According to most history books, the Islamic empire came to an official end with the Mongol conquests of the Middle East during the mid-13th century. Although by this time the empire had well-surpassed its Golden Age and had entered into a general state of decline, this conquest served as the final nail in the coffin. End of story. Or is it?

According to research conducted by the EU-funded IMPACT project, the influence of the Middle East’s Mongol moment far exceeds the textbook definition of merely marking the end of the Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad. Instead, it marks the beginning of a protracted era of enlightenment where, in the face of fundamentally changing socio-political realities, Muslim philosophers set off to redefine the very core of Islam.

Despite the intense change happening, the period between the dissolution of the Abbasid Caliphate and the establishment of the early modern regional states of the Ottomans, Safavids and Mughals remains one of the most understudied periods in the history of the Nile-to-Oxus region. It is this historic middle section that was the focus of the IMPACT project.

A collaborative effort

As a result of the rise of Persian and Turkish as literary languages, in addition to Arabic, one must have a wide linguistic knowledge to be able to scrutinise the texts produced during this period – which makes studying the 13th to 16th centuries a challenge.

“As a consequence, the majority of the texts from this period remain unpublished – and this was the core focus of our research,” said Project Lead Judith Pfeiffer. “Our objective was to overcome the current fragmentation of the existing expertise across Europe, the Middle East and North America.”

To accomplish this, the project collaborated closely with other projects happening in related fields, often bringing a wide range of experts together for international workshops and conferences. The project also focused on encouraging and engaging with young researchers by providing graduate students travel grants and establishing post-doctoral research positions.

The project was further supported by the editing and translating of key texts and the publication of important monographs.

“As a result of these combined efforts, IMPACT enabled associated researchers to devote themselves to the in-depth study of a specific topic for an extended period of time without the distractions of academic administration,” said Pfeiffer.

A database of insight

The cumulation of this expansive research is the launch of an open-source, open-access and fully searchable database. Here, for the first time, future researchers can find a plethora of published and unpublished Arabic, Persian and Turkish works on the rational sciences dating from 13 – 16th centuries.

“By studying the texts, authors and intellectual networks of the 13th-16th century period of the Nile-to-Oxus region, we have made this crucially important, but much neglected, part of history accessible,” said Pfeiffer. “We successfully bridged the gap between the much more heavily studied classical and modern periods of Islamic intellectual history, thus enabling scholars to study the intellectual and political history of the period, both in its own right and in a holistic manner.”

CORDIS Source: Based on an interview with the project coordinator

This January scientists from a range of disciplines will come together to undertake the first ever coordinated sampling of the major rivers in Great Britain to look for soil derived organic carbon. This carbon is a large element of the nation’s ‘natural capital’ – in fact it is so large that restoring some damaged elements of it, such as upland peat bogs, could cost up to £570 million over the next 40 years.

In recognition of this NERC has commissioned the major new program, LOCATE (Land Ocean Carbon Transfer). One key early activity is to estimate the loss by sampling thirty rivers once a month for an entire year.

LOCATE uses the power of the highly distributed set of Centres NERC has across the nation to conduct this ambitious, sampling program. Besides the National Oceanography Centre (NOC) who lead this project, the centres include; the Centre for Ecology and Hydrology (CEH), the British Geological Survey (BGS) and Plymouth Marine Laboratory (PML), together with the Environmental Research Institute in Thurso, Scotland. Knitting together a sampling and analysis framework is no small task, for this reason LOCATE conducted a highly successful dry run in November 2016 in readiness for the formal start in the second week of January 2017.

British soil carbon provides society with a range of benefits. On fields, soil carbon supports crop production, whereas peatlands act to stock-pile carbon away from the atmosphere where it can lead to climate change. Carbon reserves are threatened by land-use change in changes in climate leading to increased losses from land to rivers, estuaries and oceans. These losses have been reported across Britain and Europe and pose a variety of risks including degraded drinking water quality through and decreased fertility of soils as well as potentially adding to man-made emissions to the atmosphere

Soils across the globe contain about four times as much carbon as the fossil fuels, which to date have entered the atmosphere via combustion. This pool of carbon is greatest at high latitudes, such as northern Scotland. Each year some of this carbon leaches into rivers and streams, gradually increasing the concentration of dissolved carbon in rivers in parts of Britain and Europe.

A good understanding of where this movement is happening at present does not currently exist, with historical estimates showing substantial geographical differences. For this reason LOCATE will establish how much soil carbon is getting into rivers and estuaries and do some accurate up to date carbon accounts for the Great British landmass.

In addition, LOCATE will develop natural observatory catchments in Scotland, Wales and England to examine the carbon cycle in detail. Results from this work will be used to develop predictive models with which future policy and land management plans can be developed.

Earlier this year LOCATE sampled the whole North Sea, the data from which shows higher concentrations of terrestrial material in the Rhine than the Baltic outflow. This surprising result shows that there is still much to understand about this key component of the planetary carbon cycle.

Professor Richard Sanders, from the NOC and principle investigator of LOCATE, said, “LOCATE will develop our understanding of how much carbon is being lost from the land to our rivers, estuaries and oceans. Importantly we will identify the hot spots of these losses. One main objectives is to mobilize the wider research and stakeholder communities to engage with the project through access to the LOCATE observatories and data with which questions on carbon cycling can be addressed.”

The LOCATE program would very much welcome hearing from potential partners interested in the Land Ocean transfer of other substances who could work collaboratively with the project to exploit the data sharing and sampling infrastructure LOCATE has built.

Researchers from the Harvard John A. Paulson School of Engineering and Applied Sciences have made the world’s smallest radio receiver – built out of an assembly of atomic-scale defects in pink diamonds.

This tiny radio — whose building blocks are the size of two atoms — can withstand extremely harsh environments and is biocompatible, meaning it could work anywhere from a probe on Venus to a pacemaker in a human heart.

The research was led by Marko Loncar, the Tiantsai Lin Professor of Electrical Engineering at SEAS, and his graduate student Linbo Shao and published in Physical Review Applied.

The radio uses tiny imperfections in diamonds called nitrogen-vacancy (NV) centers. To make NV centers, researchers replace one carbon atom in a diamond crystal with a nitrogen atom and remove a neighboring atom — creating a system that is essentially a nitrogen atom with a hole next to it. NV centers can be used to emit single photons or detect very weak magnetic fields. They have photoluminescent properties, meaning they can convert information into light, making them powerful and promising systems for quantum computing, phontonics and sensing.

Radios have five basic components — a power source, a receiver, a transducer to convert the high-frequency electromagnetic signal in the air to a low-frequency current, speaker or headphones to convert the current to sound and a tuner.

In the Harvard device, electrons in diamond NV centers are powered, or pumped, by green light emitted from a laser. These electrons are sensitive to electromagnetic fields, including the waves used in FM radio, for example. When NV center receives radio waves it converts them and emits the audio signal as red light. A common photodiode converts that light into a current, which is then converted to sound through a simple speaker or headphone.

An electromagnet creates a strong magnetic field around the diamond, which can be used to change the radio station, tuning the receiving frequency of the NV centers.

Shao and Loncar used billions of NV centers in order to boost the signal, but the radio works with a single NV center, emitting one photon at a time, rather than a stream of light.

The radio is extremely resilient, thanks to the inherent strength of diamond. The team successfully played music at 350 degrees Celsius — about 660 Fahrenheit.

“Diamonds have these unique properties,” said Loncar. “This radio would be able to operate in space, in harsh environments and even the human body, as diamonds are biocompatible.”

This research was coauthored by Mian Zhang, Matthew Markham and Andrew M. Edmonds. It was supported in part by the STC Center for Integrated Quantum Materials.

The “China Dream” that President Xi Jinping pursues, and India’s aspiration of becoming “a leading power”, tend to define the nuanced competition between these two neighbours in Maritime South Asia. In interacting with India’s proximate neighbours in this maritime space, Beijing is exploring globalisation with Chinese characteristics, while India is still exploring catch-up with China.

By P S Suryanarayana2

Chinese President Xi Jinping is consistently advocating “win-win cooperation” with other countries as the best means to realise the “China Dream”.3 As conceptualised, the “China Dream” is a grand 21st century vision with domestic significance for catalysing the national rejuvenation of an ancient and successful Chinese civilisation. At the same time, Xi’s calls for “win-win cooperation” with other countries are designed to realise the “China Dream” externally. These calls have been imagined as the best strategy to position China as a premier global power now.

In addition, Xi is seeking to distinguish China from the current global superpower, the United States. Increasingly seen as a possibly-waning force which might even become isolationist, the US still has no definitive successor at the top of the existing world order. Unsurprisingly, therefore, he has already tempered the idea of universal “win-win cooperation” by floating the concept of a “new model of major-country relations between China and the United States”. This lateral concept of a “new model” of Sino-American ties has been amplified by Xi himself as an interactive network of “such principles as non-confrontation, non-conflict, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation”.4

Now, it is anybody’s guess whether Xi will be able to engineer the emergence of a “new model” of Sino-American relations. This will be particularly relevant after a presumably-‘isolationist’ Donald Trump becomes US President in January 2017. However, Xi has projected “win-win cooperation” and a “new model” of China-US equation as positive image-multipliers. These are further portrayed as the anti-thesis of America’s old and new game-plans of creating several de-stabilising force-multipliers in the form of US-led military alliances around the world. Within the framework of such a world-view from Beijing, China does engage South Asia, too.

In particular, China projects “win-win cooperation” with each of the South Asian countries, including India, as the leitmotif of this multi-directional and multi-dimensional engagement.5 Chinese protagonists further portray this leitmotif as a virtuous negation of the “old mentality” of zero-sum games which dominated the bygone Cold-War era between the US and the now- defunct Soviet Union.6 However, the complexity of real-world engagements can be understood, for the purposes of policy analyses, only through nuanced thinking – not through the simplistic dichotomy of zero-sum games and “win-win cooperation”.

Nuanced Determinants of Policy

Two strands of nuanced policy-determinants come into play as China engages South Asia and vice versa. Often, the South Asian countries do not collectively deal with China which, too, does not always see, and interact with, them as a unified or homogenous entity. In this sub- context, India looms large as a power with a geopolitical and geo-economic outreach beyond South Asia. This elementary fact is not negated by the reality that India does not today match China’s growing geopolitical and geo-economic sway across the world.

Despite India’s asymmetrical disadvantages, China has been consistently capitalising on its macro-economic and military-spending superiority over India to try and ‘contain’ it within the confines of South Asia. Often cited in this regard are the perceived moves by Beijing to prop up as well as enhance the power-coefficients of India’s South Asian neighbours. India seems to have no means of moderating the interactions of its neighbours, particularly Pakistan and Sri Lanka, with China. As pointed out later in this paper, the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) has a military dimension, too, at and off Gwadar port, not far from India’s western coast.

China’s potentially-strategic access to a southern Sri Lankan port is also of concern to India. Above all, from Delhi’s perspective, China continues to raise the bogey of consensus to thwart India’s entry into the United Nations Security Council as a permanent member, and the Nuclear Suppliers Group as a responsible power with atomic weapons. These are but illustrative of Delhi’s frustration at being treated by Beijing as a mere South Asian player. Looking beyond such a real but stereo-typed view of China’s role in South Asia, it is necessary to assess how the “China Dream” and Xi’s mantra of “win-win cooperation” impinge on India and its proximate neighbours in Maritime South Asia. This forms the limited focus of this paper.

One of the two nuanced policy-determinants in the China-South Asia engagement is India’s own competitive aspiration to become “a leading power”. Such an aspiration is driven by India’s own sense of history as an ancient civilisation which, too, is in a position today to try and re-emerge as a leading force on the global stage. This aspect, frequently articulated by India’s Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar,7 can be seen as a geopolitical and geo-economic dynamic that might impinge on Xi’s pursuit of the “China Dream” in South Asia and beyond.

The second and no-less significant nuance in the China-South Asia engagement is the possibility that the formula of “win-win cooperation” does not guarantee or even imply equal or matching wins for Beijing and its partner(s) as well as interlocutor(s).

Moreover, Xi’s pursuit of the “China Dream” and “win-win cooperation”, as well as India’s aspiration to emerge as “a leading power”, will in some ways be influenced by the Trump-led America’s likely equations with Russia, Beijing’s best friend today, and with India. Within this overarching framework, one must view Xi’s outreach towards South Asia through the implementation of his initiative for the nearly-global ‘21st century Maritime Silk Road’.8

Broadly, the US-spawned global financial crisis of 2008 offered an ascendant China the first opportunity to think big and aim high on the world stage. Beijing’s own go-global party, the Olympics of 2008, was a defining moment, especially because the country overcame, in the run-up to that event, world-wide protests over the treatment of the Tibetan minority in Han- majority China. Significant, too, was India’s support for China on that occasion. To this day, India hosts thousands of Tibetan refugees, who dislike China, as well as the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama, and the ‘Tibetan Government-in-Exile’. However, Delhi took steps in 2008 that pleased Beijing in the run-up to the Olympic Games. India forestalled any disruption of the Olympic-torch relay that passed through the streets of New Delhi.

Trade Routes and Militarisation

Fast-forward to 2016. Beijing has the benefit of uncertainties over America’s global profile under the prospective Trump presidency of presumably ‘isolationist’ tendencies – a possible reversal of the current US’ strategy of re-balanced predominance in China’s neighbourhood. If indeed the Trump presidency will imply a reduced US presence in Asia or a reduced American attention towards Asia, this should suit Beijing in its engagement with South Asia, especially, Maritime South Asia in India’s proximate environs. Three sub-theatres become relevant to this particular context – the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean environs around Sri Lanka, and the Arabian Sea along the Pakistan-Iran coastline.

The Bay of Bengal, especially the Six-Degree Channel near the western entry-exit point of the Malacca Strait, is a crucial conduit for China’s two-way international trade and commerce. China’s international trade in this sector passes through India’s exclusive economic zone, because India’s Nicobar Islands lie close to the Six-Degree Channel. This Channel, as well as the Ten-Degree Channel which separates India’s Nicobar Islands from its Andaman Islands to the north, are of strategic interest not only to Delhi but also Beijing in both commercial and military terms. Legitimately, India has some of its sovereign military facilities on its Andaman and Nicobar Islands – certainly, a matter of deep interest to China.

The Ten-Degree Channel will be of increasing interest to China, if Xi eventually goes ahead with his presumptive ‘plan’ of carving out a Panama-Canal-like or a Suez-Canal-like artificial waterway at the Isthmus of Kra.9 The Isthmus lies in the vicinity of the Ten-Degree Channel which falls within India’s territorial waters. China’s presumptive ‘plan’ of carving out an artificial Kra Canal has been variously hinted at by at least one Chinese Minister and the state- media. The ‘plan’ is widely seen as China’s creative response to the so-called Malacca Dilemma.10 This relates to the possibility of the US, its allies and its partners being able to impede China’s international commerce (and perhaps also strategic traffic) at or near the Malacca Strait, the natural waterway that Beijing currently uses in its outreach towards South Asia and beyond. As the Kra Canal option is a long-term proposition, the current uncertainties over Trump’s likely foreign and strategic policies do not alter the inherent logic of this option. Moreover, observers believe that China, with its capabilities for creating artificial islands in the South China Sea, must be competent to carve out an artificial Kra Canal to link two seas.

Of interest to China in this perspective are (1) India’s military presence at the Andaman and Nicobar Islands; (2) Delhi’s reported plans to reinforce its Eastern Naval Command (ENC) as well as set up a strategic-arms outpost in the Bay of Bengal, and; (3) America’s military interest in this Bay, as reflected by US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter’s visit to the ENC in 2015.

China’s reported interest in gaining strategic (not just commercial) access to Bangladesh will also add to the potential militarisation of the Bay of Bengal. In addition, much will depend on whether, and if so how, India advances its on-going strategic partnership with the US, under or after the Trump presidency, by becoming a “net provider of security” in this Bay and, more broadly, in the Indian Ocean theatre.11

Vying for Strategic Access

In another sub-theatre in Maritime South Asia, namely Sri Lanka’s Indian Ocean environs (this island-republic is surrounded by the Indian Ocean on all sides), China has already gained geo-economic and geopolitical access to Hambantota in the south. The Hambantota port, at a vantage location along the Indian Ocean, and the collateral logistical facilities there, have been built with China’s technical and financial help. Although these facilities are for civilian use (and, there has so far been no commercial vibrancy there), the depth of the port and the quality of the airport have given rise to speculation about China’s potential geo-strategic access to them. Equally noteworthy is China’s on-going construction of the ‘Colombo port city’ (in reality, a financial centre), a project that was stalled for some time due to a change in Sri Lanka’s domestic political climate. This project gives China considerable strategic access to Sri Lanka’s western coast.

In this strategic setting, Delhi has recently augmented its presence and activities at the Oil Tank Farm at Trincomalee on Sri Lanka’s eastern seaboard. India’s geo-cultural links with the island-republic’s northern areas and parts of eastern hinterland are well-known. In a sense, therefore, the competitive impulses in the equation between China and India, both rising powers at different stages of economic development, are not confined to the Bay of Bengal sub-theatre in Maritime South Asia.

In the Arabian Sea sub-theatre, in and near Pakistan’s territorial waters, the Chinese success in constructing the Gwadar port as a full-spectrum facility reinforces Beijing’s almost-intrusive (but certainly extensive) access to this strategically located country. India cannot at all hope, or even wish, to match Beijing’s extensive reach across the length and breadth of Pakistan, which China looks upon as its version of America’s closest junior partner (Israel).12 Indeed Beijing’s strategic access to Pakistan is being dramatically enhanced through the ongoing work on the creation of China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). In contrast, the well-known paradigm of problematic India-Pakistan relations places Delhi at a disadvantage vis-à-vis Beijing in this sub-theatre in Maritime South Asia.

Nonetheless, Delhi is assisting Iran in developing its Chabahar port, which lies in the vicinity of Gwadar itself. At this stage, however, there is no authoritative indication of India being able to gain strategic access to Chabahar over time. In contrast, the Chinese Navy and the Pakistani Navy have already exercised together, close to the Gwadar port after it was operationalised recently.13 The exercise, in the nature of war-game to safeguard the Gwadar port, has not gone unnoticed in India.

The CPEC is an integral part of Xi Jinping’s geo-economic and geopolitical initiative of linking his country to various parts of Asia, Europe and Africa through suitable land-and-sea connectivity projects. Labelled overall as the “Belt and Road” initiative, Beijing has undertaken to build energy-and-infrastructure projects in partner-countries that allow China unimpeded connectivity by land, sea, and air. The cyberspace and the Outer Space have not so far figured prominently in China’s “Belt and Road” initiative.14

As a “leading power”-aspirant, India has not so far associated itself with Xi Jinping’s unilateral initiative15 of linking China to much of the rest of the world through connectivity-energy-and- infrastructure projects. However, India has not fought shy of joining China’s multilateral initiative of creating the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. In this milieu, China tends to view its promised investments in India’s infrastructure and industrial sectors as being intrinsic to the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative. Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Yi Xianliang, recently catalogued Chinese investment-commitments in South Asia, under this initiative, as follows: US$ 46 billion in Pakistan, US$ 22 billion in India, US$ 20 billion in Bangladesh, and US$ 17 billion in Sri Lanka.16

China and India, both aspiring to capitalise on their differential strengths as rising powers in that order, are also willing to cooperate wherever possible17 (the current and potential areas of such cooperation fall outside the limited scope of this paper on China and Maritime South Asia). However, competition is still the name of the Sino-Indian game in Maritime South Asia, because Beijing is exploring globalisation with Chinese characteristics while Delhi is still exploring catch-up with China.

Source: This article was published by ISAS as ISAS Insights No. 371 (PDF)

Notes:
1 This paper is adapted from the extempore presentation by Mr P S Suryanarayana – Editor (Current Affairs), Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore – at the international workshop on ‘China and South Asia’, organised by ISAS in association with the Regional Centre for Strategic Studies (RCSS), in Colombo (Sri Lanka) on 5 and 6 December 2016.
2 Mr P S Suryanarayana of ISAS, who can be contacted at isaspss@nus.edu.sg, is the author of Smart Diplomacy: Exploring China-India Synergy (2016). The author bears responsibility for the facts cited and opinions expressed in this paper.
3 Chinese President Xi Jinping’s discourse on the ‘China Dream’ as an aspiration, and ‘win-win’ cooperation as the means to accomplish this Dream, is evident from the numerous documents purveyed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, http://www.fmprc.gov.cn (English site).
4 The White House (US), Remarks by President Obama and President Xi Jinping in Joint Press Conference, Great Hall of the People, Beijing, 12 November 2014, http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press- office/2014/11/12/remarks-president-obama-and-president-xi-jinping-joint-press-conference (The file details are cited here as they existed at the time of access).
5 China’s mantra of “win-win cooperation” was highlighted by the Chinese delegates to the ISAS-RCSS international workshop on ‘China and South Asia’ held in Colombo on 5 and 6 December 2016.
6 Ibid.
7 Jaishankar spoke of India’s aspiration to become “a leading power”, while delivering the IISS Fullerton Lecture in Singapore in 2015 and while addressing a group of Indian and Chinese think-tanks in Delhi on 9 December 2016, http://www.mea.gov.in.
8. The English-language site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China purveys an exposition of Xi Jinping’s inter-related initiatives like the ‘21st century Maritime Silk Road’, the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt’, the ‘One Belt One Road’, the ‘Belt and Road’ etc. Also read, among others, Andrew Small, The China Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics, Random House Publishers India Pvt. Ltd, Gurgaon, 2015; and P S Suryanarayana, Smart Diplomacy: Exploring China-India Synergy, World Century Publishing Corporation, New Jersey, USA, 2016.
9 For more details, read: P S Suryanarayana, Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal: A Strategic Factor in China-South Asia Relations, ISAS Working Paper No. 248 – 12 December 2016; http://www.isas.nus.edu.sg.
10 For the importance of Malacca Strait to China, read, among others, John W. Garver, China’s Quest: The History of the Foreign Relations of the People’s Republic of China, Oxford University Press, New York, USA, 2016; and Jeff M. Smith, Cold Peace: China-India Rivalry in the Twenty-First Century, Lexington Books, Lanham (Maryland, USA) and Plymouth (UK), 2014.
11 The idea of India as a “net provider of security” in the Indian Ocean region was first floated by the US – The International Institute for Strategic Studies, The Shangri-La Dialogue, The 8th IISS Asia Security Summit, Singapore, 29–31 May 2009, pp. 21–24. The author covered the summit as a media representative.
12 It is known in the international diplomatic circles that China treats Pakistan in much the same way as the US has treated Israel, at least so far. China has conveyed this to the US.
13 Details of the China-Pakistan naval exercise off Gwadar in November 2016 can be had from http://www.ispr.gov.pk.
14 China has recently said that nearly 100 countries are supportive of its ‘Belt and Road’ initiative. Details can be had from the PRC’s Foreign Ministry website (English site).
15 India’s Foreign Secretary S Jaishankar has said, during his Fullerton Lecture in Singapore in 2015, that Delhi was not consulted by Beijing when it blueprinted its national initiative such as the ‘Belt and Road’ strategy. However, India is open to multilateral initiatives.
16 Chinese Ambassador to Sri Lanka, Yi Xianliang, spoke at the inaugural session of the ISAS-RCSS international workshop on ‘China and South Asia’ held in Colombo on 5 December 2016.
17 For a scholarly commentary on numerous aspects of the China-India interactions, read: Subrata Kumar Mitra, Rivals Sometimes, Friends Always? Puzzles, Paradoxes and Possibilities in Sino-Indian Relations, ISAS Working Paper No. 241 – 11 October 2016; http://www.isas.nus.edu.sg.

Putin has had enough of the relentless barrage of US accusations that he, personally, “hacked the US presidential election.”

The Russian president’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said on Friday that the US must either stop accusing Russia of meddling in its elections or prove it. Peskov said it was “indecent” of the United States to “groundlessly” accuse Russia of intervention in its elections.

“You need to either stop talking about it, or finally show some kind of proof. Otherwise it just looks very indecent”, Peskov told Reporters in Tokyo where Putin is meeting with Japan PM Abe, responding to the latest accusations that Russia was responsible for hacker attacks.

Peskov also warned that Obama’s threat to “retaliate” to the alleged Russian hack is “against both American and international law”, hinting at open-ended escalation should Obama take the podium today at 2:15pm to officially launch cyberwar against Russia.

Previously, on Thursday, Peskov told the AP the report was “laughable nonsense”, while Russian foreign ministry spox Maria Zakharova accused “Western media” of being a “shill” and a “mouthpiece of various power groups”, and added that “it’s not the general public who’s being manipulated,” Zakharova said. “the general public nowadays can distinguish the truth. It’s the mass media that is manipulating themselves.”

Meanwhile, on Friday Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister told state television network, Russia 24, he was “dumbstruck” by the NBC report which alleges that Russian President Vladimir Putin was personally involved in an election hack.

The report cited U.S. intelligence officials that now believe with a “high level of confidence” that Putin became personally involved in a secret campaign to influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. “I think this is just silly, and the futility of the attempt to convince somebody of this is absolutely obvious,” Lavrov added, according to the news outlet.

As a reminder, last night Obama vowed retaliatory action against Russia for its meddling in the US presidential election last month. “I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing,” Obama told National Public Radio.

US intelligence agencies in October pinned blame on Russia for election-related hacking. At the time, the White House vowed a “proportional response” to the cyberactivity, though declined to preview what that response might entail. Meanwhile, both President-elect Donald Trump, the FBI, and the ODNI have dismissed the CIA’s intelligence community’s assessment, for the the same reason Putin finally lashed out at Obama: there is no proof.

That, however, has never stopped the US from escalating a geopolitical conflict to the point of war, or beyond, so pay close attention to what Obama says this afternoon.

According to an NBC report, a team of analysts at Eurasia Group said in a note on Friday that they believe the outgoing administration is likely to take action which could result in a significant barrier for Trump’s team once he takes office in January.

“It is unlikely that U.S. intelligence reports will change Trump’s intention to initiate a rapprochement with Moscow, but the congressional response following its own investigations could obstruct the new administration’s effort,” Eurasia Group analysts added.

At the same time, Wikileaks offered its “validation” services, tweeting that “Obama should submit any Putin documents to WikiLeaks to be authenticated to our standards if he wants them to be seen as credible.”

The second round of top-level Russian-Japanese talks was held in Tokyo on Friday. The issues discussed included, in particular, the prospects for developing bilateral trade and economic, and investment cooperation.

A number of inter-governmental and inter-departmental documents, as well as a package of documents between various organizations from both countries, were signed as a result of the Russian President’s visit, according to the Kremlin.

On Thursday, Vladimir Putin met with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Mr Abe’s hometown of Nagato.

According to the Kremlin, the two leaders discussed the main areas of bilateral relations, international issues in the Asia-Pacific region, security matters, cooperation between the two countries in the UN, the situation in Ukraine, and ways to combat international drug trafficking.

Also under discussion was joint economic activity by the two countries on the southern Kuril Islands in areas such as fishing, tourism, aquaculture, medicine and the environment, the Kremlin said.

America matters to the world. To say that American growth and stability are international public goods, in the sense that they affect everyone around the world, is clichéd, but true nevertheless. Not just America’s external policies, but even its domestic economic policies have a spill-over impact on countries beyond its borders. Virtually every country therefore has a stake in America’s economic philosophy and policy; the stakes are even higher for emerging market economies such as those in South Asia whose prospects for growth and welfare are premised on the existence of a benign global economic order. Is it possible that this thought might be on the United States President- elect Mr Donald Trump’s mind?

By Duvvuri Subbarao*

The Prospect of the Trump Presidency– Two Consequences

The prospect of the Trump Presidency raises concerns for South Asia on two broad fronts.

First, Trump campaigned on a platform of rewriting the rules of US engagement with the world which, coming on top of the vote for Brexit and the rise of right-wing nationalism in Europe, threatens the forces of globalization that have defined the liberal international economic order for much of the last 50 years. These inward-looking developments come at a time when globalization is already stalling, if not actually regressing.

For a quarter century before the Lehman financial crisis in 2008, global trade expanded at a scorching pace – not just outpacing global output growth, but outpacing it by several multiples. Today, global trade is hardly able to keep pace with global output growth, raising concerns that it is not just cyclical factors but deep-rooted structural factors that are at play.

What might the de-globalization agenda of Trump, coming at such a juncture, mean for South Asia – especially for its aspirations for rapid growth and broad-based poverty reduction?

As a region, South Asia has been late in coming into globalization. Even as other regions of the emerging world, particularly in East Asia and Latin America, produced growth miracles of varying quality and sustainability, ostensibly as a result of opening up to global market forces starting in the 1970s, South Asian economies remained locked into slow growth and low incomes. This was widely attributed to their inward economic orientation, characterized by wide-ranging controls on movement of goods and capital. It was only in the 1990s, and increasingly in the new millennium, that they started liberalizing ever so cautiously – crossing the river by feeling the stones as it were.

Globalization has never been – and never will be – a totally benign force. It brings immense benefits by way of opportunities for leveraging on global synergies for domestic growth and welfare; but it also imposes ruthless costs by exposing fragile developing economies to the brutal volatility of global economy and finance, as indeed evidenced by the global financial crisis of 2008. The challenge lies in minimizing the costs and maximizing the benefits.

The ability to manage that challenge varies across regions. East Asia and Latin America are arguably better equipped to withstand global shocks because of their middle income status than South Asia which is decidedly low income. For sure, South Asian economies have a huge and compelling agenda on the domestic front – they have to implement structural reforms, increase investments in education and health and improve governance. But in order to realize their aspirations for growth and welfare, they also need a conducive global environment characterized by steady growth, open trade, a stable financial sector, and most of all, a predictable policy environment.

With its large economy, open market orientation and deep and liquid financial markets, America has for long provided leadership to the liberal international economic order. That leadership has not always been flawless nor unselfish, but on balance it served the world well. Might the Trump policy agenda, including the prospect of America relinquishing its leadership, upend the global order and complicate economic management in emerging markets in general and South Asia in particular?

The second broad concern for the outside world is that Trump comes into office with the promise of a huge fiscal stimulus to the US economy – big cuts in taxes and large increases in spending on infrastructure and defence – aimed at raising growth and creating jobs at home. Even though fiscal policy is quintessentially domestic, given the size of the US economy and the centrality of the American dollar to the global financial system, the Trump fiscal stance will have strong and potentially destabilizing impact on the rest of the world including emerging markets.

Coping with destabilizing forces is always costly and complex, even more so if destabilisation stems from external sources over which a country has no control. The challenge is particularly compelling for South Asian economies if only because they have the least ability to cope with instability.
Based on these two broad concerns, this paper examines the challenges that the Trump Presidency will throw up for South Asian economies.

Fiscal Stimulus

The spill-over from the Trump fiscal stimulus will manifest through a variety of channels. First, looser fiscal policy in the US will mean tighter global financial conditions, higher bond yields and increased interest rates in South Asia at a time when they are looking to raise investment activity through lower interest rates and softer bond yields.

Second, stronger growth in the US will likely put upward pressure on commodity prices, particularly of oil, which again will hit South Asia disproportionately because of its larger dependence on commodity imports.

Third, the slashing of corporate taxes, an important component of the Trump fiscal plan, will make domestic investment a more attractive option for US corporates, thereby inhibiting foreign direct investment into emerging markets. This too will hit South Asia more than other emerging regions as the former’s plans for faster growth and job creation are based on larger flows of FDI. Besides, lower foreign direct investment which is more stable, will increase South Asian dependence on portfolio flows in managing their balance of payments.

Financial Stability

By far the most important channel through which US fiscal expansion will impact South Asia will be through the exchange rate channel. In the one month since Trump’s election victory, the dollar recorded its sharpest rise in decades against a basket of peers, and it is likely to remain firm if Trump embarks on his fiscal plan soon after assuming office. Many corporates in South Asia which, tempted by the near-zero interest rates in the US during the reign of ‘Quantitative Easing (QE)’, borrowed in dollars have suddenly found their repayment burden shoot up as a result of the depreciation of their domestic currencies. This headwind comes at a time when corporates across South Asia are already under pressure because of the burden of non-performing assets.

In theory, we should expect faster growth in the US and a stronger dollar to support emerging economies though higher demand for their exports. Disappointingly, that positive effect will likely be neutralized by Trump’s protectionist policies (more on that later).

What would worry South Asia more than the level of the dollar exchange rate is the volatility in that exchange rate. A volatile exchange rate of their currencies against the dollar will make South Asian economies even more vulnerable to the vagaries of fickle capital flows – money which comes in when yield differences and exchange rates are favourable and exits just as swiftly when those conditions turn the other way. India, for example, has experienced portfolio outflows in the one month since the Trump victory at a rate not seen since the ‘taper tantrums’ of 2013 when capital fled the Indian economy plunging the exchange rate and jeopardizing financial stability.

Why should we expect the dollar exchange rate to be volatile going forward? For a host of reasons. First, because the dollar, which seems already overvalued, could likely spin into a self-reinforcing upward spiral under the impending Trump fiscal stimulus.

The second reason for concern about dollar volatility is the uncertainty about how the Fed might react to the Administration’s fiscal stance and Trump’s bewildering communication practices. Note that the Trump stimulus, being touted as Reaganomics rerun, comes at a time when the US economy is at near-full employment, holding out the threat of accelerating inflation and higher interest rates. Will this heightened concern about inflation prompt the Fed to hike rates faster and sooner than it had indicated in its forward guidance and, in the process, run the risk of forcing the economy into a recession? Or would the Fed, as some economists reckon, run the economy ‘red hot’ for a year or two, allowing demand to outstrip potential output, thereby energising the economy onto a higher growth trajectory?

The Fed’s dilemma will likely be compounded by Trump’s shifting position on this issue. At various times during the campaign, he was on “both sides of the issue”, sometimes berating the Fed for running a soft interest rate policy, and at other times flipping seamlessly to describe himself as a “low interest rate guy”. Although the Federal Reserve acts independently of the Administration, the latter’s views, especially if they are time- inconsistent, have the potential to undermine Fed independence, and at any rate muffle the signal and threaten financial stability, not just in the US but around the world. In particular, abrupt and unanticipated policy adjustments by the Fed could make the dollar volatile, leading to bouts of capital flight from emerging economies, threatening their financial stability and external sector viability.

Over the last ten years, as South Asian economies have integrated more deeply into global finance, they paid a heavy price during episodes of global instability – during the Global Financial Crisis in 2008, during the QE regime that followed during 2009-12 as well as when the QE was tapered in 2013. Global financial stability and a stable dollar are more critical than ever for South Asian economies to realize their aspirations for rapid growth and broad-based equity. That the Trump economic policies might derail those aspirations is a growing concern.

Protectionist Policies

As a candidate, Trump was most voluble on his protectionist policies – withdraw from TPP, renegotiate NAFTA, label China a currency manipulator and slap hefty tariffs on imports – all aimed at ‘reshoring’ production and creating jobs. Whether these mercantilist policies will deliver the intended outcomes is highly questionable; but they are sure to destabilize world trade, and even more so if other countries retaliate.

The stereotype view is that a turmoil in global trade is unlikely to hurt South Asia if only because their export sectors are small relative to GDP. But precisely because their exports are small do South Asian countries have a big stake in ensuring that global trade remains open and keeps expanding.

South Asia, as indicated earlier, was late coming into globalization and missed out on the export-led growth experienced first by the East Asian Tigers in the 1980s and China in the 1990s. South Asians’ ability to replicate the earlier growth models is already being challenged by the declining importance of cheap labour as a determinant of comparative advantage. Those headwinds will be further reinforced by Trump’s protectionist policies, jeopardizing their plans for growth and welfare.

Trump’s protectionist policies encompass also controlling immigration. It is not clear if his immigration reforms will remain restricted to dealing with illegal immigrants or if they will also extend to immigration of skilled professionals. If the latter, South Asia, as a large supply pool of professional immigrants to the US, will be hurt. There is ample evidence to show that immigration of professionals has benefitted both home and host countries – host countries by way of higher output and high-end jobs, and home countries by way of remittances and diffusion of talent. South Asia will have another worry if Trump’s immigration reforms turn out to be more militant than now seems likely.

Global Economic Governance

Globalization has made the world flat, but only in some respects. In many important ways, the playing field remains uneven, with advanced economies controlling the rules of global economic governance. The governance of the IMF and the World Bank is controlled by the advanced economies, with conditionalities imposed on borrowing countries as per the ‘Washington Consensus’, unmindful of the hardship and even economic damage it might cause to the latter. The global rules for financial sector regulation are set by the Financial Stability Board where emerging economies, despite a seat at the table, are unable to influence policy decisions.

The G20 is more inclusive but has failed to live up to the high expectations it raised after the extraordinary unity of purpose and resolve it showed in resolving the Global Financial Crisis. With the immediacy of the crisis behind it, the fault-lines among the G20 countries have started showing up once again, and it has shown itself to be unable or unwilling to grapple with the many complex problems that the global economy faces.

It is into this quagmire of asymmetric relationships and conflicting interests that Mr Trump steps in with his muscular policies for domestic stimulus and disengagement from global economic governance. Surely American leadership of global institutions has often been flawed and has not always been driven by collective self-interest. But it cannot be anyone’s case that global economic governance will improve if America withdraws. On the contrary, American withdrawal could make the situation even worse. America matters to the world because of the size of its economy, the pivotal position of the dollar as the world’s sole reserve currency and the depth of global integration whereby what happens anywhere in the world affects countries everywhere.

American Leadership

A world divided by nation-states, but sharing an increasingly common economic space, needs enlightened leadership that puts collective self-interest above narrow domestic interests.

This matters to every country but more so to South Asia which houses more poor people than any other region in the world. South Asia’s growth and prosperity are critically dependent on a benign global economic order for which America’s continued engagement with the world and constructive leadership of the international economic order are essential.

Is it possible that this thought might be on Mr Trump’s mind?

About the author:
* Dr Duvvuri Subbarao is Distinguished Visiting Fellow at the Institute of South Asian Studies (ISAS), an autonomous research institute at the National University of Singapore. He is a former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, and author of Who Moved My Interest Rate? Leading the Reserve Bank of India through Five Turbulent Years, Penguin Group, 2016. He can be contacted at subbarao@gmail.com. The author bears responsibility for the facts cited and opinions expressed in this paper.

Source:
This article was published by ISAS a ISAS Insights No. 372 (PDF).

By N. Sathiya Moorthy

Much is happening in India’s immediate South Asian, Indian Ocean neighbourhood, both on the political and diplomatic/geo-strategic fronts. However, political India is tied down to demonetisation, and the Indian strategic community to ‘surgical strikes’, Jammu & Kashmir and Pakistan — with no time and inclination to look elsewhere in the neighbourhood. All of it could have consequences for India’s foreign policy, especially the ‘Neighbourhood First’ approach, propounded by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, at the commencement of his term two-and-half years back.

Needless to point out, Sri Lanka and Maldives are India’s immediate neighbours in the Indian Ocean. Modi made a landmark three-nation visit of Sri Lanka, Seychelles and Mauritius in March 2015, and had to leave out Maldives out of the itinerary, owing to domestic political situation. Nothing much has been heard from the Indian side on the necessary follow-up on these fronts, which is of interest and concern to India from the medium and long-term perspectives.

It’s not as if India has turned a blind eye to developments in these countries, nor has it stopped participating in events over there. Recently, Indian Navy chief Admiral Sunil Lanba was in Sri Lanka on a five-day visit, when he also delivered the key-note address at the prestigious, post-war annual ‘Galle Dialogue’ in end-November. The visit was aimed at “consolidating and enhancing maritime ties” between the two countries, an official statement had said earlier. Before Adm. Lanba, National Security Advisor (NSA) A.K. Doval had delivered the keynote address at the 2014 edition of Galle Dialogue — only months after the Modi Government had come to power.

‘External interference’

What has gone mostly unnoticed in the past week/month or so is the greater activity on the part of non-regional state players, pertaining to Sri Lankan affairs. In what looks mostly out-of-turn, Chinese Ambassador in Colombo, Yi Xialiang, said in Colombo recently that his nation would not entertain ‘external interference’ in the affairs of Sri Lanka. Independently, and around the time, Russian envoy, Alexander A. Karchava, recalled for the benefit of local audience(s) how Moscow had stood firm with Sri Lanka on UNHRC-related ‘accountability probe’ issues and resolutions in Geneva.

This is not the first time in recent weeks that Amb. Yi has talked in public on Sri Lankan affairs. If he was referring to the Indian neighbour of Sri Lanka, he did not mention it. There is also the distinct possibility, China now wants to be counted in as a South Asian nation — as and when it suits the same. For long, friends of China in the now-defunct SAARC have been pushing the case for making the nation a member of the South Asian organisation.

If Amb. Yi was referring to the US, obviously China too as an extra-regional player like the other, was seeking to make its political presence and ‘initiatives’, if any, a fait accompli for the future. If left uncontested, it can have consequences, though not all of them unpleasant for the host in particular. India cannot be taking a similar view of the neighbourhood situation — not on what Sri Lanka should do or not do, but precisely on what was going on, and was likely to happen, in an area of immediate external security implications and concerns for itself.

In this context, Sri Lankan Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe’s recent reiteration that the US under the upcoming Trump dispensation would continue to be the ‘elephant in the room’ as far as the Indian Ocean Region (IOR) was concerned. Earlier, he had made the reference in his inaugural address to Galle Dialogue 2015, and made it clear that none could wish away the American presence and influence. In the more recent instance, he was obviously seeking to silence expectation that a Trump establishment could well begin dis-engaging from the region.

Incidentally, not very long ago, Amb. Yi had joined issue with Sri Lankan Finance Minister, Ravi Karunanayake, on the relative cost of Chinese loans, which the latter had, more-than-once, said was on the high side. The issue was allowed to die a natural death after Sri Lankan Foreign Secretary, Esala Weerakoon, spoke to Amb. Li on telephone, asking not to go to the media on what essentially were bilateral affairs.

In doing so, Weerakoon and the Sri Lankan Government handled the issue with the sensitivity that bilateral relations required. The alternative might have been for the Foreign Secretary to summon the Chinese envoy, and register Colombo’s views in the matter. Minister Ravi too has stopped talking. Incidentally, no one made any big issue of the same in Sri Lankan Parliament, either, then or afterwards. Noticeably, the local media also played down the issue once Weerakoon had spoken to Amb. Yi.

Major defence partner

In the midst of all this, news got around that Sri Lankan President Maithiripala Sirisena would be visiting Moscow, for what the local media described as a ‘pow-vow’ with Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, in March 2017. US Vice President elect, Mike Pence, spoke in between to Sirisena, inviting him to visit the US, to improve bilateral relations.

Given that the Trump administration reportedly does not have too much of initial reservations to working with Putin’s Moscow, and has only specific concerns about a growing China, what it means for Sri Lanka, or for the larger Indian neighbour, too, remains to be seen. It’s another matter how the bilateral agreement, making India a ‘major defence partner’ of the US and signed during the lame duck presidency of Barack Obama would play out in the coming weeks, months and years.

Governments and administrations are continuing institutions prima facie, and the chances are that the outgoing Obama administration would have taken Trump’s transition team into confidence before proceeding in the matter. Yet, it cannot be gainsaid that the personality of political administrators in different countries — including incumbent Indian Prime Minister Modi — have always contributed to the pace, space and direction of bilateral and regional relations.

Pressure points

In Sri Lanka, however, no one seems to be talking over much about bilateral, regional and international issues, including geo-strategic concerns that may still be close to the nation’s heart, one way or the other. Though no one has begun talking about it, sooner than later, there will be frequent mention of UNHRC March session, when the Maithiri-Ranil duo’s past governmental commitments on wartime accountability probe mechanisms could come in for review.

It’s here, the tilt, if any, in the approach of the freshly-mint Trump administration on larger issues of human rights (as perceived by his American predecessors in the past) too could come up for a closer study. It need not stop with the Sri Lankan Tamil (SLT) back home, or their brethren in Europe and the immediate American neighbourhood like Canada. The rest of the rights groups across the world too would be watching — though it’s another matter that they too have often trained their guns to suit American priorities and pressure-points than the other way round.

India too may be watching the Trump position with interest, the Obama administration having initiated the Geneva process with vehemence, sweeping away the all important Indian vote, too, in the first year, 2012. Independent of its own performance in the past, or into the future, India should also be looking at what Sri Lanka itself would be wanting from the immediate neighbour in terms of diplomatic initiatives, and what the likes of China and Russia could do, in turn, at Geneva, if it came to that.

Collective decision

In Sri Lanka, new Constitution, Executive Presidency, ‘unitary State’ and power devolution, all in the name of post-war, ethnic reconciliation are getting into sharper focus. In common neighbour, Maldives, the unsettling political environment continues. President Abdulla Yameen, at least in the short and medium-term, has proved that he is a match to anyone and everyone, separately or together, closer home or otherwise.

India’s immediate interest may not relate to the turn of domestic politics in either of these countries. Nor could India be concerned too much about their respective rights, concerns and priorities over the nation’s collective decision, if any, on the future political course nearer home, or geo-strategic priorities and positioning.

India respects the sovereignty of smaller neighbours. But the inability of these nations to arrive at a ‘collective decision’ on such matters has been a cause for the continued political stability well into the future — hence India’s concern, too, as someone who could be affected directly or otherwise.

Waiting on the wings

In Maldives, the major polity is no more two-faced, but three-faced after former President Maumoon Abdul Gayoom split away from the PPM, of which he was the founder and chair and of whose nominee incumbent President Yameen is. Already, the MDP led by another former President, Mohammed ‘Anni’ Nasheed, has been waiting on the wings and as a ‘political refugee’ in distant UK.

The UK lost whatever little hold it had over the Yameen administration after Maldives quit the Commonwealth, way ahead of the January meeting of the CMAG, the ministerial action group. If anyone or any nation, it may be India that may have to get into the act, if only with shared, long-term security interests in mind. Already, the present Maldives Government has acknowledged more than once in recent months that they are working closely with India, especially on fighting international terrorism.

Yet, there is no denying that in Maldives, the China-funded Male-Hulhule sea-bridge, connecting the all-important national capital of Male with the international airport-island that will be making news in the months to come — that too ahead of the presidential polls, due in November 2018. Whether this could tilt the Maldivian voter in favour of Yameen, or democracy issues, as flagged by the Nasheed camp, or the middle path on either initiated long ago by Gayoom, would matter too remains to been.

In Sri Lanka, too, the new dispensation (which is no more new) has been bending backwards to accommodate China on the investment front, the more recent one being the privatisation of the southern Hambantota port, built during predecessor Mahinda Rajapaksa’s regime. At the time of the port-work initiation, a section of the strategic community in India claimed it to be of great geo-strategic value for the nation to have slipped by.

In between, China too has offered fighter jets and a maintenance shop of sorts at the all-important Kattanayake air base/airport, near capital Colombo. The US is also known to have offered Boeing Poseidon military aircraft for purchase by Sri Lanka. Considering Sri Lanka’s economic condition and fiscal position, any offer of choice would have to be possibly accompanied by a financing package, possibly by the US government.

US military teams too have been visiting Sri Lanka in recent months, either for training or for humanitarian work — all of them converging onto better and faster acclimatisation for the future. At least that way, no one is any more talking about any imminent arrival of Chinese submarines for berthing off Maldives, nor of American or Russian military aid or presence, after the disastrous SOFA bid by the former and the embarrassing arrest of a Russian parliamentarian’s son for data theft in the US, the former before Yameen came to power and the latter under Yameen’s care.

By Mariya Cheresheva

Bulgarian parliamentarians gave tough anti-terror legislation a green light in a series of votes on Wednesday and Thursday.

The changes give the police, army, prosecution and security services sweeping powers in terrorist alert cases to wiretap suspects and restrict civil rights.

In cases of terrorist threats, the Minister of Interior will be empowered to trigger a national counter-terrorism plan that includes “the partial and temporary restriction of the rights of citizens”.

The military will be given wide police functions to search and arrest people. Physical force will also be permitted, in cases of “absolute necessity”.

The period of permitted wiretapping of a criminal suspect is extended from six months to three years and the Prosecutor-General has been given the rights to demand the use of special intelligence means.

Since the bill was proposed in July, it has been subjected to criticism by the government’s opponents and by rights groups.

MPs from the left-wing Bulgarian Socialist Party and the Alternative for Bulgarian Revival criticized extending the permitted time for wiretapping, qualifying it as “unreasonably broad”.

Atanas Atanasov, an MP from the right-wing party Democrats for Strong Bulgaria, told BIRN the powers granted to the Minister of Interior, the State Agency for National Security, DANS, and the Prosecutor General, were too wide.

Such authority “opens up opportunities for the abuse of political power,” Atanasov said.

He told BIRN that the powers of law-enforcement bodies in cases of an anti-terror plan now resemble those in a state of emergency, which can only voted on by parliament, not by a single minister.

The MP, who is а member of parliament’s security commission, said: “The enforcement of such special orders creates a huge risk of abuse by one body [the Prosecutor-General] which is not subjected to any control.”

Back in July, the rights group, the Bulgaria Helsinki Committee, complained that the changes potentially impacted “on the fundamental rights of citizens without them having committed any terrorist acts, attempts or preparations for such acts”.

The government, however, has defended the need to introduce anti-terror legislation amid what it says are growing international threats.
– See more at: http://www.balkaninsight.com/en/article/bulgaria-s-new-anti-terror-bill-raises-concern-12-15-2016#sthash.i9LxW5hw.dpuf

It is time for a new and streamlined structure for legal and institutional accountability across the United Nations and its specialised agencies. There is much work to be done. None of these problems are easy to solve. But solutions can be achieved. None of us have anything to fear from being held accountable, for the staff of the United Nations radiate with their own brilliance when they are permitted to stand as jewels in the night. The politics of the United Nations is due for fundamental change, and we have the tools at hand. We can and will apply them.

By Matthew Parish*

Organizations are not as efficient as individuals. Individuals know what they want. Organizations, which are ultimately composed of nothing more than individuals, may have many different things that they want. On occasion, each person in an organization may have their own agenda. This creates inefficiencies, as individual preferences conflict and people compete politically for influence. In a private company, this inefficiency problem may be disciplined by the appointment of management by owners to pursue profit. If management do not succeed in achieving the owners’ goals of achieving profit, they are removed and replaced with people who will. In public organisations, this are not so straightforward. The problem of disciplining inefficiency is more complex, because the goal of the organisation may not be obvious, even if it is enshrined in statute. Its “owners” – that is to say, the general public or that subsection of the general public the organisation is ostensibly designed to serve – may not all have co-aligned ideas of what the organisation is supposed to do.

In the face of these competing mandates, the managers may take advantage of a risk of indirection and pursue their own self-interests, which are more likely to be seizure of public funds as budget; development of a bureaucracy of sub-managers over whom they exercise dominion; and creation of rules and procedures that institutionalise their seizure of influence. Harmful conduct of this nature is ultimately disciplined in approximately democratic societies by elections. If public organisations become too inflated and inexact in their mandates, then electors remove politicians with authority over the organisations and replace them with those who pursue a less inefficient agenda. Elections as a form of inefficiency discipline are necessarily imperfect (as with all institutional life), but the logical direction of political economy is clear.

Yet for international organisations, the requisite elections are so few and far between, and the electors so divorced from the funds they are spending, that the use of elections as a form of inefficiency discipline becomes too tenuous. Domestic administrators, already at risk of engagement in the rent-seeking politics of taking advantage of public sector inefficiencies, are also the electorate supposed to discipline the international organization. Hence domestic administrators with a conceivable incentive to inflate budgets and staff might be inclined to elect international bureaucrats with an incentive to do much the same thing.

In theory domestic electorates could come to the rescue, voting out the domestic administrators who elect the international administrators. But such a model of institutional discipline falls foul of two false premises. The first is the assumption that all domestic administrators in the election of the international organisation’s bureaucrats are themselves subject to electoral discipline. In circumstances where a plurality, if not a majority, of international organisation member states are imperfectly democratic, that axiom is bound to fail. The second such premise is the assumption that domestic electorates, even in more perfect democracies, actually care. They may take the view that the operation of international organisations is so remote from their day-to-day lives that they are simply not prepared to exercise their voting preferences based upon such concerns.

Yet there is another way of disciplining the inefficiencies inherent in all public organisations, namely institutions of internal accountability. As Secretary General-elect Guterres has personally emphasised, he must maintain unwavering commitment to transparency, accountability and oversight, standing firmly for the reputation of the United Nations and its dedicated staff and imposing the highest ethical standards upon all UN employees.

Legal accountability is the most effective way of disciplining any organisation, by reference to a series of standards set out in legal rules and an independent judiciary responsible for enforcing those rules through a series of orders of compensation, restitution and other penalties in the event of clear wrongdoing. The UN Dispute Tribunal undertakes admirable work in this regard, holding staff and managers alike to the standards the Secretary General-elect personally expects of all United Nations officials. Yet there is always more that can be done. The manifest gaps in gender equality and regional diversity within the UN structure show that the legal mechanisms in place are not incentivising apportionments in accordance with the equities inherent in the 1945 Charter to the requisite degree. Hence they must be strengthened.<

I would like to give just three anecdotal examples of instances where lacunae remain, and might easily be resolved, just by simple modifications to the United Nations’ current internal legal structure. Person A served as a Senior Director to the Executive Head of a major United Nations agency. Concerned about ethical conduct on the part of the agency in question, she was effectively sidelined and forced to resign, thereby being moved to another specialist agency albeit on a temporary contract that was subsequently not renewed. She was penalised for being a whistleblower. No contemporary corporate structure countenances retaliation for revelation of wrongdoing. The United Nations must have a system in which all stakeholders may raise concerns: not just UN staff, the Chief Executive Board and the Senior Management Group, but also civil society. Where those concerns are raised and are of a legitimate nature, then then an environment must exist where they may be conveyed without fear of retaliation and confident of a fair process for investigation and resolution of grievances and disputes that enables all parties to address their concerns, and for those grievances to be resolved, in a proper way.

Let me mention a second example. Person B was a senior manager who observed financial irregularities in a United Nations specialist agency. The organisation sought to buy her off when she raised the issue, transferring her into a sinecure until she complained so loudly that the decision was reversed. There is no sense in which this can be regarded as an efficient use of UN member state resources. The more efficient expenditure of oversight and investigation resources, through bolstering the resources of the United Nations Office for Internal Oversight Services, should be pursued to ensure that allegations of this nature are investigated. This creates the harmonious incentives for mutual cooperation to achieve common goals across the UN system.

My final example, Person C, was a field operative in an unsafe environment. She was so disheartened by the attitudes of some of her colleagues in failing to give requisite priorities and emphasis to the needs of the people, with a focus upon delivery and results rather than mere operation in silos and pretences in just bridging a traditional gap between difference UN agencies, that she eventually departed the organisation for private practice, disheartened by the experience and excoriating in her criticisms of the individuals who lacked the focus and imagination to emphasise delivery. Capable people must never be lost from the United Nations Organisation in this way. It is a tragedy if the common humanity expressed by the United Nations is not expressed in its outputs. I am determined to see that happen.

It is, incidentally, no coincidence that the three anecdotal instances I have provided of mixed response to internal critique and complaint in the context of administrative operations of the United Nations all relate to instances where the victims of inadequate administrative oversight were female. That is why I am proud of the Secretary General-elect when he says:

The UN must be at the forefront of the global movement towards gender equality, an inalienable and indivisible feature of all human rights and fundamental freedoms: progressively moving from perceiving women and girls as a subject of protection to promoting their empowerment; from an isolated focus on women to gender mainstreaming.

I am absolutely committed to a system of legal and institutional accountability across the United Nations system. That is why the UN Office of Internal Oversight Services, the UN Dispute Tribunal and the specific responsibilities and mandates of inspectors-general of individual UN agencies must work together to create a culture of prevention so that the United Nations can be guaranteed to live up to its charter obligations. In this way, member states and other international partners can be confident that the funds they may be called upon to contribute to the United Nations Organisation will be effectively and efficiently spent in mitigating crisis.

The key to institutional effectiveness is an incentive mechanism for all international civil servants to work with clear goals and under a system of transparency and accountability. This way, uncontrolled administrative growth may be eliminated. Instead there can be a concentration of resources in sectors where the UN’s multilateral mandate is uniquely valuable. The United Nations Development System, by common consensus, stands in need of reform by virtue of having itself developed in an unwieldy fashion. By institutional and structural revisions, the fine staff of the Development System can be reinvigorated to focus upon the UN Charter’s objectives. And only with economic development, and the requisite efficient financial assistance from all due corners of the international community, can the political solutions requisite to peacekeeping and peace building be sustained. In this context I particularly admire the dedicated work and relentless focus of the US Congress in promoting accountability and transparency in the operation of the United Nations and its specialist agencies.

That is why I am in favour of a new and streamlined structure for legal and institutional accountability across the United Nations and its specialised agencies. There is much work to be done. None of these problems are easy to solve. But solutions can be achieved. Legal and administrative review is undertaken effectively and efficiently in a variety of domestic and trans-national environments. None of us have anything to fear from being held accountable, for the staff of the United Nations radiate with their own brilliance when they are permitted to stand as jewels in the night. The internal in-fighting of the United Nations will stop. Whistleblowers and those with legitimate grievances will be heard. The rare transgressors will be held accountable. The politics of the United Nations is due for fundamental change, and we have the tools at hand. We can and will apply them.

*Matthew Parish is a former UN peacekeeper in the Balkans and formerly served as Legal Counsel at the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development in Washington, DC. He is the Managing Partner of the Gentium Law Group in Geneva, and formerly served as Chief Political Advisor to Vuk Jeremic in the selection process to become the next UN Secretary General in 2016. Mr Jeremic came second. Matthew is now a key political supporter of the Secretary General-elect, Antonio Guterres. www.gentiumlaw.com, www.matthewparish.com

The views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of TransConflict.

By Neena Bhandari

As the curtain falls on 2016, the year that marked the fifth anniversary of Fukushima and the 30th anniversary of Chernobyl nuclear disasters, sending a sombre reminder of the devastating humanitarian and environmental consequences of these weapons of mass destruction, the resolve to free the world of nuclear weapons is stronger than ever before.

The United Nations Resolution A/C.1/71/L.41, which calls for negotiations on a “legally binding instrument to prohibit nuclear weapons, leading toward their total elimination”, was adopted at the 71st session of the First Committee of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) on October 27, 2016 with 123 members, including nuclear North Korea, voting in favour of taking forward the multilateral nuclear disarmament negotiations, 38 voted against and 16 abstained.

Australia, once a champion of nuclear disarmament, chose to oppose the Resolution even as the continent country’s nearest 26 neighbours in the Asia-Pacific voted in favour alongside African, Latin American and Caribbean countries.

International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) Australia’s Campaign Director, Tim Wright says, “If Australia continues to oppose this long-overdue treaty, it risks alienating other nations in the region. It is deeply regrettable that Australia, instead of standing up for what is morally right and necessary, chose to side with the small number of nuclear-armed nations and others that claim nuclear weapons are legitimate.”

He adds: “Australia’s attempt to derail the UN working group on nuclear disarmament was an extraordinary move, and one that backfired spectacularly. It resulted in a clearer recommendation and strengthened the resolve of other nations to start negotiations in 2017 on a treaty outlawing nuclear weapons.”

The Resolution follows three intergovernmental conferences, examining the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, which were held in Norway, Mexico and Austria during 2013 and 2014. These conferences paved the way for non-nuclear countries to play a more assertive role in disarmament.

Calling on Australia to immediately end its claimed reliance on U.S. nuclear weapons, Wright told IDN, “This dangerous policy of extended nuclear deterrence undermines disarmament and promotes proliferation. It sends a message to other nations that these weapons of mass destruction are legitimate, necessary and useful. There can be no justification whatsoever for this policy. No other country in our immediate region claims protection from nuclear weapons.”

Nuclear-armed states and countries that subscribe to the United States’ extended nuclear deterrence for security, such as Australia, Japan and South Korea, had opposed the Resolution.

It is worth noting that New Zealand supported the Resolution, which is consistent with its last over three decades of social and legal history on the issue of nuclear arms. Wright says, “Australia, once a supporter of nuclear disarmament, has in recent years completely abandoned principle on this issue, seizing every opportunity to defend the continued possession and potential use of these worst weapons of mass destruction.”

New Zealand, Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand are amongst countries in the region that are likely to play a key role at the negotiating conferences scheduled for March and June 2017 in New York.

Former Chair of the New Zealand Parliamentarians for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament (PNND), Maryan Street told IDN, “It is shocking that Australia opposed Resolution L41. There’s no rational explanation for it except to state the obvious and that is that their allegiance to the United States overtook all other considerations. Australia has never been in the forefront of the anti-nuclear movement and so it should come as no surprise that it voted the way it did. With a conservative Liberal government, there is clearly no appetite for courage on this issue.”

Out of the 34 Asia-Pacific countries, which voted on the issue, only four voted against it, namely Australia, Japan, the Federated States of Micronesia and South Korea, and four others – China, India, Pakistan and Vanuatu abstained.

“To be so out of step with your nearest neighbours on an issue of such strategic and potentially cataclysmic importance seems to be irresponsible. Australia needs to use its considerable weight to engage with Asia-Pacific fora, such as regional security discussions, not disengage from them,” says Street.

Australia has supported global bans on chemical and biological weapons, landmines and cluster munitions. “Australia is committed to the elimination of nuclear weapons pursued in an effective way. However, so long as the threat of nuclear attack exists, the United States’ extended nuclear deterrence serves Australia’s security interests”, a spokesperson for Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) told IDN.

According to the 2016 annual poll by the Sydney-based Lowy Institute for International Policy, support for the U.S. alliance has slipped nine points: 71 percent of Australians see the alliance as ‘very’ or ‘fairly’ important to Australia’s security, the lowest level of support since 2007, but still eight points higher than the result that year.

Australia feels its efforts must be directed to strengthening the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which is the cornerstone of the global disarmament and non-proliferation regime, and implementing its commitments, such as those agreed in the action plan of the 2010 NPT Review Conference.

“A nuclear weapons’ ban treaty without the participation of countries which possess nuclear arsenals, or without due regard for the international security environment, would be ineffective in eliminating nuclear weapons”, the DFAT spokesperson added.

While the NPT remains essential for preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and as the basis for disarmament negotiations, Wright says, “The treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons is a measure designed to implement Article VI of the NPT. The prohibition treaty will close the loopholes in the existing international legal regime governing nuclear weapons. It will make it clear beyond doubt that it is illegal for any nation to use, test, manufacture or stockpile nuclear weapons.”

Wright adds: “It is deeply concerning that Australia and several other pro-nuclear weapon nations seem to have abandoned their support for the NPT. They are refusing to comply with their obligation under Article VI of the treaty to pursue negotiations for nuclear disarmament.”

All 191 NPT state parties have committed in Article 6 to “pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament”.

“In 1996 the International Court of Justice advised that they have an obligation to bring these negotiations to a conclusion. Resolution L.41 conforms to this obligation and attempts to give practical expression to it,” says Ramesh Thakur, Director of the Center for Nuclear Non-Proliferation and Disarmament, Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra.

Four of the five nuclear weapons’ states who are signatory to the NPT, France, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States, voted against the Resolution alongside Israel, a non-NPT nuclear power. China, which has about 260 nuclear warheads, India with between 100-120 warheads and Pakistan with between 110-130 warheads, abstained.

Thakur says, “A legal nuclear ban treaty by itself cannot deliver nuclear disarmament, but it can be a vital element to revive flagging momentum and re-energize efforts to move from a ban to total elimination of nuclear warheads and dismantlement of the nuclear weapons infrastructure.”

He adds: “A legal ban will further reinforce the normative boundary between conventional and nuclear weapons, strengthen the norm of non-use of nuclear weapons, and reaffirm both the non-proliferation and disarmament norms. Accordingly, a ban treaty will be complementary to the disarmament goal of the NPT and provide impetus to efforts toward an eventual Nuclear Weapons Convention that is universal, non-discriminatory and fully verifiable.”

Since the ratification of the NPT in 1973, Australia has more or less had a bipartisan approach to global nuclear issues. As Labour Party senator and Shadow Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in a media release, “Labor supports effective and feasible action toward non-proliferation and disarmament, and will continue to actively pursue a path toward these objectives. Labor shares international frustrations with the pace of disarmament and we remain committed to the cause of eliminating nuclear weapons.”

The Australian Greens have also called on Foreign Minister Julie Bishop to explain why Australia voted against the Resolution.

“Australia should support moves in the UNGA for a convention to eliminate nuclear weapons. Australia should change its foreign policy to reflect changed circumstances and should independently pursue Australia’s interests before Mr Donald Trump takes over as President in January next year. These include complying with the non-aggression clauses of the UN Charter and the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in South-East Asia”, former Australian diplomat, Dr Alison Broinowski told IDN.

A 2014 Nielsen poll showed that 84 per cent of Australians from a broad range of demographics want the government to support a ban.

Outreach Coordinator for ICAN Australia, Gem Romuld told IDN: “Our work in Australia tells us there is overwhelming public support for a treaty to outlaw nuclear weapons, to clearly stigmatise and rule out any form of Australian involvement in these weapons of mass destruction, for example, by assisting the U.S with nuclear targeting via the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility in the Northern Territory. Australia assists the U.S in its war-fighting efforts by hosting the Pine Gap Joint Defence Facility, a major communications base, which would help nuclear weapons reach their destination in the event of a nuclear war”.

In recent years, the nuclear armed states have pursued costly programmes to modernise and increase their arsenals. The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) 2016 annual nuclear forces data shows that while the overall number of nuclear weapons in the world continues to decline, none of the nuclear weapon-possessing states are prepared to give up their nuclear arsenals for the foreseeable future.

According to SIPRI, “At the beginning of 2016 nine states – the United States, Russia, the United Kingdom, France, China, India, Pakistan, Israel and North Korea – possessed approximately 4,120 operationally deployed nuclear weapons. If all nuclear warheads are counted, these states together possessed a total of approximately 15,395 nuclear weapons compared with 15,850 in early 2015.”

So, once again, as usual, Donald Trump when faced with allegations about Russian hacking in his election, quickly gave an interview to Fox News about Taiwan. That helped in diverting much of the traffic towards the issue, in a communication diversion strategy that Trump has mastered since he decided to stand for election. The interview itself was obviously incoherent, and Trumpian…as in he said a lot of things, half said even more, and almost all of them contradictory. Typical example being he claimed Obama’s policies were a failure, but simultaneously claimed that President Obama has been a terrific president. If any observer was watching for signs of Trump’s pivot towards centrism, this is as good as it gets.

However, the important part was his comments about One China policy. Trump said, he understands completely what a One China policy is, and why US governments have followed it for over forty years, but he fails to comprehend why it should be continued if there’s no deal with China. “I fully understand the ‘one China’ policy, but I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘one China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade,” Trump told Fox, as reported by Reuters.

Well, that’s a bold statement, because for a start, he doesn’t understand One China policy. And, a deal is already in place. The deal is so the planet earth doesn’t look like a sequence from Fallout 4. But on the other hand, he cleverly didn’t say that he wants to topple the One China policy and chart a new US foreign policy towards China. It’s like an art of saying things, without saying things; kind of like thinking out aloud, wondering, what does it matter if the policy is overturned. If the Chinese administration was looking for hint, this is it. Let me explain.

Trump’s world view is quite distinctly mercantile. It’s not realist, although it is broadly based on interests…it doesn’t quite go as far as understanding the relative gains. It’s of course not idealistic and liberal in the least, as it gives two hoots about human rights. It’s mercantile, as in Trump understands deals, and quid pro quo relations. That’s in a way, good, because if someone understands deals, the deal itself gets easy and the only challenge then remains is in the communication of the deal.

The problem here is however, a bit different. Taiwan is considered an intrinsic part of China, not just by China, but also tacitly on United States. The reason is, US calculated, during Nixon’s time, and subsequently afterwards, that Taiwan is not worth a war, or worse, a nuclear war, with China. It’s simple cost benefit analysis, the same logic, why US didn’t help Georgia during 2008, or Ukraine in the current state. While competition and rivalry is good, no great power wants to go out of their way to challenge the primacy of another great power in their own neighbourhood.

But for all it does, is it encourages the small states like Georgia or Taiwan, to risky behaviour and leads to war. If Trump genuinely cares about Taiwan, it will try to reign in Taiwanese adventurism, and maintain the status quo, as if the regional balance starts to topple, and in the eventuality of a war, the cavalry won’t be coming over the Western hill with a setting sun in the background. Taiwan will not realistically get any help from the West, other than lot of moral support and tall words. Great powers, above all tends to focus on their own survival, and if anyone thinks US would risk war with China over Taiwan, then that’s frankly a naïve and absurd analysis of the situation.

Which makes me go back the the first point. Trump is repeatedly hinting at deal with China…is anyone listening? If I am there to give advice, I would suggest forming a team, specifically focussed on Trump, and try to start a backchannel with the Trump team. If this leads to a G2 powersharing and grand bargain, then it will be the best for global order. Trump can of course take all the credit for the “deal”, if that keeps him happy.

By Brent Sadler*

“It is change, continuing change, inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the world as it will be. . . . This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our everyman must take on a science fictional way of thinking.”— Isaac Asimov

Today, the Department of Defense (DOD) is coming to terms with trends forcing a rethinking of how it fights wars. One trend is proliferation of and parity by competitors in precision munitions. Most notable are China’s antiship ballistic missiles and the proliferation of cruise missiles, such as those the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant claimed to use to attack an Egyptian ship off the Sinai in 2014. Another trend is the rapid technological advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics that are enabling the creation of learning machines.

Failure to adapt and lead in this new reality risks U.S. ability to effectively respond and control the future battlefield. However, budget realities make it unlikely that today’s DOD could spend its way ahead of these challenges or field new systems fast enough. Consider that F-35 fighter development is 7 years behind schedule and, at $1.3 trillion, is $163 billion over budget.1 On the other hand, China produced and test-flew its first fifth-generation fighter (J-20) within 2 years. These pressures create urgency to find a cost-effective response through emergent and disruptive technologies that could ensure U.S. conventional deterrent advantage—in other words, the so-called Third Offset Strategy.

Narrowing Conventional Deterrence

In 1993, Andrew Marshall, Director of Net Assessment, stated, “I project a day when our adversaries will have guided munitions parity with us and it will change the game.”2 On December 14, 2015, Deputy Secretary of Defense Robert Work announced that day’s arrival when arguing for a Third Offset during comments at the Center for a New American Security.3

An offset seeks to leverage emerging and disruptive technologies in innovative ways in order to prevail in Great Power competition. A Great Power is understood to be a rational state seeking survival through regional hegemony with global offensive capabilities.4 The First Offset Strategy in the 1950s relied on tactical nuclear superiority to counter Soviet numerical conventional superiority. As the Soviets gained nuclear parity in the 1960s, a Second Offset in the 1970s centered on precision-guided munitions and stealth technologies to sustain technical overmatch, conventional deterrence, and containment for another quarter century. The Third Offset, like previous ones, seeks to deliberately change an unattractive Great Power competition, this time with China and Russia, to one more advantageous. This requires addressing the following challenges.

Fast Followers. Russia and China have been able to rapidly gain and sustain near-parity by stealing and copying others’ technologies for their own long-range precision capabilities, while largely pocketing developmental costs. Lateral thinking5 is required to confound these Fast Followers, as Apple used with Microsoft when it regained tech-sector leadership in the early 2000s.6

Hybrid Warfare. Russia’s actions in Crimea and ongoing activities in Eastern Ukraine indicate both that Russia is undeterred and that it was successful in coordinating asymmetric and unconventional tactics across multiple domains.

Narrowing Conventional Advantage. The loss of the precision-munitions advantage increases cost for U.S. intervention, thus reducing deterrence and inviting adventurism. Recent examples include Russian interventions (Georgia, Ukraine, Syria) and increasingly coercive Chinese activities in the East and South China seas, especially massive island-building in the South China Sea since 2014.

Persistent Global Risks from Violent Extremists. While not an existential threat, left unchecked, violent extremism is inimical to U.S. interests as it corrodes inclusive, open economies and societies. As a long-term ideological competition, a global presence able to monitor, attack, and attrite violent extremist networks is required.

In response to these challenges, two 2015 studies are informing DOD leadership on the need for a new offset: the Defense Science Board summer study on autonomy and the Long-Range Research and Development Planning Program. From these studies, Deputy Secretary Work has articulated five building blocks of a new offset:

• autonomous deep-learning systems
• human-machine collaboration
• assisted human operations
• advanced human-machine combat teaming
• network-enabled semi-autonomous weapons.

Central to all are learning machines that, when teamed with a person, provide a potential prompt jump in capability. Technological advantages alone, however, could prove chimerical as Russia and China are also investing in autonomous weapons, making any U.S. advantage gained a temporary one. In fact, Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, predicts a future battlefield populated with learning machines.7

A Third Offset Strategy could achieve a qualitative edge and ensure conventional deterrence relative to Fast Followers in four ways: One, it could provide U.S. leaders more options along the escalation ladder. Two, a Third Offset could flip the cost advantage to defenders in a ballistic and cruise missile exchange; in East Asia this would make continuation of China’s decades-long investment in these weapons cost prohibitive. Three, it could have a multiplicative effect on presence, sensing, and combat effectiveness of each manned platform. Four, such a strategy could nullify the advantages afforded by geographic proximity and being the first to attack.

Robot Renaissance

In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue beat chess champion Garry Kasparov, marking an inflection point in the development of learning machines. Since then, development of learning machines has accelerated, as illustrated by Giraffe, which taught itself how to play chess at a master’s level in 72 hours.8 Driving this rapid development have been accelerating computer-processing speeds and miniaturization. In 2011, at the size of 10 refrigerators, the super-computer Watson beat two champions of the game show Jeopardy. Within 3 years, Watson was shrunk to the size of three stacked pizza boxes—a 90-percent reduction in size along with a 2,700-percent improvement in processing speed.9 Within a decade, computers likely will match the massive parallel processing capacity of the human brain, and these machines will increasingly augment and expand human memory and thinking much like cloud computing for computers today, leading to accelerating returns in anything that can be digitized.10 This teaming of man and machine will set the stage for a new renaissance of human consciousness as augmented by learning machines—a Robot Renaissance.11 But man is not destined for extinction and will remain part of the equation; as “freestyle chess” demonstrates, man paired with computers utilizing superior processes can prevail over any competitor.12

Augmenting human consciousness with learning machines will usher in an explosion in creativity, engineering innovation, and societal change. This will in turn greatly impact the way we conceptualize and conduct warfare, just as the Renaissance spurred mathematical solutions to ballistic trajectories, metallurgy, and engineering for mobile cannons. Such a future is already being embraced. For example, Bank of America and Merrill Lynch recently concluded that robotics and AI—learning machines—will define the next industrial revolution and that the adoption of this technology is a foregone conclusion. Their report concludes that by 2025 learning machines will be performing 45 percent of all manufacturing versus 10 percent today.13 It would be a future of profound change and peril and was the focus of the 2016 Davos Summit whose founder, Klaus Schwab, calls the period the Fourth Industrial Revolution.14 As the Industrial Revolution demonstrated, the advantage will be to the early adopter, leaving the United States little choice but to pursue an offset strategy that leverages learning machines.

Advantages of Man-Machine Teaming

Learning machines teamed with manned platforms enabled by concepts of operations will be a key element of the Third Offset Strategy. Advantages of this approach include:

Speed Faster than Adversaries. Staying inside an adversary’s OODA (observe, orient, decide, act) loop necessitates learning machines that are able to engage targets at increasing speed, which diminishes direct human control.15

Greater Combat Effect per Person. As extensions of manned platforms, teaming increases the combat effect per person through swarm tactics as well as big data management. Moreover, augmenting the manned force with autonomous systems could mitigate deployment costs, which have increased 31 percent since 2000 and are likely unsustainable under current constructs.16

Less Human Risk. Reduced risk to manned platforms provides more options along the escalation ladder to commanders and allows a more forward and pervasive presence. Moreover, autonomous systems deployed in large numbers will have the long-term effect of mitigating relative troop strengths.

High-Precision, Emotionless Warfare. Learning machines provide an opportunity for battlefield civility by lessening death and destruction with improved precision and accuracy. Moreover, being non-ethical and unemotional, they are not susceptible to revenge killings and atrocities.

Hard to Target. Learning machines enable disaggregated combat networks to be both more difficult to target and more fluid in attack. Some capabilities (for example, cyber) could reside during all phases of a conflict well within a competitor’s physical borders, collecting intelligence while also ready to act like a “zero-day bomb.”17

Faster Acquisition and Improvement. Incorporation of learning machines in design, production, and instantaneous sharing of learning across machines would have a multiplicative effect. However, achieving such benefits requires overcoming proprietary constraints such as those encountered with the Scan Eagle unmanned vehicle if better intra-DOD innovation and interoperability are to be achieved.

Realizing these potential benefits requires institutional change in acquisition and a dedicated cadre of roboticists. However, pursuing a Third Offset Strategy is not without risks.

Third Offset Risks

Fielding learning machines presents several risks, and several technical and institutional barriers. The risks include the following challenges.

Cyber Intrusion and Programming Brittleness. DOD relies on commercial industry to develop and provide it with critical capabilities. This situation provides some cost savings, while presenting an Achilles’ heel for cyber exploitation during fabrication and in the field. One avenue for attack is through the complexity of programming, which leads to programming brittleness, or seams and back rooms causing system vulnerabilities.18 Another is through communications vital to proper human control. Additionally, swarm tactics involving teams of machines networking independently of human control on a near-continuous basis could further expose them to attack and manipulation.19 Mitigating such threats and staying inside an adversary’s accelerating OODA loop would drive increasing autonomy and decreasing reliance on communications.20

Proliferation and Intellectual Insecurity. The risk of proliferation and Fast Followers to close technological advantage makes protecting the most sensitive elements of learning machines an imperative. Doing so requires addressing industrial espionage and cyber vulnerabilities in the commercial defense industry, which will require concerted congressional and DOD action.

Unlawful Use. As competitors develop learning machines, they may be less constrained and ethical in their employment. Nonetheless, the international Law of Armed Conflict applies, and does not preclude employing learning machines on the battlefield in accordance with jus in bello—the legal conduct of war. Legally, learning machines would have to pass the same tests as any other weapons; their use must be necessary, discriminate, and proportional against a military objective.21 A key test for learning machines is discrimination; that is, the ability to discern noncombatants from targeted combatants while limiting collateral damage.22

Unethical War. When fielded in significant numbers, learning machines could challenge traditions of jus ad bellum—criteria regarding decisions to engage in war. That is, by significantly reducing the cost in human life to wage war, the decision to wage it becomes less restrictive. Such a future is debatable, but as General Paul J. Selva (Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) suggested at the Brookings Institution on January 21, 2016, there should be an international debate on the role of autonomous weapons systems and jus ad bellum implications.

A New Fog of War. Lastly, the advent of learning machines will give rise to a new fog of war emerging from uncertainty in a learning machine’s AI programming. It is a little unsettling that a branch of AI popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s was called “fuzzy logic,” due to an ability to alter its programming that represents a potential loss of control and weakening of liability.

Third Offset Barriers

Overcoming the barriers to a Third Offset Strategy requires advancing key foundational technologies, adjustments in acquisition, and training for man–learning machine interaction.

Man-Machine Interaction. Ensuring proper human interface with and the proper setting of parameters for a given mission employing learning machines requires a professional cadre of roboticists. As with human communication, failure to appropriately command and control learning machines could be disastrous. This potential was illustrated in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssesy when the HAL 9000 computer resolved a dilemma of conflicting orders by killing its human crew. Ensuring an adequately trained cadre is in place as new systems come online requires building the institutional bedrock on which these specialists are trained. Because it will take several years to build such a cadre, it is perhaps the most pressing Third Offset investment.

Trinity of Robotic Capability. Gaining a sustainable and significant conventional advantage through learning machines requires advances in three key areas. This trinity includes high-density energy sources, sensors, and massive parallel processing capacity. Several promising systems have failed because of weakness in one or all of these core capabilities. Fire Scout, a Navy autonomous helicopter, failed largely due to limited endurance. The Army and Marine Corps Big Dog was terminated because its noisy gasoline engine gave troop positions away. Sensor limitations undid Boomerang, a counter-sniper robot with limited ability to discern hostiles in complex urban settings.23

Agile Acquisition Enterprise. As technological challenges are overcome, any advantage earned would be transitory unless acquisition processes adapt in several key ways. One way is to implement continuous testing and evaluation to monitor the evolving programming of learning machines and ensure the rapid dissemination of learning across the machine fleet. A second way is to broaden the number of promising new capabilities tested while more quickly determining which ones move to prototype. A third way is to more rapidly move prototypes into the field. Such changes would be essential to stay ahead of Fast Followers.

While acquisition reforms are being debated in Congress, fielding emerging and disruptive technologies would need to progress regardless.24 However, doing both provides a game-changing technological leap at a pace that can break today’s closely run technological race—a prompt jump in capability.

Chasing a Capability Prompt Jump

Actualizing a nascent Third Offset Strategy in a large organization such as DOD requires unity of effort. One approach would be to establish a central office empowered to ensure coherency in guidance and oversight of resource decisions so that investments remain complementary. Such an office would build on the legacy of the Air Sea Battle Office, Joint Staff’s Joint Concept for Access and Maneuver in the Global Commons, and Strategic Capabilities Office (SCO). Therefore, a central office would need to be resourced and given authority to direct acquisition related to the Third Offset, develop doctrine, standardize training, and conduct exercises to refine concepts of operation. First steps could include:

• Limit or curtail proprietary use in Third Offset systems while standardizing protocols and systems for maximum cross-Service interoperability.
• Leverage legacy systems initially by filling existing capacity gaps. SCO work has been notable in pursuing rapid development and integration of advanced low-cost capabilities into legacy systems. This approach results in extension of legacy systems lethality while complicating competitors’ countermeasures.
• Examples include shooting hypersonic rounds from legacy Army artillery and the use of digital cameras to improve accuracy of small-diameter bombs.25 The Navy could do this by leveraging existing fleet test and evaluation efforts, such as those by Seventh Fleet, and expanding collaboration with SCO. An early effort could be maturing Unmanned Carrier-Launched Airborne Surveillance and Strike, which is currently being developed for aerial refueling, into the full spectrum of operations.26
• Standardize training and concepts of operations for learning machines and their teaming with manned platforms. Early efforts should include formally establishing a new subspecialty of roboticist and joint exercises dedicated to developing operational concepts of man-machine teaming. Promising work is being done at the Naval Postgraduate School, which in the summer of 2015 demonstrated the ability to swarm up to 50 unmanned systems at its Advanced Robotic Systems Engineering Laboratory and should inform future efforts.
• Direct expanded investment in the trinity of capabilities—high-density energy sources, sensors, and next-generation processors. The DOD Defense Innovation Initiative is building mechanisms to identify those in industry advancing key technologies, and will need to be sustained as private industry is more deeply engaged.

DOD is already moving ahead on a Third Offset Strategy, and it is not breaking the bank. The budget proposal for fiscal year 2017 seeks a significant but manageable $18 billion toward the Third Offset, with $3 billion devoted to man-machine teaming, over the next 5 years; the $3.6 billion committed in 2017 equates to less than 1 percent of the annual $582.7 billion defense budget.27 As a first step, this funds initial analytical efforts in wargaming and modeling and begins modest investments in promising new technologies.

Conclusion

Because continued U.S. advantage in conventional deterrence is at stake, resources and senior leader involvement must grow to ensure the success of a Third Offset Strategy. It will be critical to develop operational learning machines, associated concepts of operations for their teaming with people, adjustments in the industrial base to allow for more secure and rapid procurement of advanced autonomous systems, and lastly, investment in the trinity of advanced base capabilities—sensors, processors, and energy.

For the Navy and Marine Corps, the foundation for such an endeavor resides in the future design section of A Cooperative Strategy for 21st Century Seapower supported by the four lines of effort in the current Chief of Naval Operations’ Design for Maintaining Maritime Superiority. A promising development has been the establishment of OpNav N99, the unmanned warfare systems directorate recently established by the Office of the Chief of Naval Operations on the Navy staff and the naming of a Deputy Assistant Secretary of Navy for Unmanned Systems, both dedicated to developing capabilities key to a Third Offset Strategy. This should be broadened to include similar efforts in all the Services.

However, pursuit of game-changing technologies is only sustainable by breaking out of the increasingly exponential pace of technological competition with Fast Followers. A Third Offset Strategy could do this and could provide the first to adopt outsized advantages. Realistically, to achieve this requires integrating increasing layers of autonomy into legacy force structure as budgets align to new requirements and personnel adapt to increasing degrees of learning machine teaming. The additive effect of increasing autonomy could fundamentally change warfare and provide significant advantage to whoever successfully teams learning machines with manned systems. This is not a race we are necessarily predestined to win, but it is a race that has already begun with strategic implications for the United States.

About the author:
*Captain Brent D. Sadler, USN, is a Special Assistant to the Navy Asia-Pacific Advisory Group.

Source:
This article was published in the Joint Force Quarterly 83, which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes:
1 CBS News, 60 Minutes, “The F-35,” February 16, 2014.

2 Deputy Secretary of Defense Bob Work, speech delivered to a Center for a New American Security Defense Forum, Washington, DC, December 14, 2015, available at <www.defense.gov/News/Speeches/Speech-View/Article/634214/cnas-defense-forum>.

3 Ibid.

4 John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics (New York: Norton, 2014).

5 Lateral thinking, a term coined by Edward de Bono in 1967, means indirect and creative approaches using reasoning not immediately obvious and involving ideas not obtainable by traditional step-by-step logic.

6 Shane Snow, Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success (New York: HarperCollins, 2014), 6, 116.

7 Russia’s Chief of the General Staff, General Valery Gerasimov, stated in a February 27, 2013, article: “Another factor influencing the essence of modern means of armed conflict is the use of modern automated complexes of military equipment and research in the area of artificial intelligence. While today we have flying drones, tomorrow’s battlefields will be filled with walking, crawling, jumping, and flying robots. In the near future it is possible a fully robotized unit will be created, capable of independently conducting military operations.” See Mark Galeotti, “The ‘Gerasimov Doctrine’ and Russian Non-Linear War,” In Moscow’s Shadows blog, available at <https://inmoscowsshadows.wordpress.com/2014/07/06/the-gerasimov-doctrine-and-russian-non-linear-war/>. For Gerasimov’s original article (in Russian), see Military-Industrial Kurier 8, no. 476 (February 27–March 5, 2013), available at <http://vpk-news.ru/sites/default/files/pdf/VPK_08_476.pdf>.

8 “Deep Learning Machine Teaches Itself Chess in 72 Hours, Plays at International Master Level,” MIT Technology Review, September 14, 2015, available at <www.technologyreview.com/view/541276/deep-learning-machine-teaches-itself-chess-in-72-hours-plays-at-international-master/>.

9 “IBM Watson Group Unveils Cloud-Delivered Watson Services to Transform Industrial R&D, Visualize Big Data Insights and Fuel Analytics Exploration,” IBM News, January 9, 2014, available at <http://ibm.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1887>.

10 Ray Kurzweil, How to Create a Mind: The Secret of Human Thought Revealed (New York: Penguin Books, 2012), 4, 8, 125, 255, 280–281.

11 A learning machine, according to Arthur Samuel’s 1959 definition of machine learning, is the ability of computers to learn without being explicitly programmed.

12 Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (New York: W.W. Norton, 2014), 188.

13 Michael Hartnett et al., Creative Disruption (New York: Bank of America and Merrill Lynch, April 2015), available at <www.bofaml.com/content/dam/boamlimages/documents/articles/D3_006/11511357.pdf>.

14 Klaus Schwab, The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Geneva: World Economic Forum, 2016).

15 Michael N. Schmitt, “War, Technology and the Law of Armed Conflict,” International Law Studies, vol. 82 (2006), 137–182.

16 Growth in DOD’s Budget from 2000 to 2014 (Washington, DC: Congressional Budget Office, November 2014).

17 Richard Clarke, Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It (New York: HarperCollins, 2010), 163–166.

18 Ibid., 81–83.

19 Katherine D. Mullens et al., An Automated UAV Mission System (San Diego, CA: SPAWAR Systems Center, September 2003), available at <www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA422026>.

20 Armin Krishnan, Killer Robots: Legality and Ethicality of Autonomous Weapons (Farnham, United Kingdom: Ashgate, 2009).

21 James E. Baker, In the Common Defense: National Security Law for Perilous Times (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 215–216.

22 “Protocol Additional to the Geneva Conventions of 12 August 1949, and relating to the Protection of Victims of International Armed Conflicts (Protocol I), 8 June 1977,” Article 48, 57.4 and 51.4; Yoram Dinstein, The Conduct of Hostilities under the Law of International Armed Conflict, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 62–63.

23 Schmitt.

24 House Armed Services Committee, Acquisition Reform: Experimentation and Agility, Hon. Sean J. Stackley, Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research, Development, and Acquisition, 114th Cong., January 7, 2016, available at <http://docs.house.gov/meetings/AS/AS00/20160107/104314/HHRG-114-AS00-Wstate-StackleyS-20160107.pdf>.

25 Sam LaGrone, “Little Known Pentagon Office Key to U.S. Military Competition with China, Russia,” U.S. Naval Institute News, February 2, 2016.

26 Christopher P. Cavas, “U.S. Navy’s Unmanned Jet Could Be a Tanker,” Defense News, February 1, 2016, available at <www.defensenews.com/story/defense/naval/naval-aviation/2016/01/31/uclass-ucasd-navy-carrier-unmanned-jet-x47-northrop-boeing/79624226/>.

27 Aaron Mehta, “Defense Department Budget: $18B Over FYDP for Third Offset,” Defense News, February 9, 2016, available at <www.defensenews.com/story/defense/policy-budget/budget/2016/02/09/third-offset-fy17-budget-pentagon-budget/80072048/>.

(The National Museum, Damascus) — It’s a god-awful situation in Palmyra. How much of our priceless cultural heritage will be destroyed during the expanding re-occupation by Islamic State (IS)?

This observer has received more than two dozen emails in the past 72 hours asking for details of what is happening in Palmyra. Many scholars and citizens interested in Palmyra and our cultural heritage here is Syria, who I have had the honor to communicate with these past three years while doing research for the volume, Syria’s Endangered Heritage: An International Responsibly to Preserve and Protect are, like most of us, abjectly horrified by Palmyra’s recapture by IS last weekend.

I spoke this morning with my friend W.N. who works with Syria’s Directorate of Antiquities and Museums (DGAM) in Homs and who accompanied me during my last visit to Palmyra when we were given detailed briefings from Syrian Military Intelligence. W was last working in the Palmyra National Museum on Thursday 12/8/2016 two days before the first units of what soon became approximately 4000-5000 IS fighters started invading. He reports that none of his colleagues had any idea that ISIS was in the area and apparently neither did the Syrian and Russian army who were caught by surprise, abandoned their base and heavy weapons stores and moved to the West toward Homs. Like all of us, officials and citizens here hope that ISIS will be expelled before they can do serious damage.

The fears of this observer and many archeologists globally, are many and distressing. One is that we will once again see televised executions in the ancient city to strengthen IS positions and create more publicity. Russian, Syrian and Iranian soldiers, taken prisoners, may become the first victims. On 12/15.2016 the government of Iran reported that two of its IRGC officers were killed a couple of days earlier fighting IS near the key Syrian military base, T4. The IRGC armed and funded Afghan Fatemiyoun Division was rushed back to Palmyra once IS re-entered the area on Saturday, 12/10/2016.

The retaking of Palmyra by IS has strategic implications. Palmyra was a much-touted political asset for Moscow. Russia is worried that the international community will see the Kremlin as a loser in Palmyra rather than as a “great power” that Vladimir Putin has been trying to achieve via Crimea, Ukraine as well as Syria and elsewhere. Previously, many ordinary Syrians welcomed Russian troops with admiration and enthusiasm, hoping that Russia’s participation in the Syrian conflict would end the war. Yet today many of them are disappointed. Some are inclined to believe that Russia is just another stakeholder in the conflict with its own interests – just like the Americans, Turks, Kurds, Hezbollah, ISIS and other military forces.

But a more major immediate concern of officials here relates to information this observer was given last May in Palmyra concerning details of what Daesh had planned to do using the nearly 3,500 explosives they had planted among the ruins. The plan was to completely obliterate Palmyra’s ancient sites. (link) but Russian and Syrian forces, with a little bit of luck and technology, plus Russian explosive sniffing dogs, were able to block them at the last minute as Daesh forces fled into the surrounding desert and mountains.

It is widely feared that IS will now decide to carry out its earlier plan which they dubbed “Erase” and substantially pulverize Palmyra’s antiquities. Unless they can be stopped.

As much of the world will recall, the last time IS controlled Palmyra it blew up several ruins, including historic treasures such as the temples of Bel and Baalshamin and the Arch of Victory among others.

The group also staged several mass public executions in the ancient Roman amphitheater.

Two days ago, Tuesday, 12/13/2013 mass executions were reported in Palmyra of more the 200 residents including a school principal and his family. One of the people in Palmyra who was providing information about recent developments was among those reported executed. Most were shot but a least two were beheaded with IS fighters showing residents photos of what happens to “regime agents.” It is predictable that supporters of the Islamic State will again broadcast televised executions in the ancient city in order strengthen their positions and create more publicity. Russian and Syrian soldiers, taken prisoners, will become the first victims.

“The catastrophe has happened, I am in absolute shock!, ” My much valued friend Dr.Maamoun Abdulkarim, Syria’s Director of Antiquities, told the UK Guardian on Sunday 12/11/2016 in a phone interview. “I am losing hope; it looks like we have lost the city.”

During my meeting with Dr. Maamoun this afternoon in his DGAM office at the National Museum in Damascus, where he offered the most recent, yet sketchy, information from Palmyra, the International Patriot revered for his indefatigable work protecting our global cultural heritage, lamented that he will soon be 50 years of age but in reality he feels more than 80, given unfolding events in his cherished Palmyra.

It was reported here today that IS has again taken over the National Museum of Palmyra, re-established its Sharia Court in the basement, and is expected to construct another “Justice Cage” outside the Museum similar to the one shown below when this observer spent three days last May with the Syrian army who briefed him extensively on how Palmyra was liberated on March 28, 2016 by 64 Russian bombing sorties over 45 days along with 2000 Russian, Syrian army and Shia militia fighters.

The “Islamic State” is expected to once again set up, just 30 yards to the left as one exits the main entrance to Palmyra’s museum, a new execution and slave women auction chamber to decapitate nonbelievers and other miscreants as well as sell women for as little as $ 100—the former price as of February 2015 according to IS documents found in its abandoned Sharia Court. The price for virgins less than 16 years of age was at the time set at $ 150.

Last May the army officers, mentioned above, offered assurances to this observer that “Daesh will never come to Tadmor (Palmyra) again!” I believed them given all the details they presented about defenses being set up by Russian and Syrian forces.

So what happened to these defenses and what went so very wrong? This observer has heard speculation that the Syrian military simply didn’t have the manpower to defend Palmyra while it was closing in on eastern Aleppo so the loss of Palmyra for the second time is really nobody’s fault. A spurious argument in my view.

The ISIS re-occupation of Palmyra

Pulling together information from a variety of sources including Palmyra Museum employees who normally work five days a week in Palmyra as well as two ‘citizen journalists’ still living in Palmyra and other sources, the following events appear to have occurred to date.

Three weeks ago foreign Shia militia and Russian forces left Palmyra and were deployed elsewhere, mainly in Aleppo. At about the same time witnesses in Palmyra said 500 fighters reached Syria and were sent to different front lines, the bulk joining ISIS forces near Palmyra. Shortly they were joined by as many as 4,500 more.

On 10/8/2016 ISIS had begun an assault on government positions in Homs province, where Palmyra is located. It quickly overran government army checkpoints and seized oil and gas fields until it reached the city’s edge. The jihadists briefly entered the Palmyra on Saturday 10/10/2016 before appearing to partially withdraw after Russia launched intense air strikes during Saturday afternoon on the advancing units of the IS, According to some reports, the air power forced the IS units to suspend the offensive but despite the raids and the arrival of Syrian army reinforcements, IS seized control of the city hours later. The activist-run Palmyra Co-ordination Collective said IS militants then seized the city’s military warehouse and its northern and western districts after taking government positions, oilfields wheat silos, the city’s hospital and strategic heights in the surrounding countryside over a period of 72 hours. ISIS also attacked two gas fields, al-Mahr and Jazal, which are important for Syria’s electricity generation and some residents in Damascus are reporting that they have been suffering increased electricity shortages since IS took Palmyra for the second time.

Video released by Isis showed abandoned tanks and other vehicles and empty streets, with buildings still emblazoned with paintings of the Syrian flag and Mr Assad.

The T4 military airport, located 50km west of Palmyra in the east Homs countryside, which is a main strategic goal of IS is one of the Syrian regime’s largest and most important airbases, being near a strategic crossroad that lead to Deir Ezzour, Raqqa, Damascus, and other key cities,. On 12/12/2016 the day after they captured Palmyra, IS fighters declared their intent to capture T4 and reportedly battled to within two kilometers of it amidst their ongoing ground offensive in eastern Homs.

One Palmyra resident reported yesterday that days before the surprise attack government forces and their allies redeployed to Aleppo to join the fighting there. Another resident who was able to escape shortly after IS invaded, reported that “Days before the battle began, we noticed regime forces move a large number of fighters and military equipment towards Aleppo city,” as he added on 12/12/2016 that just before the Islamic State attacked, the number of Syrian, Russian and militia personnel had decreased “from around 40,000 to 10,000.” This observer does not particularly credit these large numbers having been given information that there were never that many government fighters still based in Palmyra since its liberation this past May.

What appears to have aided the ISIS recapture of the city is Palmyra’s isolated location in the eastern desert of Homs province, where the group was able to overrun territory quickly and the geography of the city, being surrounded by mountains, makes it very difficult to defend.

On Monday, 12/12/2016, after four days of fighting, IS took control of the eastern part of Palmyra. On Tuesday, 12/13/2013 mass executions were reported in Palmyra of more the 200 residents including a school principal and his family. One of the people near Palmyra who was providing information about recent developments was among those reported executed. Most were shot but a least two were beheaded with IS fighters showing residents photos of what happens to “regime agents.”

As of today IS controls the whole area and its loss is raising questions and much second-guessing from Monday morning armchair Generals. And some real Generals from countries now fighting here.

Most agree that the quick retaking of Palmyra was possible because was not properly defended militarily; and, thus, it was very vulnerable so IS focused their forces in this direction. The breakthrough and rapid advancement of IS was possible due to fundamental mistakes of commanders of units of the Russian and Syrian Armies, deployed in the Palmyra area, who let their guard down and apparently ignored local reports by remaining townspeople that “Daseh” was returning. The Russians did not pay due attention to fortification activities, processes of equipping positions with engineering and combat hardware, and there was carelessness during tactical reconnaissance and assessment of the forces and means of attackers. As a result, commanders did not report the all necessary information to the higher command in Damascus on time, thereby, deluding it.

There are several reasons offered by Syrian military analysts to explain why Russian and Syrian commanders are being accused of making so many mistakes simultaneously.

On 10/8/2016 ISIS began an assault on government positions in Homs province, where Palmyra is located, It quickly overran army checkpoints and seized oil and gas fields until it reached the city’s edge. The jihadists briefly entered the city on Saturday 10/10/2016 before partially seeming to withdraw after Russia launched intense air strikes. Despite the Russian bombing and the arrival of Syrian army reinforcements, IS seized controlled of the city hours later. The activist-run Palmyra Co-ordination Collective said IS militants quickly seized the city’s military warehouse and its northern and western districts after taking government positions, oilfields wheat silos, the city’s hospital and strategic heights in the surrounding countryside over a period of 72 hours.

Lieutenant General Stephen Townsend, who commands the US-led coalition bombing IS in Syria, said jihadists seized a large trove of gear including air-defense weapons when they retook the desert city from Russia and Syrian regime troops on Sunday, 12/10/2016. “We believe that includes some armored vehicles and various guns and other heavy weapons, possibly some air-defense equipment,” Townsend said in a video briefing from Baghdad. Townsend said the coalition would, at least initially, defer to the Russians to try to retake Palmyra but his lack of confidence in Russian ground forces was plain. Another U.S. defense official told Fox News IS was in control of an SA-3 missile system taken from the Syrian regime outside Palmyra, a development first reported by the Washington Post.

LT. Townsend and members of the US led Coalition is said to blame the Russians for the debacle and that the breakthrough and rapid advancement of the IS took was due to fundamental mistakes of commanders of units of the Russian and Syrian Armies, deployed in the Palmyra area, who he claims let their guard down and ignored local reports from remaining citizens that Daseh was returning. They did not pay due attention to fortification activities, ISIS processes of equipping positions with engineering and combat hardware, and they were careless during tactical reconnaissance. Russian commanders failed to anticipate a surprise ISIS attack which is one of their well-known tactics over the past two years. Russian commanders are also being accused of misjudging the availability of rebel forces and the capabilities of likely attackers.

As a result, commanders responsible for safeguarding our globally shared cultural heritage in Palmyra did not report the necessary information to the higher command in Damascus thereby deluding it with respect to clear evidence over the past few weeks that IS was nearby.

Russia is also being accused by the US led Coalition of making many mistakes simultaneously. Specifically not having intelligence sources in Palmyra city, adjacent to the acres of ruins now once again in grave danger, gross negligence in reconnaissance, being preoccupied with their bombing campaign in Aleppo, not observing or ignoring the redeployment of new units of the IS group from Iraq to Syria, as well as involvement of the most experienced IS commanders of the senior and middle levels in the offensive and failure to anticipate the likelihood of large numbers of suicide bombers, involved in the operation. A common IS tactic.

In Russia’s defense, what also appears to have aided the IS recapture of Palmyra is its isolated location in the eastern desert of Homs province, where the group was able to overrun territory quickly and the geography of the city, being surrounded by mountains, rendering it difficult to defend.
A source in Homs, 200 km west of Palmyra commented to this observer, “We know that Russia can bomb our hospitals, schools, public gathering and markets. But we have no confidence that their ground forces can defeat Daesh and save Palmyra.”

Adding to doubts about Russia’s performance in Palmyra are reports citing local sources near the site of the attack in eastern Homs province, northwest of Palmyra, reported that there were cases of the use of Sarin gas and suffocation and that dozens had been wounded during heavy rocket fire on 12/12/2016 of the area. Local sources had reported seeing dead bodies with no visible injuries, claims the UK Observatory. The reported gas attack came from the air and took place near the town of Uqairabat, which lies on a main road leading south into Palmyra from government-held territory. Amaq, a news service linked to ISIS, said in an online statement that 20 people had died and around 200 were injured from breathing problems “as a result of a Russian air attack with sarin gas.” These allegations have not been proven.

The Syrian and Russian commands are well aware that IS cannot be defeated this time in Palmyra by just airstrikes. For this reason, combat-ready units of the Syrian Armed Forces-rumored to be from the reputedly competent ‘Tiger Force” is urgently being dispatched to Palmyra on orders of President Assad. As of 12/15/2016 there is no reported sign of their arrival as IS forces work to secure their new supply of weapons and set up positions among the ruins of Palmyra and nearby locations.

A government Minister I met with this morning (12/16/2016) was with President Assad last night when he met with his cabinet and discussed Syria’s plans to retake Palmyra. This afternoon there are reports that he has commanded the elite “Tiger Force” to lead the attack to re-take Palmyra.
Russia’s air force and some of its elite fighters are reported, according to the same source, to be at this hour preparing to invade Palmyra. Perhaps as early at the next 48 hours since time is of the essence. On orders from President Putin currently in Japan.

The Syrian people’s past and are globally shared endangered heritage in this cradle of civilization may hang in the balance.

Anti-Semitism is on the rise and needs to be challenged. But the working definition of anti-Semitism that was formally adopted this week by the British government is dangerous. It says that anyone who subjects Israel to ‘double standards by requiring of it behaviour not expected or demanded of any other democratic nation’ is an anti-Semite.

Setting aside the categorisation of Israel as a democracy (for me as an Israeli Jew it undoubtedly is, but for my Palestinian neighbours in South Hebron it undoubtedly is not), what if the double-standards clause were applied in other cases?

Given that the UK condemns Iran more harshly than China for human rights violations, one could conceivably accuse the British government of being Islamophobic.

But then the UK’s criticism of Saudi Arabia, which is reducing parts of Yemen to rubble (with the help of arms supplied by Britain), is lax when compared to its criticism of Sudan, which would imply the British government is guilty of another sort of racism.

The definition of anti-Semitism adopted by the British government is itself a manifestation of a double standard, since it treats Israel differently from every other country in the world rather than as a nation among nations.

Mother-of-pearl or nacre (pronounced nay-ker), the lustrous, tough-as-nails biomineral that lines some seashells, has been shown to be a faithful record of ancient ocean temperature.

Writing online Thursday, Dec. 15, in the journal Earth and Planetary Science Letters, a team led by University of Wisconsin-Madison physics Professor Pupa Gilbert describes studies of the physical attributes of nacre in modern and fossil shells showing that the biomineral provides an accurate record of temperature as the material is formed, layer upon layer, in a mollusk.

“We can very accurately correlate nacre tablet thickness with temperature,” said Gilbert, explaining that mother-of-pearl is formed as mollusks lay down microscopic polygonal tablets of the mineral aragonite like brickwork to build layers of the shiny biomineral.

The work is important because it provides scientists with a new and potentially more accurate method of measuring ancient ocean temperatures, improving on methods now used with other biominerals to tease out the record of the environmental conditions at which the materials formed in the distant past.

“Everyone else measures temperatures in the ancient world using chemical proxies,” said Gilbert, referencing methods that, for example, use ratios of isotopic oxygen locked into tiny fossil shells made by marine microorganisms known as Foraminifera to get a snapshot of ocean temperatures in the distant past.

The method devised by Gilbert and her collaborators is extraordinarily simple: using just a scanning electron microscope and a cross section of shell, it is possible to measure the thickness of the layered microscopic tablets that compose nacre in a shell. The thickness of the tablets, explains Gilbert, correlates with ocean temperature as measured in modern shells when ocean temperatures were known at the time the shells were formed.

The new work by the researchers from Wisconsin, Harvard, and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory provides a novel physical approach to measuring past climate, said Gilbert, an expert in biomineral formation.

“If what you are measuring is a physical structure, you see it directly,” said Gilbert. “You just measure nacre tablet thickness, the spacing of the lines, and it corresponds to temperature. When the temperature is warmer, the layers get thicker.”

The new study looked at fossil samples of nacre as old as 200 million years from a mollusk in the family Pinnidae, large, fast-growing saltwater clams that live in shallow ocean environments. Today, as in the distant past, the bivalves are widespread in tropical and temperate coastal and shallow continental shelf environments.

The new method is potentially more accurate, Gilbert noted, because the chemistry of fossil shells can be altered by diagenesis. Diagenesis occurs over geologic time, during or after sediments rain down on ocean beds to form sedimentary rock. Fossil shells may partially dissolve and re-precipitate as calcite, which fills cracks in aragonite nacre, thus skewing the chemical analysis of a sample, if analyzed as a bulk sample.

“If the chemistry changes after the death of a fossil, the formation chemistry isn’t necessarily preserved,” said Gilbert. On the other hand, “if the physical structure is altered by diagenesis, you will notice immediately that nacre is no longer layered, and so you will know that it’s not worth analyzing that area. If just a few nacre tablets are preserved, their thickness can easily be measured” meaning the new technique can augment current geochemical methods used to assess past temperatures, and thus help reconstruct ancient climates, especially the shallow marine environments that preserve most of the world’s invertebrate fossil record.

The family of mollusks in the new study has lived in the world’s oceans for more than 400 million years, potentially leaving a clear record of ocean temperatures into the distant past. For purposes of assessing climate, the record is valuable because not only does it say something about past climate, but the data can also help modelers forecast future climate and environmental change.

“The only thing you can do to understand climate in the future is to look at climate in the past,” Gilbert noted.

Frequent sauna bathing can reduce the risk of dementia, according to a recent study carried out at the University of Eastern Finland. In a 20-year follow-up, men taking a sauna 4-7 times a week were 66% less likely to be diagnosed with dementia than those taking a sauna once a week.

The association between sauna bathing and dementia risk has not been previously investigated.

The effects of sauna bathing on the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other forms of dementia were studied in the Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study (KIHD), involving more than 2,000 middle-aged men living in the eastern part of Finland. Based on their sauna-bathing habits, the study participants were divided into three groups: those taking a sauna once a week, those taking a sauna 2-3 times a week, and those taking a sauna 4-7 times a week.

The more frequently saunas were taken, the lower was the risk of dementia. Among those taking a sauna 4-7 times a week, the risk of any form of dementia was 66% lower and the risk of Alzheimer’s disease 65% lower than among those taking a sauna just once a week. The findings were published recently in the Age and Ageing journal.

Previous results from the KIHD study have shown that frequent sauna bathing also significantly reduces the risk of sudden cardiac death, the risk of death due to coronary artery disease and other cardiac events, as well as overall mortality.

According to Professor Jari Laukkanen, the study leader, sauna bathing may protect both the heart and memory to some extent via similar, still poorly known mechanisms. “However, it is known that cardiovascular health affects the brain as well. The sense of well-being and relaxation experienced during sauna bathing may also play a role.”

In 1900, astronomer Joseph Lunt made a discovery: Peering through a telescope at Cape Town Observatory, the British-South African scientist spotted this beautiful sight in the southern constellation of Grus (The Crane): a barred spiral galaxy now named IC 5201.

Over a century later, the galaxy is still of interest to astronomers. For this image, the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope used its Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) to produce a beautiful and intricate image of the galaxy.

Hubble’s ACS can resolve individual stars within other galaxies, making it an invaluable tool to explore how various populations of stars sprang to life, evolved, and died throughout the cosmos.

IC 5201 sits over 40 million light-years away from us. As with two thirds of all the spirals we see in the Universe — including the Milky Way — the galaxy has a bar of stars slicing through its center.

By Elise Harris

Pope Francis kicked off his 80th birthday on Saturday by having breakfast with a group of homeless from around St. Peter’s and inviting them to Mass – but his giving didn’t stop there.

Throughout the day birthday treats and a special Christmas gift will be given to the poor and needy in soup kitchens and shelters throughout Rome in the name of the Pope in honor of his special day.

Francis started his birthday by welcoming eight homeless people, two women and six men, to his residence in the Vatican’s St. Martha guesthouse.

Accompanied by Papal Almoner Bishop Konrad Krajewski, the eight individuals come from different nationalities, and included four Italians, two Romanians, one Moldavian and one Peruvian. They had been in the area around St. Peter’s Basilica and the showers under the colonnade when they were invited by Krajewski in the early morning to join the Pope for breakfast.

At 7:15 a.m. Pope Francis came down and met them, greeting each one personally and “affectionately,” according to a Dec. 17 Vatican communique. The homeless then gave the Pope three large vases of sunflowers, which Francis immediately put in the chapel of the Saint Martha house where he celebrates daily Mass.

The group then made their way to the cafeteria for breakfast. Pope Francis sat with his guests and spoke with each of them before offering some typical Argentine sweets and inviting them to attend his 8 a.m. Mass with the resident cardinals in Rome inside the Pauline Chapel of the Apostolic Palace.

Cardinal Angelo Amato, Dean of the College of Cardinals, offered a special greeting to the Pope, reminding him of his parents, Mario and Maria Regina Bergoglio, his family and all of the others “who have contributed to your formation.” He also recalled the moment of the conclave and noted that many of the cardinals sat alongside Francis as they elected him to guide the Church “in this important time in history.”

“Today we wanted to celebrate Holy Mass with you, to thank the Lord for having chosen you for this mission and for all the love with which you are carrying it out every day.”

He affirmed their closeness to the Pope, particularly on “this beautiful day of your life,” and assured of their constant prayer before offering a cheer “Ad multos annos,” or “to many years!”

In his homily for Mass, Pope Francis also made his own reference to memory, saying the day’s Gospel reading from Matthew, which recounts the genealogy of Jesus, is an opportunity to pause and remember the graces received.

“This is the meaning of today’s liturgy: the grace of memory. We need to ask for this grace: to not forget.”

Remembering one’s story, their ancestors and the path of faith they have walked is based on love, he said, explaining that to reflect on this “does us good,” since it makes the period of waiting before Christmas even more “intense” and vigilant.

While the long Gospel passage might seem a bit “annoying,” it tells the story of a God who wanted to be with his people to the point of making himself a man like each one of us, Francis said.

“This is today’s grace: to remember,” he said, noting that in the story told in the Gospel we see that it’s both a story of grace, but also of sin.

“Along the path we always find grace and sin…even we, in our lives, find the same thing: moments of great fidelity to the Lord, of joy in service, and some bad moments of infidelity,” he said, but emphasized the fact that these moments of darkness are what make us feel the need for salvation.

When we become aware of our need to be saved, “we confess the faith, we make a confession of faith: ‘I am a sinner, but you can save me, you can carry me forward,” the Pope said, adding that this recognition allows us to go forward “in the joy of hope.”

Francis closed his homily by praying that the Lord would help everyone “to recover this grace of memory.”

The rest of Pope Francis’ special day is set to continue like normal, with various meetings and encounters with both individuals and groups of people.

However, as a special sign honoring the Pope’s birthday, soup kitchens throughout Rome will offer special treats after either lunch or dinner, while in various shelters where homeless stay overnight, guests will be given a bag with an image reminding them of Christmas, as well as a “small gift.”

Pope Francis will likely continue to receive well-wishes throughout the day. As of Saturday morning, he had already received nearly 50,000 birthday messages from around the world via email, as part of a special initiative launched by the Vatican in honor of the big day.

The majority of messages that have already arrived are in the English, Spanish and Italian languages, however, more than 1,000 came in Latin, which the Pope has an impeccable knowledge of.

By Sinem Cengiz*

At the age of 16, Sana’a Mehaidli, who had four brothers and a sister, blew up herself and a truck full of explosives next to an Israeli convoy in Lebanon during the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon on April 9, 1985. She is believed to have been the first female suicide bomber.

Since then, female suicide bombers have become a disturbing and increasing phenomenon from North Africa to Central Asia, the Middle East and Europe. This is a matter of great concern because of its implication that women and children may become key actors in future terrorist attacks.

This week, a suicide attack carried out by two girls said to be aged seven or eight killed at least 31 people at a crowded market in northeast Nigeria. In October, female suicide bombers killed 17 people at a camp for displaced people in the same country. In Nigeria there were 27 suicide attacks from January to May 2015, three-quarters of them carried out by women.

The terrorist organization Boko Haram has abducted hundreds of women and schoolgirls over the years and forced them to become suicide bombers. There is a causal relationship between the education of women and a decrease in terrorist violence. This is why terrorist groups such as Boko Haram are against female education.

In order to produce more practical solutions against female terrorism, one should better comprehend the motivations of female suicide bombers and terrorist organizations’ strategies to attract them. How have women, who are mostly viewed by society as protected persons and givers of life, become pivotal agents of terrorism?

Why are they preferred as suicide bombers to men? Firstly, women can hide bombs and explosives better under traditional clothing such as the burqa or abaya, or pretend to be pregnant in order to avoid security detection. Secondly, it is believed by terrorist groups that attacks perpetrated by women attract greater media attention than male-perpetrated missions due to their dramatic effect.

Several studies suggest that many female bombers do not volunteer to kill themselves, but are coerced. Women may be pushed to do so for several reasons, such as desperation, pressure, ideology or religious belief.

Chechen female suicide bombers named Black Widows — whose husbands were killed during the second Chechen war by Russian security forces, or had lost all their male relatives — carried out terrorist attacks in 2002 and 2004 in Russia to avenge their spouses.

Far more disturbing is that women are forced to become suicide bombers due to rape, dying so as to regain their “honor.” In 2009, Iraqi woman Samira Ahmed Jassim was arrested for recruiting female suicide bombers by having them raped, then persuading them that martyrdom was the only way to escape the shame.

She is believed to be responsible for coordinating the rape of 80 young Iraqi women in order to persuade them to become suicide bombers. She is said to have sent 28 women to their deaths.

There are also examples of women joining terrorist groups due to politics or ideology. This year Turkey faced several terrorist attacks, some carried out by female suicide bombers affiliated with the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). Founded as a Marxist organization, the PKK — which prides itself on “gender equality” — is among the first terrorist organizations to exploit women.

There are stories of women voluntarily joining the organization then not being able to leave, eventually becoming victims of all types of misconduct. Western media, keen to praise the PKK’s “gender equality” by reporting the extraordinary life stories of women in the organization, fail to take a better look at its shameful history.

This is not to say that all women have been forced to become suicide bombers. Some wilfully do so. Marxist or jihadist, religious or ideological, these women are murderers of innocent people. No ideology or belief can justify these terrorist attacks. The world could become a better place with the help of women, but not of those with blood on their hands.

*Sinem Cengiz is a Turkish political analyst who specializes in Turkey’s relations with the Middle East. She can be reached on Twitter @SinemCngz