on, and proposes a simple debt operation for Greece that can deliver debt sustainability with minimal adjustments to the ESM operating procedures.

By Chris Marsh, Dominik Nagly, George Pagoulatos and Elias Papaioannou*

It is now seven years since the Greek crisis began. Since 2008, real output has been reduced by one-quarter; unemployment has been above 23% for over five years, and youth unemployment around 50%. Meanwhile, Greek public debt-to-GDP remains above 175% – despite a huge debt write-down. The banking system has long since stopped intermediating savings and investment; the welfare state is in dire straits. Non-performing loans clog the banking system. An exodus of the most talented and vibrant young Greeks has begun, eroding the tax base. Trust in democratic institutions has plummeted. For many Greeks, hope has long since given way to hopelessness.

The Greek crisis reflects chronic deficiencies of its institutions, structural shortcomings, indecisiveness, and unwillingness of its political system to address long-lasting problems, among perhaps deeper societal issues. Yet, the failings in Greece also reflect substantial shortcomings in international institutions. The IMF failed to fulfil the promise of Bretton Woods to provide temporary financial support to facilitate external adjustment “without resorting to measures destructive of national or international prosperity.” EU institutions – those intended to foster peace through cooperation and shared prosperity – have turned upon each other.

It’s time for all sides to move on.

To this end, we outline simple steps the Greek government and creditor community can take to deliver realistic and meaningful debt sustainability within the constraints set by the Eurogroup of 24 May 2016. The promise of further action to ease the burden of debt goes back to November 2012 – but procrastination by the EU and missteps by the Greek government delayed delivery.

To be sure, by no means will debt sustainability alone restore growth. It should be accompanied by significant and far-reaching supply-side reforms – in the judicial system, public administration, product markets and the education system.¹ Debt relief should be accompanied by demand-side policies – lowering taxes and boosting public infrastructure spending. Moreover, Greece’s fate depends on much-needed Eurozone-level reforms such as the banking union project, institutional modernisation, and dealing with asymmetric shocks (Baldwin and Giavazzi 2016). But action on debt is a necessary condition for a sustainable recovery – to free Greece from its ‘debt overhang’.

Inside the black box of debt sustainability analysis

Niels Bohr, the Danish quantum physicist, put it eloquently: “Forecasting is very hard, especially about the future.” Debt sustainability analyses are notorious, as one has to make assumption for the evolution of interest rates, real output, and inflation, for decades. Unsurprisingly then, despite methodological convergence amongst the Quadriga (or quartet) of creditors (the IMF, European Commission, ECB, and European Stability Mechanism), meaningful differences around  debt sustainability analysis conclusions persist. On the one hand, in its 2016 debt sustainability analysis, the IMF sees debt-to-GDP increasing to 294% of GDP in 2060 and gross financing needs² touching 67% of GDP. On the other hand, in its 2016 debt sustainability analysis the European Commission  sees debt-to-GDP declining to 101% by 2060 and gross financing needs increasing to 23%. While the Commission’s assessment suggests little further action on debt is needed, the IMF’s analysis suggests otherwise.

While the differences between institutions seem insurmountable, they hinge on two key assumptions:

• First, the evolution of Greek GDP, which depends on a confluence of domestic and global factors (many outside the control of the Greek authorities). Domestic uncertainties relate to the permanence of the banking system, the relaxation of capital controls, the timing and strength of much-anticipated recovery, the impact of taxation on investment, recovery of infrastructure spending, and many more. And there are global risks related to political regime shifts in Greece’s key partners, ongoing conflict in the Middle East and North Africa, swings in Greece’s international political alliances, and the evolution of US interest rates.
• Second, the interest on future new debt issuance (illustrated in Figure 1). In short, while an interest rate of 4% on new borrowing will deliver a debt-to-GDP of about 100% by 2060, if this interest rate were instead raised to 6%, debt-to-GDP would reach 190% in the same year. Likewise, the gross financing need-to-GDP would nearly double.

Figure 1 Greece: Debt scenarios* (percent of GDP) as the coupon on new debt issuance varies

The intuition for the sensitivity of Greek debt to interest rate risk is straightforward. For high debt levels, debt sustainability is extremely sensitive to the interest rate at which this debt is refinanced – an interest rate higher than output growth means the debt stock will snowball. When debt is high – well above 100% of GDP, as is the case for Greece – the interest rate is the key driver of debt dynamics. And while the official sector has helped Greece by delaying the repayment of loans, the amortisation of this debt – and the need to roll into more expensive private funding – will slowly increase towards the middle of the century.  Greece faces a substantial refinancing hump in the 2030s, when the EFSF and ESM loans in particular are to be repaid (see Figure 2). Debt sustainability therefore hinges crucially on the interest rate at which Greece will borrow during the next 50 years. And who would venture to guess the global interest rate in 30 years, let alone the rate at which Greece can borrow!

But all is not lost. Despite the uncertainties inherent in assessing sustainability, there are actions that can be taken today to bring down the future interest payments on the current stock of debt. This amounts to reducing: (i) interest rate risk on outstanding official sector loans; and (ii) containing future private funding costs reducing the gross financing need.

 Figure 2 Greece: Amoritisation schedule of currently outstanding government debt* (billion euros)

A reasonable path

The Eurogroup of 26 May contains a commitment to medium- and long-term debt relief; the upcoming Eurogroup meeting on 5 December can deliver. Conditional post-2018 action on Greek debt would be consistent with past Eurogroup statements, and would not require parliamentary approvals. And there is no need for additional payments by euro area taxpayers.

Consider, first, some immediate measures to reduce official funding costs before the current 3rd programme is completed:

1. Eliminate official sector interest rate risk. A non-negligible risk remains because a large part of official debt is provided at variable interest rate. To assuage this, market transactions (interest rate swaps) or fiscal guarantees can ensure that official interest rate costs do not increase over time.

2. Asset liability management. If plausible from a financial stability perspective, the €19.6 billion of unused recapitalisation funds held in a segregated ESM account, as well as €1.8 billion of withheld SMP profits, can be used for early repayment of ECB and IMF loans. There may also be funds from the 3rd MoU that Greece may not use by the end of 2017.

However, these actions would only make a small difference for the long-term sustainability. More important is to minimise the risk of future private funding costs. When Greece completes the current programme, we estimate that reliance on private financing will begin again in 2019 – and Greece will likely need to tap €35 billion (cumulative 17½% of GDP) from the private sector alone by 2023 as repayment of official funding begins. If interest rates on these new bonds are above sustainable levels, Greece will be forced back in the hands of the official sector, perpetuating its Sisyphean fate.  But the political and social realities in Greece and in the EU are unlikely to stretch to another program.

As such, the official sector should take now further actions and break this vicious loop:

3. QE inclusion. Inclusion in the ECB’s Public Sector Purchase Program (PSPP) – typically known as QE – will immediately bring down the yield on government debt. The current 10-year yield exceeds 7%, hovering around 10%. Greece will have to benefit from the global low-yield environment as a means to sustainability, and funding costs will need to come in at or below 4%. QE inclusion is an important step to this end. Implementation can proceed gradually, following additional banks stress tests. The Greek government should speedily complete the pending review of the 3rd programme so as to give space to the ECB Governing Council to include Greece in the PSPP. Moreover, QE can be a boost for the private sector by lowering the cost of funding across the economy, helping liquidity constrained firms, entrepreneurs, and debt-ridden households.

4. A commitment to replace official loans with ESM-issued, long-dated bonds. The most important step the official sector (other than the ECB) can take to help Greece benefit from the current favourable interest rate environment would be to convert a large share of official debt into low-coupon, long-dated bonds. For example, upon completion of the current programme (or perhaps once Greece has completed the third review), European creditors could begin issuing, through the ESM, long-dated bonds. We believe in the current environment – where there is a shortage of safe assets and hunt for yield – these could be issued with a coupon as low as 2% . The Greeks would, of course, begin paying the coupon on these immediately, increasing the interest cost near-term. But, conditional on sound programme implementation, the EU and ESM could switch the outstanding official debt in 2023 into these long-dated bonds. (That is, the remaining €260 billion EFSF, GLF and ESM loans – this does not include the €33 billion ESM bonds included in the GGB-PSI co-financing agreement in 2012.) Conditionality around this conversion into long-dated bonds would revolve around privatisation progress and targeted structural reforms.

In Figure 3 we simulate this scenario, which compares the above baseline (with assumed 4% coupon on new bonds) with a scenario in which long-dated bonds are issued by ESM on the behalf of Greece and outstanding loans switched in 2023. We assume perpetual bonds are issued at 2% coupon; we discuss implications of using shorter maturities below. While the debt stock is slightly higher in 2030 as a result of this operation – due to additional near-term interest costs – private debt outstanding by end-2060 falls below 60% of GDP. Moreover, gross financing needs are substantially reduced beyond 2030 as official loans need not be amortised. In addition, such an operation might further reduce funding costs below 4% as the risk of lending to Greece is lowered. This, in turn, will further improve debt dynamics, encourage private investment, and spur growth.

Figure 3 Greece: Debt scenarios (% GDP)

The idea that there ought to be a move towards European Safe Bonds has already been in the air for some time (e.g. Brunnermeier et al. 2016), although the political will has not yet been summoned to meet such ambition. And there seems to be a wide consensus on the global safe asset shortage, initially put forward by Bernanke (2006) and Caballero et al. (2008). The issuance of long-dated bonds on behalf of Greece provides a simple complementary alternative. Greece would not be absolved of this debt, of course, but would be committed to repay the coupon on these bonds into the indefinite future – or until such a time as their situation permits replacement by better value sources of funding.

There is one wrinkle: at the moment, the ESM is not permitted to issue debt at a maturity of longer than 45 years. As such, the ESM operating rules would need to be changed if the maturity of the new bonds was to exceed this maturity. Alternatively, within current operating rules, the ESM could issue debt in 2023 at 45 years’ maturity, ensuring sustainability through 2060. This, however, simply creates another financing hump in the 2060s, requiring the problem to be tackled by the next generations of Europeans. Hopefully by that time, technological improvements, structural reforms and the power of conditional convergence would push Greek GDP into much higher levels, ring-fencing debt sustainability.

A realistic debt relief path

Since the outbreak of the Greek debt crisis, a great deal of financial and political capital has been invested in seeking to contain the crisis and prevent it from spilling over to the Eurozone. Successive bailouts and harsh conditionality have bought time for the Eurozone and Greece to repair the institutional failings. During this period, Greece has undertaken extensive adjustment  achieving probably the largest fiscal consolidation in history. While Greece has to continue this process, placing an emphasis on massively dysfunctional and inequity-promoting institutions, and invest in education, Greece’s European partners have to provide a helping hand. Now!

It’s time to provide a lasting solution that will allow the Greek economy – and a new generation of Greeks – to move forward. Given the debt overhang, locking in interest rates on the outstanding debt held by the official sector and swapping current liabilities for long-dated bonds can have sizable effects. If this is accompanied by Greece completing the second review of the current 3rd programme allowing inclusion in the ECB’s QE programme, then the foundations for the much-needed recovery will be in place.

We have suggested a simple debt operation for Greece that can deliver debt sustainability with minimal adjustments to the ESM operating procedures.

From the point of view of contributions to debt dynamics, addressing refinancing risk over the projection horizon is quantitatively more important than simply pressing for ever higher primary surpluses (which, given the current high levels of unemployment and underinvestment, are unreasonable). And a credible solution at tackling the problem would allow more meaningful flexibility over fiscal targets in the long term. What is more, the market-based solution we are proposing has no immediate cost for European taxpayers.

It might still be possible that the Greek Crisis will come to be seen not as a symbol of European failure, but as a demonstration of how modern Europe can work together towards lasting solutions through cooperation, mutual concessions, and trust. This would be a good outcome for Greece, Europe, and the world.

Authors’ note: Chris Marsh and Dominik Nagly are members of the Investment Team at an investment firm that may at times have financial interests in European and Greek asset markets.

*About the authors:
Chris Marsh, Investment Team, Macrosynergy Partners

Dominik Nagly, Investment Team, Macrosynergy Partners

George Pagoulatos, Professor of European Politics and Economy, Athens University of Economics and Business

Elias Papaioannou, Professor of Economics, London Business School; CEPR Research Affiliate

References:
Baldwin, R and F Giavazzi (2016), How to Fix the Eurozone: Views of Leading Economists, CEPR Press.

Bernanke, B (2006). “The Global Savings Glut and the US Current Account.”

Brunnermeier, M K, S Langfield, M Pagano, R Reis, S Van Nieuwerburgh and D Vayanos (2016), “ESBies: Safety in the Tranches”, ESRB Working Paper No.21.

Caballero, R J and E Farhi (2014), “The Safety Trap,” NBER Working Paper No. 19927 (summary on Vox here).

Caballero, R, E Farhi and P-O Gourinchas (2008), “An Equilibrium Model of “Global Imbalances” and Low Interest Rates”, American Economic Review 98(1), 358–93.

Eurogroup (2016), “Eurogroup Statement on Greece”.

European Parliament (2016), IPOL EGOV “Greece’s financial assistance programme (September 2016)”, Strasbourg.

European Stability Mechanism (2016), ESM Annual Report 2015, Luxembourg.

Meghir, C, C Pisarides, D Vayanos and N Vetas, (2017), Beyond Austerity: Reforming the Greek Economy, MIT Press.

Schumacher, J and B Weber di Mauro (2015), “Debt Sustainability Puzzles: Implications for Greece”, VoxEU.org, 12 July.

Schumacher, J and B Weber di Mauro (2015), “Greek Debt Sustainability and Official Crisis Lending”, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Fall.

Endnotes:
[1] A comprehensive set of proposals is included in Meghir et al. (2017).

[2] Overall new borrowing requirement plus debt maturing during the year.

By Amitava Mukherjee*

The peace agreement between the Ashraf Ghani government of Afghanistan and Gulbuddin Hekmatyar may further obfuscate the already confused Afghan scenario. There are reasons behind the suspicion that Pakistan has gained a further strategic depth in Afghan affairs as Hekmatyar is known to be ambitious and virulently anti-Indian and he may try to position himself at the helm of Afghan affairs.

The peace deal, signed on September 22, 2016, has raised more questions than it has been able to answer. From 1997, Hekmatyar has been hiding in either Pakistan or Iran under direct supervision of the ISI and Iranian intelligence and as a result his organisation — the Hezb-e-Islami — has lost much of its clout in Afghan affairs, although it is the oldest of all the fundamentalist mujahideen organisations operating on Afghan soil.

As a result, the Hezb-e-Islami has undergone schism and a very powerful rival faction led by Abdul Hadi Arghandiwal has firmly entrenched itself in Kabul. Arghandiwal was a cabinet Minister in the Hamid Karzai-led former Afghan government and is an important component of the present National Unity Government (NUG).

So it is an open question why Ashraf Ghani agreed to enter into such an agreement. Obviously, he is under some amount of pressure. Otherwise, he would not have agreed to deal with a person who is under direct influence of Pakistan, a country with which Ashraf Ghani has sour relations at present. If the pressure is from the US then the most plausible reason is the fact that Washington is afraid of a probable comeback of Hamid Karzai, the former President of the country.

But from the standpoint of tribal equation, Ashraf Ghani has a reason to solicit Hekmatyar’s help. The Afghan President is a Kochi Ahmadzai, a sect which is not at all influential among the Pashtuns. In addition, Ghani has spent a great part of his life abroad and has lost much of touch with his tribal group. On the other hand, Hekmatyar comes from the Ghilzai Pashtuns and wields considerable influence among them.

This is important for Ashraf Ghani as the NUG is not at all a cohesive body and the Afghan President has strained relations with his Chief Executive Abdullah Abdullah, who is half Pashtun-half Tajik.

Abdullah is a pro-Indian figure. His support base consists of former mujahideen warlords of the Northern Alliance like Ismail Khan, Abdul Rashid Dostum, Mohammed Mohaqiq, Karim Khalili etc. who are either Uzbek or Tajik or Hazara Shias. Some of them are important figures in the NUG government.

So Hekmatyar’s presence in Afghanistan is likely to help Ashraf Ghani.

But, for the Afghan President, this presents a dangerous possibility too. Although the Afghan presidential election is still far away yet there is a possibility that Hekmatyar may run for it. He is sure to have Pakistan’s support from the moment he sets foot on Afghan soil. What the US will do is a bit difficult to predict as it has declared Hekmatyar a “global terrorist” and the Hezb-e-Islami is on the UN list of “foreign terrorist organisations”. This is exactly the reason behind the absence of both Ashraf Ghani and Hekmatyar at the time of signing of the peace agreement.

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar’s entry into the troubled Afghan waters is sure to rattle India as he is known to have worked with major intelligence agencies like the CIA, MI5 and the ISI. It is known that he has extracted a promise from the Afghan government that the latter would leave no stone unturned to get his name dropped from the US list of terrorists and that 20,000 of his supporter-families now living in exile in Pakistan would be rehabilitated in Afghanistan at government expense.

By all indications, the peace agreement may be an attempt to neutralise the importance of Abdullah Abdullah, who is backed by the powerful Tajik lobby of the Panjsher valley and western Afghanistan. It is to be noted here that Hamid Karzai had once taken a very big lead from western Afghanistan in one of Afghanistan’s earlier presidential elections.

Hekmatyar’s rehabilitation is likely to create ruffled feathers in two critical sectors — the Taliban and the Jamiat-e-Islami (JeI). The Taliban does not like Hekmatyar as the latter had recently supported the presence of Islamic State (IS) fighters in eastern Afghanistan. Previously, in 1990, Taliban had battered Hekmatyar’s soldiers on the outskirts of Kabul.

An equally serious challenge may come from the Jamiat-e-Islami, the biggest Islamic party of Afghanistan composed of mostly Tajiks and Uzbeks. The JeI is packed with supporters of Burhanuddin Rabbani, a former Afghan President, and Ahmed Shah Masood, the legendary former Defence Minister of the country. Hekmatyar and his Hezb-e-Islami may find the challenge from the JeI too tough.

*Amitava Mukherjee is a senior journalist and commentator. Comments and suggestions on the article may be sent to: editor@spsindia.in

A legal turn in interpreting the Iran nuclear accord is necessary as a timely antidote to the avalanche of negative re-interpretations of this agreement in the US in the aftermath of November elections that yielded victory for Donald Trump, who is on record repeatedly vilifying the nuclear agreement and pledging to tear it up if elected as the next US president.  As expected, a growing chorus of right-wing voices in American politics and media have called on Trump to deliver on his campaign rhetoric and dismantle the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

But, these calls often transpire in a legal vacuum and without any proper understanding of the JCPOA as a multilateral, i.e., international, agreement that has become legally binding as a result of its endorsement by the UN Security Council (Resolution 2231).  As this author has argued in a previous article, “The Iran Nuclear Accord is Legally Binding,” there is a widespread misperception of the JCPOA in both policy and academic circles as “legally non-binding” political agreement, which must be debunked and deconstructed with the help of sound leqal, theoretical and methodological insights.  A major vulnerability of such interpretations of the JCPOA is that they often evaluate the agreement from the prism of its authors, some of whom like the US Secretary of State John Kerry have gone on record portraying the accord as “legally non-binding.”  Others, such as international law expert Daniel Joyner, have reached the same conclusion, but only by examining the JCPOA independent of its UN dimension, reflected in Resolution 2231, which agrees to the commitments made by the parties and calls on them to observe the various timetable of the accord, such as the implementation day, the conclusion day, etc.  Joyner pays lip service to the so-called “soft law” and omits mentioning the relevance of UN Security Council for (customary) international law, thus succumbing to the distorted interpretation of JCPOA as legally non-binding, in his otherwise thoughtful book on Iran’s Nuclear Program and International Law.Joyner’s main weakness, however, is his traditional and non-dynamic interpretation of international law, which evolution since WWII parallel to the growth of the United Nations has given rise to increasing variations in forms, instruments, meanings and standards of measurement of international law, encompassing newer areas of “soft laws” that often denote “soft obligations.”  As a result, instead of evolving on ‘straight lines,’ international law has acquired a somewhat circular character, thus calling for a new interpretation of the JCPOA along the continuum which lies between the hard and soft international law, instead of privileging the traditional perspective that lacks sufficient conceptual rigor. Unfortunately, the tyranny of this (mis) interpretation has led to the premature closure of questions that ought to remain open, such as whether or not the obligations of the parties under the JCPOA is correlative of a legal duty? (1)

Undoubtedly, part of the difficulty in proper understanding of the JCPOA stems from the semantic nearness of the agreement to a mere political agreement, which can be and has been rather deceiving, in light of the fact that treaties and declarations often “reflect a deliberate ambiguity between actual and desired practice to stretch the consensus on the text as far as possible.” Certainly, the JCPOA is no exception and there is a dynamic (and complex) interplay between form and substance that needs to be scrutinized, otherwise we risk failing the achievement of a deeper understanding of the JCPOA — as a duty-based agreement, principally as a result of UN Security Council’s  binding measures prescribed by Resolution 2231. Lest we forget, UNSC Resolution 2231 was effectively passed unanimously on July 2015 under Chapter VII of the UN Charter.  This in turn raises the issue of Resolution’s “enforcement.” The only use of the term “enforcement” in the UN Charter occurs in relation to the enforcement under Chapter VII of decisions of Security Council (Article 45).  With respect to the JCPOA, enforcement would be comprising of all measures intended and proper to induce respect for the nuclear agreement.  A unilateral defection from the JCPOA, such as by the US, inevitably raises the question of enforcement under the UN Charter, e.g., Article 25 obligating the member states to carry out the Security Council’s decisions.

Undoubtedly, Iran’s resort to a legalist turn in interpreting the JCPOA will go a long way in defending Iran’s interests and adding a legal layer to the protective shield for the international agreement that is potentially jeopardized by the rise of anti-JCPOA Trump.  Trump and his chorus of Iranophobic advisers are, however, on weak legal ground, giving the impression that US can willfully withdraw from the JCPOA without facing any backlashes.  Their perverse interpretation of the JCPOA, which is a win-win for the parties and the international community, requires timely debunking with the help of new legalistic interpretations of the JCPOA that are fully immersed in international law and the primary responsibility of states under the binding decisions of the UN Security Council. For sure, as a long-term agreement, JCPOA must rest upon a certain flexibility and room for development if it is to survive changes in the circumstances and relations between parties, above all by strengthening its perception as a legally-binding agreement.  The ‘will to interpret’ here, steeped in international law and an evolutionary perspective on the role of UN, requires dispensing with the troublesome misinterpretations of the JCPOA and comprehending it through the prism of international law, otherwise the JCPOA will soon be in a sealed coffin.

This article was published at Iran Review.

(1) For an alternative interpretation that relies on a ‘spectral’ view of law and legality, see Nader Entessar and Kaveh Afrasiabi, Iran Nuclear Negotiations: Accord and Detente Since the Geneva Agreement of 2013 (Rowman & Littlefield, 2015).

By Jai Kumar Verma*

On October 30, thousands of hardcore Muslims of Hefajat-e-Islam and Ahle Sunnat Wal Jamaat took out processions in Nasirnagar and other places and demanded capital punishment for Hindu fisherman Rasraj, who allegedly posted on the social media a photograph of Lord Shiva inside the Masjid al Haram in Mecca. These Islamic extremists damaged 17 temples, broke the idols inside and looted several hundred houses and shops of Hindus.

In this rampage, more than 150 Hindus were injured. Rasraj was arrested and paramilitary forces posted in the area.

However, again on November 5, Muslim fanatics looted houses of several Hindus and vandalised temples and broke the idols inside. The police have arrested more than 50 persons who were involved in arson and loot.

Insiders claim that Rasraj is an illiterate person and no Hindu in Bangladesh would dare to post a derogatory photograph of the most sacred Masjid al Haram on social media.

The fact was that a few Hindu women were returning from Kali Puja and the son of a local influential teased them. When the chaperones of these women objected to the harassment, the miscreants attacked them and concocted the story of putting a disparaging picture of the most pious place of Muslims.

Local Muslims mention that Rasraj was not only illiterate but he must be ignorant about Kaaba and he cannot post a photograph on Facebook. They further mentioned that he had taken loan from local Muslims and there was some delay in repayment, hence the creditor might have put the anti-Muslim post on Facebook from his account to teach him a lesson.

Rasraj also mentioned that somebody had hijacked his Facebook account and put the objectionable photograph which he immediately deleted and also apologised.

The announcement instigating Muslims against Hindus was made from local mosques, especially from Nurpur, Asurain and Phulpur stating that a local Hindu had insulted the Holy Kaaba. When Muslims gathered near mosques, inflammatory speeches were delivered and a big crowd gathered which vandalised temples and looted houses.

Rasraj was an Awami League worker and was arrested the same day. The government constituted separate teams of the Counter-Terrorism and Transnational Crime (CTTC) and Criminal Investigation Department to probe the matter but Muslim extremists vandalised temples and looted houses of Hindus before the investigation.

According to Prabir Chowdhury of the Bangladesh Hindu Alliance, the looting of Hindu houses and damaging of temples was pre-planned by radical Muslims. In fact, Hindus celebrated Durga Puja with great fanfare which was not liked by Muslim extremist organisations — hence they concocted the story and attacked Hindus and their temples.

In the recent past, there were several unprovoked attacks on Hindus, secular bloggers, atheists, writers and publishers as well as on foreigners by Islamic extremists. Muslim fanatics kidnap and rape unmarried Hindu girls and then convert them to Muslim religion.

Hindus and their temples were attacked by Muslim fundamentalists in 2014 when the Bangladesh Awami League won the elections and Sheikh Hasina became the Prime Minister. Earlier, in 2012, fanatic Muslims attacked Buddhist monasteries and looted their houses and shops when one Buddhist allegedly posted a slanderous photograph of the Koran in the social media.

In July this year, Islamic terrorists killed 20 persons, of whom 18 were foreigners, in a restaurant in Dhaka.

The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) – Bangladesh Chapter pointed out after thorough investigation that these attacks were “pre-planned” and the local authorities had not taken adequate measures to curb the violence.

The leaders of the minority community claim that the culprits of previous attacks and lootings were not punished, which encouraged fundamentalists and malefactors to indulge in teasing and looting of the minority community.

Several times the Jihadists attack the minority community just on suspicion. Hindus reveal that Muslim extremists themselves plant these derogatory photographs on social media and then vandalise temples, and loot houses and shops of the Hindu community.

The Pakistani forces had committed mayhem on Hindus in Bangladesh in 1971 but at that time the local Bengali Muslims were there to assist and console them — but it appears that fundamentalism as well as greed for the property of Hindus has increased in locals hence fewer people come forward for the assistance of Hindus.

The atrocities on Hindus are increasing and, therefore, a number of Hindu families are migrating to India leaving their property in Bangladesh. Local police officials like Abdul Kader, officer in-charge of Nasirnagar police station, also conspire with the extremists who vandalise the temples and pillage the houses and properties of Hindus. Kader was later suspended for dereliction of duty.

A few Hindu families have already crossed into India while several others have shifted from their houses to safe places. About 33 percent of the population of Nasirnagar area are Hindu and support the ruling Awami League party, hence the office bearers of Awami League assured that stringent action would be taken against miscreants and reasonable compensation would be given to the victims and vandalised temples would be repaired.

A section of media also use derogatory words like ‘Kafir’ and ‘Malaun’ against Hindus. In past also there were several cases where Hindu temples were damaged and idols were broken by fanatic Muslims. The cases of atrocities on minorities occur more on Fridays as several times the Imams of mosques deliver inflammatory speeches against Hindus which result in attacks on temples and idols.

The minority leaders divulge that prior to the creation of Bangladesh in 1971, the extremists were exterminating minorities, especially Hindus, systematically. After the creation of Bangladesh, the atrocities on Hindus were reduced for some time but again increased when the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) came to power.

The Awami League is more secular but a few leaders are becoming fanatic and do not want to take stringent action against extremists as they feel that their vote-bank may be hurt. The Hindu population is continuously declining. In 1947, the Hindu population in the area of present Bangladesh was 31 per cent, which declined to 19 per cent by 1961, 14 per cent in 2002 and to 8.5 per cent in 2011. However, the Hindu population increased to 10.7 per cent in 2015 which was not liked by Muslim extremists.

Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj directed the Indian High Commissioner at Bangladesh to convey India’s concern about the safety of Hindus.

Analysts mention that Islamic extremism is increasing and a few youths have already joined Islamic State (IS) although the present government denied the presence of IS but the time has come when security agencies of the country should be cautious and deal sternly with the growing fundamentalism. IS would be defeated soon and at that time several Bangladeshis who are working with IS would return to Bangladesh and would spread the ideology of IS which will be detrimental for the secular fabric of the country.

The Awami League government should give stringent punishment to the officers of security agencies who allow extremists to vandalise the temples and loot the houses and shops of the minority community.

The religious as well as political leaders, including Imams of the mosques who deliver communal speeches, should also be punished under the law of the land. The media which spreads hatred should also be banned. The government must assure the minority community that they are safe in Bangladesh as it is essential for the economic progress of the country.

*Jai Kumar Verma is a Delhi-based strategic analyst. He can be contacted at: editor@spsindia.in