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Three’s Company? France, Germany, UK And European Defence Post-Brexit – Analysis

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It is vital that France, Germany and the UK cooperate constructively on military matters after the British leave the European Union.

By Daniel Keohane*

Supporters of EU defence policy have seized on the Brexit decision of the British people as an opportunity to strengthen that policy. In the past the UK had blocked some proposals, which France, Germany and others now wish to implement. But a more energised EU defence on paper will not quickly transform into a stronger policy in practice. More important for the security of Europeans is that France, Germany and the UK ensure that they cooperate constructively on military matters after the British leave the EU.

Analysis

The British exit from the EU is occurring while European governments face an unprecedented confluence of security crises, ranging from an unpredictable Russia to conflicts across the Middle East, which are generating internal security tests such as terrorist attacks and refugee flows. The US is ambiguous about putting out all of Europe’s fires and expects allies to take on more of the military burden. And no European country can cope alone. Aside from their complexity, one key new dimension of these security challenges is that Europeans now have to simultaneously defend their territories and manage external crises. Plus the lines between internal and external security are increasingly blurred.

That Brexit will reduce the potential usefulness of EU security and defence policies should be self-evident, since the UK is the strongest European military power in NATO. But since Britain remains a nuclear-armed member of NATO, will nothing really change for European defence? Think again. Brexit might hinder European military cooperation because it could greatly strain political relationships with other European allies, especially with the next two leading military powers in NATO-Europe: France and Germany. But handled correctly, military collaboration could become one of the most constructive areas for cooperation between the UK and the EU post-Brexit.

The election of Donald Trump as US President has an even greater potential to transform Europe’s strategic landscape than Brexit, if he scales back American military commitments in Europe (this subject is beyond the scope of this analysis). But regardless of what the Trump Administration does, European defence post-Brexit will require much closer trilateral political and military cooperation between France, Germany and the UK.

The Brexit effect

Following the British vote to leave the EU in June, the remaining 27 Union governments have committed themselves to improving the performance of EU security and defence policies. Although it is not fair to blame the UK alone for the EU’s prior lack of progress on defence, cheerleaders for that policy in Berlin, Paris and elsewhere have seized on the Brexit vote as an opportunity to strengthen that policy area. Partly based on a number of subsequent practical Franco-German proposals, EU Foreign and Defence Ministers approved new proposals for EU security and defence policies in mid-November.

Since the Brexit vote, the German Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen has at times accused the UK of paralysing progress on EU defence in the past, and asked it not to veto new plans. In turn, the British Defence Secretary, Michael Fallon, has sometimes suggested that London would veto anything that smacked of an ‘EU army’ or undermined NATO (such as an EU version of NATO’s military headquarters, SHAPE). Thankfully, this divisive rhetoric has recently died down as it has become clear that EU security and defence plans will not undermine NATO and that the UK will not use its veto.

With the approval of the UK (which retains its veto until it departs the Union), EU heads-of-governments approved a package of three plans covering aspects of capability development, operational planning and military research, among other issues, at a summit on 15 December. However, despite their good intentions, the proposals are unlikely to have much immediate impact, and whether or not the remaining 27 EU governments will collectively deliver more on defence remains an open question.

For instance, while they agree on much, there are some major differences in strategic culture between Berlin and Paris. For one, France, as a nuclear-armed permanent member of the UN Security Council, has a special sense of responsibility for global security, and is prepared to act unilaterally if necessary. Germany, in contrast, will only act in coalition with others, and remains much more reluctant than France to deploy robust military force abroad.

For another, Berlin and Paris do not necessarily agree on the end goal of EU defence policy. Calls in the 2016 German defence white paper for a ‘European Security and Defence Union’ in the long-term give the impression that EU defence is primarily a political integration project for some in Berlin.

The French are more interested in a stronger inter-governmental EU defence policy today than a symbolic integration project for the future, since Paris perceives acting militarily through the EU as an important option for those times the US does not want to intervene in crises in and around Europe. Because of their different strategic cultures, therefore, France and Germany may struggle to develop a substantially more active EU defence policy more than their joint proposals would suggest.

The French do not assume that their EU partners will always rush to support their military operations. In general, they have not robustly supported France in Africa in recent years, although Germany has enhanced its presence in Mali since the 2015 Paris terrorist attacks. But if acting through the EU could help ensure more military support from other EU members, France would find that preferable to acting alone. The trouble for France has been that it has been stuck in the middle between a Germany reluctant to use robust military force abroad and a UK reluctant to act militarily through the EU.

Post-Brexit, French strategic culture will remain closest to that of the British. The EU could only develop a defence policy because France and the UK agreed that it should, at St. Malo in 1998. Moreover, London and Paris have been prepared to act together, leading the charge for what became NATO’s intervention in Libya in early 2011. The ongoing quiet deepening of bilateral Franco-British military cooperation, based on the 2010 Lancaster House treaties, is vitally important for European military cooperation post-Brexit. For example, London and Paris announced in November 2016 that they will deepen their dependence on each other for missile technology. In sum, Franco-British cooperation is more militarily significant for European security than the trumpeted developments through the EU.

But bilateral Franco-British military cooperation may not be immune to politics. And it is important to try to avoid a spill-over effect from the Brexit decision onto NATO, especially any political rift between Europe’s two leading military powers, the traditionally more ‘Europeanist’ France and more ‘Atlanticist’ UK. In a speech on 5 September, the British Defence Secretary said ‘Given the overlap in NATO and EU membership, it’s surely in all our interests to ensure the EU doesn’t duplicate existing structures… Our Trans-Atlantic alliance works for the UK and for Europe making us stronger and better able to meet the threats and challenges of the future’.

In contrast, on 6 October, the French President, François Hollande, said that there are European countries ‘that think the United States will always be there to protect them… if they don’t defend themselves they will no longer be defended’. Hollande added ‘Europeans must realize…they must also be a political power with a defence capability’.

If these Franco-British positions were to harden –because of difficult Brexit negotiations– and cause a political rift, it could hinder not only their bilateral cooperation, but also cooperation through both NATO and the EU. Strong Franco-British cooperation is vital for European security, not only because of their combined military power, but also because Europeans need to be able both to contribute more to NATO (as the UK prioritises) and to act autonomously if necessary (like France advocates via the EU or in other ways).

The UK and EU military cooperation

The British government should hope that EU governments do deliver on their defence promises, including after the British exit from the EU. There are three reasons for this. First, some EU operations are useful for coping with the vast array of security challenges facing Europe at large. NATO cannot –and the US does not want to– be everywhere. This largely explains why most EU military operations have taken place in the broad geographic space (beyond EU territory) stretching from the Western Balkans via the Mediterranean and Africa to the Indian Ocean, to counter pirates, terrorists and people smugglers among other tasks. This emerging strategic necessity helps explain why the British Defence Secretary said in July that after its departure the UK could still contribute to EU operations.

Secondly, Europeans need to improve their military capabilities and spend their sparse defence monies more effectively. The EU institutions in Brussels can help the governments with funding for defence research, opening up protected national military procurement markets and providing financial incentives for more efficient multinational equipment programmes. All of this would benefit both taxpayers and soldiers, as well as NATO, since 21 countries will remain members of both the Union and the Alliance post-Brexit.

Third, the EU and NATO are deepening their practical cooperation, and European security can only benefit from these two organisations working together. To tackle terrorism or the migration crisis, the EU and NATO can connect everything from internal policing and intelligence networks to external military operations. Both bodies are conducting operations to combat people smuggling in the Mediterranean for example. To counter Russian hybrid belligerence, they are also trying to better combine their various efforts, from economic sanctions to territorial defence, cyber-defence and countering propaganda.

This is why NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has welcomed the (mainly) Franco-German proposals for strengthening EU security and defence policies. At an October informal meeting of EU Defence Ministers in Bratislava, Stoltenberg highlighted that there is no contradiction between better EU military cooperation and a strong NATO, noting that both are mutually reinforcing.

Because of these three reasons –alongside Britain’s substantial military capacity and experience– it is in everyone’s interest to have as close a relationship as possible between the UK and the EU on military matters after Brexit. The UK, for example, may wish to continue contributing to useful EU operations. Non-EU countries, such as Norway and Turkey, have made significant contributions to some EU operations in the past.

But the UK cannot expect a formal say over EU defence policy in return for such contributions. Other non-EU NATO members, particularly Norway and Turkey, would likely expect similar arrangements, and the remaining 27 EU governments are keen to protect their decision-making autonomy. Instead London should aim for de facto rather than de jure influence post-Brexit. This could involve ad hoc observer status in inter-governmental EU decision-making committees, based on London’s willingness to participate in a particular capability project or contribute to an operation at hand.

This type of arrangement would require a lot of political trust between the UK and the remaining 27 governments. But given the UK’s deep knowledge of EU procedures and challenges –alongside its global outlook, strong military capabilities and vast operational experience– it is likely that London would have considerable de facto influence on other EU governments if it chose to. Handled correctly, defence policy could become one of the most constructive areas for cooperation between the UK and the EU after Brexit.

As long as it remains an EU member, therefore, there is not much point in London threatening to veto any future agreements on EU military cooperation, as they would almost certainly happen anyway after the UK has left the EU. It would also needlessly antagonise France, Germany and others when the UK has much more important things to negotiate with its EU partners. The British government should wish its EU partners well in their endeavours to make EU military cooperation more effective, safe in the knowledge that the UK can no longer be blamed for any future lack of progress on EU defence policy.

Furthermore, post-Brexit European military cooperation will continue to be pushed more by the coming together of national priorities than by the efforts of the EU and NATO. European military cooperation is mainly bottom up –driven by national governments– not top down, meaning directed and organised by the institutions in Brussels. For example, some countries are working more closely in regional formats, such as Baltic, Nordic and Visegrád (Central European) cooperation. And a number of European governments are pursuing deeper bilateral cooperation, including the integration of parts of their armed forces in some cases. Examples include (the aforementioned) Franco-British, German-Dutch and Finnish-Swedish initiatives.

European governments are increasingly picking and choosing which forms of military cooperation they wish to pursue, depending on the capability project or military operation at hand. Sometimes they act through NATO or the EU, but almost all European governments are using other formats as well, whether regional, bilateral, or ad hoc coalitions. The combination of more complex security crises and reduced resources has meant that European governments are more focused on their core national interests than before, and both more targeted and flexible about how they wish to cooperate.

Other EU governments will continue to want to work with the UK in bilateral or other settings, as well as at NATO, as should the UK with them. But the overall success of European military cooperation post-Brexit will depend on the convergence or divergence of national policies, in particular the abilities of France, Germany and the UK to not only agree among themselves but also convince other European governments to support their approaches.

Conclusions

One misfortune of Brexit is that it is occurring just when British, French and German defence policies have been showing some signs of convergence in recent years. Tasks-wise, each country is aiming –to varying degrees– to be as full-spectrum as possible, maintaining the ability to both adequately defend territory and deploy abroad. Each of them has promised to increase defence spending in the coming years, reflecting the difficult security crises that Europe faces today. All three have made important contributions to NATO’s reassurance measures to allies in Eastern Europe, such as participating in Baltic air policing. And all three have deployed forces to help fight Islamist terrorists in Africa and the Middle East.

Granted, Germany has been reluctant to take on full-blown combat roles abroad. But its beefed-up support to the anti-Islamic State coalition, following the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, alongside its willingness to lead one of NATO’s four new battalions in Eastern Europe, suggests that Germany realises that it needs to be prepared to contribute more militarily to European security.

France has sometimes been suspected of being too Russia-friendly, but it cancelled the delivery of two Mistral amphibious assault ships to Moscow after the 2014 annexation of Crimea. Britain has long been accused of being anti-EU military cooperation. But the EU’s most successful military mission to date, an anti-piracy operation on the waters off Somalia, has been run from a British military headquarters.

In essence European military cooperation –whether through the EU, NATO or other formats– is a tale of three cities, because it can fully work only if Berlin, London and Paris agree. Encouragingly, in November 2016 a joint meeting of French, British and German defence chiefs took place in Paris. Regardless of what the incoming Trump Administration does, the minimum challenge now for France, Germany and the UK will be to ensure that the British exit from the EU will not make political alignments on European defence more difficult to achieve.

About the author:
*Daniel Keohane
, Senior Researcher, Center for Security Studies, ETH Zürich | @keohanedan

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute


Palestine: Fatah At The Crossroads – Analysis

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By Gautam Sen*

Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestine National Authority (PNA) and the head of Fatah – the main constituent of the Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) for quite some time, is at the crossroads. Abbas has been in the driving seat by virtue of his predominant position within the PLO since the demise of Yasser Arafat in 2004 and the Fatah’s control of the PNA. Now, at the age of 81 years, Abbas is facing a crucial test. This challenge is consequent upon political pressures increasing from some Arab countries like Egypt to have a rapprochement with Hamas — ascendant in the Gaza Strip since 2006, the hardening of Israeli stance on Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, as well as many within Fatah posing challenges to his pre-dominant position.

The Fatah held its Seventh General Congress on November 29, 2016. The Central Committee elected a 130-member revolutionary council and reconstituted the organization`s 21-member politburo. Though initially there were expectations of substantial changes within the organization, the expectations were eventually belied with Abbas managing to ensure that a majority of members of the three tier plenary body – the general congress, the revolutionary council and the politburo, were his supporters. Notwithstanding the above, the weakness of Abbas lies in Fatah and PLO not being able to control Gaza and periodic confrontation with the Hamas led by Khaled Meshaal and his deputy, Ismail Haniyeh. Egypt as a tacit measure of support to Hamas recently opened a land crossing to Gaza at Rafah. While this was ostensibly for humanitarian support, it has even has gone to the extent of offering a free-trade zone comprising Egypt and Gaza.

Despite his apparently overwhelming domination of the Fatah and the PLO as evident from the outcome of the Seventh General Congress, Abbas has failed to totally suppress the rival Fatah faction led by the 53 year old Mohammed Dahlan, a former protégé of Arafat and ex security chief in Gaza. Abbas though did not formally nominate Marwan Barghouti as his successor, who is presently serving a prison term in Israel. There is a latent demand within the organization for Barghouti to be formally nominated as Abbas`s successor. All these factors portend a significant political challenge to Abbas in the near future.

In the above-mentioned backdrop, Israel`s intransigence on the Jewish settlement issue and the PNA president`s failure to extract any substantive political concessions from the Israeli government, will only serve to undermine his political stature within Palestine and that of the PNA. Israel has also been quite disparaging of Abbas. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has gone to the extent of questioning the legitimacy of Abbas in general, apart from describing him as a weakling, inciter and rejectionist. Israeli Defence Minister Avigdor Lieberman, by stating that Abbas was not a partner for final settlement, has hinted that his country will not be interested in working out a rapprochement with Abbas and the PNA headed by him. It is to be seen whether Israeli intransigence on the settler issue gets accentuated after Donald Trump assumes his country`s presidency.

The impact of all these developments on the Palestinian cause will have to be carefully monitored. Apart from Palestine becoming a political entity recognized by the United Nations with non-member Observer status in November 2012 and president of PNA given de-facto status of head of state — for which credit may be given to Abbas and his team, the political and economic status of the Palestinians has only worsened during the past few years. Issues are being raised in some quarters on the utilization of aid from a multiplicity of donors amounting to $23 billion since the Oslo Accords. In fact, some Palestinian NGOs have started working to achieve a direct networking of international donors virtually bypassing the PNA, to ensure a more transparent flow and utilization of the aid resources.

As indicated by PNA sources in February 2016, the PNA had received only $750 million assistance from the international community in 2015 and there was a huge uncovered resource deficit of more than $2 billion in its 2016 annual budget of $4.25 billion despite foreign aid being factored in. These tend to reflect on the lack of effectiveness of the administration in the West Bank under the PNA. Moreover, allegations against promotion of the enterprises and economic ventures of Abbas`s sons at the expense of claims of other Palestinians, have also surfaced in the Palestinian public domain.

Furthermore, the phenomena of usurpation of Palestinian Arab land by the settler Jews have gradually got accentuated. About 150 Jewish settlements have come into existence to the east of the 1967 Israel-Jordan borders. At present, the total Jewish settler population in West Bank territory exceeds 590,000. The formalisation of this illegal occupation and transformation of the habitation milieu therein is now on the anvil with a Knesset Resolution planned by the Netanyahu government to accord legislative sanctity to these settlements. There is little that Abbas and his PLO can effectively do to negate these developments, notwithstanding the international support enjoyed by them and the Palestine cause.

The unanimous adoption of United Nations Security Council (UNSC) Resolution 2334 on December 23, 2016 has come as a morale booster for the PNA and the PLO-Fatah leadership. The Resolution was supported with 14 members of the 15-member Council casting affirmative votes and the US interestingly, abstaining. The essence of this Resolution is the condemnation of change in demographic composition and character of Israeli-occupied Palestinian territory, enjoining on the Netanyahu government to cease further settlements and the declaration of all settlements established by Israeli governments after June 4, 1967, as illegal. A PNA presidential spokesman described the Resolution as ‘a great blow to Israel’, ’a historic day’ and as ‘a victory for international law’.

Even though President Barrack Obama had pledged in his Cairo speech of 2009 to bring about Palestine statehood — and had many times since then demanded of Israeli governments to institute a complete settlement freeze, he failed in his attempts to force Israel to act accordingly. The nature of US support to Israel meanwhile has remained unconditional. The Obama administration`s commitment of $38 billion to Israel for the period (2018-2028) is also noteworthy. However, during the UNSC deliberations, the US Permanent Representative to the UNSC insisted that settlements have no legal validity. Some observers note that Obama perhaps considered the UNSC resolution as an important if not the last possible occasion during the remainder of his term to exhibit even-handedness on the Israel-Palestine issue.

While Abbas and the Palestinian leadership for the time-being would benefit from the positive impact generated by 2334, the enforceability of the resolution is likely to remain an issue. In a posture of defiance, Israel`s Local Planning and Building Committee of West Jerusalem has approved three lots of Jewish settlements, viz., 2600, 2600 and 400, though there are also indications that the incumbent Netanyahu government will temporarily go slow in executing hard-line measures. The Israeli government would also be conscious that Resolution 2334 is a fact of international law and can be used as a surrogate to initiate a proposal for instituting an inquiry by the International Criminal Court to investigate violations of the directive conveyed to freeze settlements in West Bank and East Jerusalem. Of note here is the International Court of Justice`s advisory opinion of 2004 highlighting limitations for Israel vis-à-vis the occupied territories.

There are opportunities for the present Fatah leadership to keep the Palestine cause alive and at least not allow further de facto diminishing of Palestinian territory. However, the same may not be feasible without an inclusive approach within their organization and perhaps a gradual change of guard within a specified time-frame, with support of genuine well-wishers in the Levant and also from the European Union. While a fully neutral approach on the part of the US cannot be realistically expected, the new administration should at least continue to be even-handed henceforth on the issue of settlements, reckoning its long-term strategic repercussions and obviating opportunities for radical Islamists.

The author is a retired IDAS officer who has served in senior positions of Govt. of India and a State Govt. The views expressed are the author’s own. Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://idsa.in/idsacomments/fatah-at-the-crossroads_gsen_040117

Sexual Orientation And Earnings: How Being In Partnership Matters – Analysis

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Previous studies on labour market discrimination based on sexual orientation have not revealed whether reported differences in earnings have been due to differences in the samples, populations, or outcomes, nor what the likely cause might be. Using a UK-wide dataset of sexual orientation and labour market earnings, this column shows that the overall difference in earnings for men who identify as gay is near zero irrespective of whether they are in a partnership or not, while women with a lesbian orientation have an earnings premium of about 5.5%. Specialisation explains earnings differences that depend on partnership status, though outside London there is some evidence of discrimination.

By Cevat Giray Aksoy, Christopher S. Carpenter and Jefferson Frank*

Since the mid 1990s, many researchers have investigated labour market discrimination based on sexual orientation (e.g. Badgett 1995, Black et al. 2003, Arabsheibani et al. 2004, Plug and Berkhout 2004). These studies frequently find large earnings differences. Partnered gay men earn significantly less than partnered heterosexual men, and partnered lesbian women earn significantly more than partnered heterosexual women. When individual level self-reports of sexual orientation are available, the earnings differences are generally smaller.

The previous studies have struggled with a trade-off between representativeness and sample size. Couples-based datasets such as population censuses in Canada, the US, and the UK provide large samples of same-sex couples, but do not identify the sexual identity of non-partnered individuals. In contrast, datasets with individual-level information on sexual orientation or sexual behaviour have been much smaller. The few studies with individual-level information on sexual orientation and reasonably large samples of sexual minorities have been limited to single states (e.g. Carpenter 2005), limited to young adults (Plug and Berkhout 2004), or lacked information on labour market earnings (Carpenter 2008a). As a result, we do not know whether differences in estimated earnings effects of a minority sexual orientation in studies have been due to differences in the samples, populations, or outcomes. It has also been difficult to disentangle the causes of sexual orientation-based differences in labour market outcomes (is it specialisation or discrimination?).

A nationally representative dataset

In a recent paper, we overcome these problems by using confidential versions of the 2012-2014 UK Integrated Household Surveys (IHS), linked to high-quality labour market earnings data from the country’s Annual Population Survey (Aksoy et al. 2016). To our knowledge, it is the first country-wide dataset combining partnership status, self-identified sexual orientation, and high-quality data on labour market earnings.

We use to it identify large samples of sexual minority individuals — more than 2,500 self-identified lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LGB) — through their responses to a direct question about sexual orientation. We also identify those in same-sex partnerships. This means we can directly test for how measurement of sexual orientation (individual level self-reports versus same-sex partnerships) is related to earnings differences between sexual minorities and heterosexuals, and comment more directly on possible explanations for differences in earnings.

Partnership status matters: Full-time employment

We discover that it is important to have data on both partnered and non-partnered sexual minorities. Our full-time employment models indicate that gay (bisexual) men are 4.5 (11.9) percentage points less likely to be working full time than similar heterosexual men. This difference for gay men is driven by the partnered sample. Partnered gay men are 6.1 percentage points less likely to be working full time than similar partnered heterosexual men. In contrast, the difference for bisexual men is driven primarily in the non-partnered sample. Non-partnered bisexual men are 11.7 percentage points less likely to be working full time than similar non-partnered heterosexual men.

Lesbians are 8.2 percentage points more likely to be working full time than similar heterosexual women, while bisexual women are 5.4 percentage points less likely to be working full time. As with gay males, the lesbian difference in full-time employment (although of opposite sign) is predominantly driven by the partnered sample. Partnered lesbians are 15.4 percentage points more likely to be working full time than similar partnered heterosexual women.

Partnership status matters: Earnings

After controlling for observable determinants of earnings such as education, location, and family structure, we find a positive and statistically significant difference in earnings for partnered lesbians compared to partnered heterosexual women, but no earnings differential for non-partnered lesbians compared with similar non-partnered heterosexual women.

We find a negative and marginally significant earnings penalty for partnered gay men compared to partnered heterosexual men, but no earnings differential for non-partnered gay men compared with similar non-partnered heterosexual men. Taking partnered and non-partnered individuals together, we find that the earnings difference associated with a gay sexual orientation for men is near zero, while the associated population-based earnings difference among women associated with a lesbian orientation is a premium of about 5.5%, and is statistically significant.

Specialisation or discrimination?

Our results are consistent with specialisation. Heterosexual partnerships typically involve gendered specialisation. The man is more engaged in market activities than the woman, particularly given that many couples have children. Even if the degree of household specialisation were the same in heterosexual and gay male households, gendered heterosexual specialisation means that the average partnered heterosexual man would be more focused on market activities than the average partnered gay man.

The same argument implies the average partnered lesbian would be more focused on market activities than the average partnered heterosexual woman. These differences would not accrue to non-partnered individuals. Our data support these specialisation-based predictions. Our finding that the lesbian premium among partnered individuals accrued approximately equally to lesbians who are household heads and lesbians who are not household heads also supports the idea that there is less specialisation in a lesbian household.

There is some limited evidence for discrimination as an explanatory factor. Our results show that older gay men and partnered gay men earn less than comparable heterosexual men. It is likely that, as men get older, not being in a heterosexual marriage becomes more of a signal of sexual minority status (Carpenter 2007, Frank 2007). It may also be easier to see that partnered gay men are gay, compared to their counterparts who do not have partners. For example, they may have photos of a same-sex partner or list their same-sex partner as a beneficiary. If there is discrimination against gay men, more observable individuals may bear a greater penalty. The gay male penalty occurs only outside London, where there is likely to be a stronger taste for discrimination. Finally, the bisexual male penalty occurs only in the private sector, and not the public sector where there is greater protection against discrimination.

Our unique samples of partnered and non-partnered sexual minorities, and high-quality data on earnings, provide evidence to support a role for specialisation in explaining sexual orientation-based differences in labour market earnings, with less evidence for selectivity, and limited and mixed support for discrimination.

*About the authors:
Cevat Giray Aksoy
, Research Economist, European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Christopher S. Carpenter, Professor of Economics, Professor of Law, Professor of Education, Professor of Medicine, Health, and Society, and Professor of Health Policy, Vanderbilt University

Jefferson Frank, Professor of Economics, University of London, Royal Holloway College

References:
Aksoy, C G, C Carpenter and J Frank (2016). “Sexual orientation and earnings: new evidence from the UK”, EBRD Working Paper No. 196, also forthcoming in Industrial and Labor Relations Review.

Arabsheibani, G R, A Marin, and J Wadsworth (2005). “Gay Pay in the UK,” Economica 72: 333-347.

Badgett, M V L (1995). “The Wage Effects of Sexual-Orientation Discrimination,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 48(4): 726-739.

Black, D, H Makar, S Sanders, and L Taylor (2003). “The Earnings Effects of Sexual Orientation,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 56(3): 449-469.

Carpenter, C (2005). “Self-Reported Sexual Orientation and Earnings: Evidence from California,” Industrial and Labor Relations Review, 58(2): 258-273.

Carpenter, C (2007b). “Do Straight Men ‘Come Out’ at Work Too? The Heterosexual Male Marriage Premium and Discrimination Against Gay Men.” In M. V. Lee Badgett and Jeff Frank (Eds.) Sexual Orientation Discrimination: An International Perspective, New York: Routledge Press.

Carpenter, C (2008a). “Sexual Orientation, Work, and Income in Canada,” Canadian Journal of Economics, 41(4): 1239-1261.

Frank, J (2007). “Is the male marriage premium evidence of discrimination against gay men?” In M. V. Lee Badgett and Jeff Frank (Eds.) Sexual Orientation Discrimination: An International Perspective, New York: Routledge Press.

Plug, E and A Berkhout (2004). “Effects of Sexual Preference on Earnings in the Netherlands,” Journal of Population Economics, 17(1): 117-131.

Three Tips To Help Multicultural Teams Succeed

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International collaboration can be difficult, as colleagues must cross time zones, language barriers and cultural divides. Just ask those who were betting on the DaimlerChrysler megamerger. The union ultimately failed, with many blaming the two companies’ cultural discord.

How can companies cultivate effective collaboration across cultural divides? Yih-Teen Lee of IESE and Minna Paunova of Copenhagen Business School look to the self-managed multicultural team. This working unit is made up of people from different cultures who are responsible for executing a team task. Especially when engaging with knowledge work, these teams’ larger collective sets of skills and viewpoints foster creativity.

What’s more, their wider range of capabilities allow them “to serve a variety of client needs across space and time,” the authors explain.

So how do they work? And how do they work best? Lee and Paunova’s study points to very practical tips for working groups to thrive. The short answer is: training makes a difference.

The longer answer is, you don’t need to have a Brazilian mom and an Indian dad with a Swiss education to contribute positively to multicultural teams’ success. In their study of 36 multinational teams (made up of over 250 MBA students from over 40 countries), they find that what’s really critical is fostering collective global leadership — and having a team-learning orientation is a way to get there.

Learning to Know You Better

In their study, the authors predicted that multicultural teams would be positively influenced by a “learning orientation.” Learning-oriented individuals aren’t afraid of failure and are eager to try new things. (In contrast, those who have a “performance orientation” are more eager to demonstrate their competence in current tasks.)

Anyone who has lived abroad can tell you that adapting to a different culture is a social learning process. The same is true in multicultural work environments. On a team level, the study confirmed that learning orientation can drive higher performance, efficacy, and commitment, as well as improved team dynamics.

(At the same time, Lee and Paunova found that when team members are already willing to put group goals above their own individual glory, learning to be open is less important.)

Managing for the Leaderless?

For success, recent scholarship recommends that global leadership be distributed across multiple team members. This implies that team members are open to both offer and receive guidance from all other team members, regardless of their culture or nationality.

When it works well, collective global leadership can boost team performance by driving greater effort and efficiency, as the present study confirmed for its MBA teams. Furthermore, shared responsibility improves the intra-team environment, allowing happier and more comfortable members to deliver improved results.

Three Tips to Boost Team Performance

So, is “learning orientation” a fixed trait, or can it be developed? The latter, say the authors, who offer three concrete tips to boost learning orientation, and thus collective leadership and performance, in multicultural teams:

  1. Hire learning-oriented team members. The authors note that “learning orientation not only makes individual team members more leader-like, but also contributes to their effective participation in the global leadership process.”
  2. Develop existing employees’ learning orientation. Implement “seminars and training tools designed to show that skills can be learned and that mistakes are a natural step in the learning process.”
  3. Coach employees to adapt to multicultural teams. Organizational programs can teach people to feel safer, identify with their multicultural team, and to be more trusting of team members from other cultures.

In short, Lee and Paunova find that multicultural teams perform best when they have collective global leadership, supported by a positive team environment. To get there, a key input is learning orientation, which can be acquired.

Methodology, Very Briefly

Data was collected from more than 250 MBA students working in 36 culturally diverse teams at a European business school over one academic year. On average, the teams had eight members from seven different countries — and there were no formally assigned leaders. Over the course of nine months, they were periodically graded on team assignments. They were also surveyed and otherwise assessed for their teamwork, dynamics and performance by the researchers and by an independent evaluator who did not know the study’s hypotheses.

Lebanese Pop Singer Yara To ‘Tell All’ On ‘Every Friday’ Show

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Lebanese pop singer Yara will spill the beans about her upcoming music plans, as well as her love life and marriage on Egyptian presenter Amr Adib’s talk show “Every Friday.” The TV show will air on Abu Dhabi channel at 11.30 p.m. Friday.

Yara will reportedly perform some of her hit songs, such as, “Twasa Fia,” and “Hob Kabeer,” as well as old Arabic melodies.

She will talk about her experience in the Arab entertainment world and her music selection. Adib will ask his guest a variety of questions covering all aspects of her life, including love, marriage, relationships with other artists and the rumors facing her lately.

“Every Friday” has in the past surprised its audiences with special musical evenings featuring pioneering Arab singers, in addition to interviews with famous football players, such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Messi, and Neymar.

The show has enjoyed great success since airing its first episode, as celebrities would post photos with Adib on Instagram after an appearance on the show. Yara had also recently shared a photo with Adib on her social media pages.

Adib, who has one of the largest audiences in the Middle East, hosted “Al-Kahira Al-Youm” (“Cairo Today”) for almost two decades.

Yara started her musical career with the ballad “Hob Kabeer.” In 2006, she joined Fadl Shaker in a duet called “Khedni Ma’ak.” In 2009, she joined Jean-Marie Riachi for the album “Belaaks” with the song “Shefto min biid” (“I Saw Him”) in Lebanese dialect.

Infants Should Eat Peanut-Containing Foods To Reduce Allergy Risk

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To reduce the risk of developing peanut allergy, experts are now recommending that infants have peanut-containing foods introduced into their diets as early as 4 to 6 months of age.

These are the findings released Thursday by an expert panel sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health, that issued clinical guidelines to aid health care providers in early introduction of peanut-containing foods to infants to prevent the development of peanut allergy.

Peanut allergy is a growing health problem for which no treatment or cure exists. People living with peanut allergy, and their caregivers, must be vigilant about the foods they eat and the environments they enter to avoid allergic reactions, which can be severe and even life-threatening. The allergy tends to develop in childhood and persist through adulthood. However, recent scientific research has demonstrated that introducing peanut-containing foods into the diet during infancy can prevent the development of peanut allergy.

The new Addendum Guidelines for the Prevention of Peanut Allergy in the United States supplement the 2010 Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Management of Food Allergy in the United States. The addendum provides three separate guidelines for infants at various levels of risk for developing peanut allergy and is targeted to a wide variety of health care providers, including pediatricians and family practice physicians.

“Living with peanut allergy requires constant vigilance. Preventing the development of peanut allergy will improve and save lives and lower health care costs,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci, M.D. “We expect that widespread implementation of these guidelines by health care providers will prevent the development of peanut allergy in many susceptible children and ultimately reduce the prevalence of peanut allergy in the United States.”

Addendum Guideline 1 focuses on infants deemed at high risk of developing peanut allergy because they already have severe eczema, egg allergy or both.

The expert panel recommends that these infants have peanut-containing foods introduced into their diets as early as 4 to 6 months of age to reduce the risk of developing peanut allergy. Parents and caregivers should check with their infant’s health care provider before feeding the infant peanut-containing foods. The health care provider may choose to perform an allergy blood test or send the infant to a specialist for other tests, such as a skin prick test or an oral food challenge. The results of these tests will help decide if and how peanut should be safely introduced into the infant’s diet.

Guideline 2 suggests that infants with mild or moderate eczema should have peanut-containing foods introduced into their diets around 6 months of age to reduce the risk of peanut allergy. Guideline 3 suggests that infants without eczema or any food allergy have peanut-containing foods freely introduced into their diets.

In all cases, infants should start other solid foods before they are introduced to peanut-containing foods.

Development of the Addendum Guidelines was prompted by emerging data suggesting that peanut allergy can be prevented by the early introduction of peanut-containing foods. Clinical trial results reported in February 2015 showed that regular peanut consumption begun in infancy and continued until 5 years of age led to an 81 percent reduction in development of peanut allergy in infants deemed at high risk because they already had severe eczema, egg allergy or both. This finding came from the landmark, NIAID-funded Learning Early About Peanut Allergy (LEAP) study, a randomized clinical trial involving more than 600 infants.

“The LEAP study clearly showed that introduction of peanut early in life significantly lowered the risk of developing peanut allergy by age 5. The magnitude of the benefit and the scientific strength of the study raised the need to operationalize these findings by developing clinical recommendations focused on peanut allergy prevention,” said Daniel Rotrosen, M.D., director of NIAID’s Division of Allergy, Immunology and Transplantation.

Putin And Trump: How To Make Nonproliferation Priority In 2017 – Analysis

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Despite good intentions, the Obama administration leaves office in January with US-Russia nonproliferation cooperation in a precarious condition. Moscow’s boycott of the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit, suspension of the Plutonium Management and Disposition Agreement (PMDA), exclusion from the Group of Eight (G8), and other developments are major, though manageable, challenges in the nuclear security domain.

Renewing US-Russian nonproliferation ties is vital since both countries have large stocks of nuclear weapons, advanced civilian and military nuclear complexes, and expertise in many nuclear and terrorism-related areas. Their cooperation has been responsible for important nuclear security successes, such as removing fissile material from vulnerable former Soviet bloc nuclear facilities.

Yet, while both powers want to deny other countries nuclear weapons, they often differ in their proliferation-related threat perceptions, preferred nonproliferation tactics, and the costs they are prepared to incur to avert further nuclear proliferation. For example, U.S. officials are more willing to sanction countries that pose a proliferation risk, while Russians are more worried about regime instability.

Russia’s exclusion from the G8 has weakened that Group’s nonproliferation functions, including its management of the Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction. For more than a decade, the Global Partnership has conducted billions of dollars’ worth of nonproliferation projects in Russia, but now these have been completed or frozen due to tensions between Moscow and the West.

Washington and Moscow can, however, rely more on strengthening the Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism (GICNT). The GICNT endorses multinational training, exercises, and sharing of best practices in the prevention, detection, and response to nuclear incidents triggered by non-state actors. It also promotes use of highly enriched uranium and plutonium in civilian activities and enhancing the security of radiological sources that could be used to make dirty bombs. Importantly, while China is not a member of the G8, it is a leading player in the GICNT.

Russia and the United States continue to support the GICNT. Mikhail Ulyanov, director of the Russian Foreign Ministry’s Department for Non-Proliferation and Arms Control, recently told Russia Direct that, “Despite all the difficulties in our relations with the U.S., our cooperation [in the Global Initiative] is very… constructive.”

To further enhance bilateral cooperation on nonproliferation, both countries need to share more intelligence to counter radiological or nuclear terrorism threats to themselves and others. Furthermore, both governments should do more to encourage other contributions to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). By securing more diverse sources of funding, the IAEA can raise the stability, sustainability and credibility of its programs. Furthermore, Russian and U.S. experts could partner to prepare an IAEA prospectus on nuclear security and help its Nuclear Security Division develop a strategic plan to manage emerging threats and opportunities.

At the multilateral level, Russia and the United States can keep strengthening the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 1540, which obliges all states to refrain from supporting non-state actors seeking to develop, acquire, manufacture, possess, transport, transfer or use nuclear, chemical or biological weapons and their delivery systems.

The Resolution further requires that all governments establish export controls on WMD materials and criminalize WMD-related proliferation activities. Consistent enforcement by governments of these obligations remains elusive since neither the resolution nor the UN Committee that oversees implementation offers clear standards for comprehensive enactment or adequate financial and technical support for its execution.

Both countries are leading users and exporters of civilian nuclear energy technologies, so they have a shared commercial interest in making nuclear energy production more secure and safe. For example, they can work together to apply supply- and demand-focused measures to civil nuclear exports to curb the spread of dangerous nuclear technologies and materials as well as better support international safety and security norms.

Furthermore, the Russian and U.S. nuclear enterprises can offer human capital training, regulatory assistance, and other support to states contemplating launching new nuclear energy programs to help them avoid accidents and protect their nuclear material and facilities.

Though bilateral and multinational partnerships, Moscow and Washington can develop safer and more secure commercial nuclear technologies. Such work can be done on a bilateral basis, such as through their underutilized bilateral civil nuclear security cooperation agreement, or via regional or multilateral approaches such as the World Association of Nuclear Operators.

Russia and the United States can also collaborate more closely in support of the new IAEA nuclear fuel bank in Kazakhstan. Such multinational nuclear fuel repositories could provide developing countries with reactor fuel in a safer, cheaper, and more secure way than if they tried to develop their own fuel-producing technologies, which can be misused to make nuclear weapons.

When bilateral relations improve, so will the possibility of renewed U.S.-Russian laboratory cooperation on nuclear security and nonproliferation issues.

Fortunately, Russian officials say they are willing to consider the “Action Plans,” adopted without Russia’s presence, at the last Nuclear Security Summit. The Plans offer proposed agendas for the UN, the IAEA, INTERPOL, the GICNT, and the Global Partnership. Ulyanov suggested, “We are ready to support everything reasonable that was adopted at the Washington Summit.”

The Trump administration should keep an open mind about the international convention to suppress acts of chemical and biological terrorism that Moscow has placed under consideration before the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva. Even if Washington decides that the proposed convention would add little to existing agreements, U.S. support for the proposal, which is also backed by China and other countries, might catalyze new WMD cooperation. For its part, Russia needs to stop claiming that the United States is supporting chemical terrorism in the Middle East or building biological weapons labs in the former Soviet republics.

Finally, while expanding cooperation on these nonproliferation issues, Russia and the United States should sustain public health collaboration against major natural diseases and keep studying the potential impact of emerging disruptive strategic technologies, such as cyber and outer space warfare. By doing so, Russia and the U.S. can make the world a safer place in 2017.

Dr. Weitz would like to thank the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation for supporting his non-proliferation research.

This article was published at the Hudson Institute

Human Security Through Formal Trials: Some Evidence From Southeast Asia – Analysis

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When the United Nations declared the 1990s to be “Decade of International Law”, optimism spread about the future of world peace. Another chapter of international law also began to open. Formal trials were what it would take to help promote human security. But evidence from Southeast Asia remains inconclusive.

By Sorpong Peou*

After a series of mass atrocities committed in the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda early in the 1990s, the United Nations led the way with innovative ideas about human security and the responsibility to protect people from the most serious crimes: namely, war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity.

Several international criminal tribunals have been established to prosecute those who committed the most serious crimes. In 2002, the International Criminal Court (ICC) was finally established. A number of alleged criminal leaders have been brought to justice. For proponents of international criminal justice, this development marked a new positive step in the right direction. Their optimism rests on the assumption that international criminal tribunals and courts would help terminate and deter armed conflicts and mass atrocity crimes that threaten the security of individual human beings.

Three UN-backed Propositions

At least three theoretical propositions have been formulated. First, the pursuit of retributive justice through formal trials helps promote human security, especially when alleged criminals are prosecuted and can no longer wage war causing human suffering. For instance, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia was meant to end the brutal war launched by the nationalist Serb government.

Second, the pursuit of retributive justice helps build lasting peace: reconciliation between hostile groups can be promoted, democracy can be advanced, and human rights can be protected. The third proposition is that formal trials can help post-war countries build and strengthen rule-of-law institutions.

But critics and skeptics cast doubt on the promise of human security through formal trials largely based on the logic of appropriateness. They do not argue that armed conflict and the most serious crimes should be ignored or that the perpetrators should be let go unpunished or should bear no consequences for their actions. Their arguments rest on the logic of consequences: the pursuit of retributive justice in post-war countries is ineffective, at best, and counter-productive, at worst.

In fact, they make the case that judicial punishment or its threat may not be the most effective way to end armed conflict. Or deter mass atrocities in countries where institutions are extremely weak and when alleged criminals are still in positions of power or more powerful than liberal reformers. When threatened with judicial punishment, alleged criminals may refuse to disarm or give up power and may seek to achieve victory by force.

Some Evidence from Southeast Asia & Elsewhere

Who has won the debate? Although it is still too early to declare who the winner is, empirical evidence now casts more doubt on the three optimistic theoretical propositions.

When we look at what the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC) and the Special Panels for Serious Crimes in East Timor (SPSC) have done, it is difficult to argue that the three theoretical propositions receive strong empirical support. These two countries are different in terms of population size, culture, religion, language and so on, but they are similar in one respect: their hybrid tribunals were set up to prosecute those who were alleged to have committed the most serious crimes.

However, the outcomes of the trials in Cambodia and Timor-Leste were different. In Cambodia, a number of top Khmer Rouge leaders were arrested. Three have died: Ta Mok (Khmer Rouge military chief known as the “Butcher”); Ieng Sary (Khmer Rouge minister of foreign affairs), and his wife Ieng Thirith (Khmer Rouge minister of social affairs). Three surviving leaders received a life sentence. They are Nuon Chea (Khmer Rouge regime’s No.2 man); Khieu Samphan (Khmer Rouge head of state), and Duch the chief executioner of the notorious Khmer Rouge prison called Tuol Sleng.

In contrast, the SPSC succeeded in convicting only a small number of low-level defendants. None of the Indonesian generals (most notably General Wiranto), accused of committing crimes against humanity, has been brought to justice. Thus, the ECCC has been comparatively far more successful than the SPSC.

Democracy in Cambodia vs Timor Leste

Based on the above theoretical propositions, one would expect democracy in Cambodia to thrive better than democracy in either East Timor/Timor-Leste or Indonesia. The reality is that Cambodia has become less democratic than the other two countries. Freedom House has rated Cambodia as “unfree” and both Indonesia and Timor-Leste as “partly free” (with better scores than Cambodia’s on political rights and civil liberties).

According to The Economic Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index 2015, Cambodia ranks 113th out of 167 countries, whereas Indonesia and Timor-Leste rank 49th and 44th, respectively. Timor-Leste and Indonesia have emerged as the most democratic countries in Southeast Asia.

On the rule of law, Cambodia appears to have done worse than Indonesia and Timor-Leste. The World Justice Project’s rule of law index (2016), for instance, puts Cambodia in 112th place among 113 countries. Among 15 countries in the East Asian and Pacific region, Cambodia has the worst score. Indonesia is in 61th place, better than Thailand (in 64th place) and the Philippines (in 74th place).

Word of Caution

On a general note, the ICC is going through a trying time. The international criminal justice system remains frail. African Union members have grown uneasy about the Court. African leaders have increasingly shown contempt for the Court, accusing the global judicial body of mainly targeting their continent and regarding its work as just another form of Western imperialism. Politicians in Kenya, Burundi and South Africa have sought to withdraw from the Court. Russia is also moving in the same direction.

Little evidence shows that the international pursuit of retributive justice through formal trials in war-torn or post-war states has made a positive impact. This does not mean that we should abandon the global attempt to advance human security through formal trials. But democratic and rule-of-law institution building may not always require the relentless pursuit of retributive justice.

*Sorpong Peou was Visiting Senior Fellow with the Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief (HADR) Programme, Centre for Non-Traditional Security Studies (NTS Centre) at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and a Professor of International Security, Department of Politics and Public Administration, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada, and was its former head. Prior to that, he was head of the Department of Political Science, University of Winnipeg, Canada, and Professor of International Security at Sophia University, Tokyo, and a Fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore.


Robert Reich: The First 100 Days Resistance Agenda – OpEd

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Trump’s First 100 Day agenda includes repealing environmental regulations, Obamacare, and the Dodd-Frank Act, giving the rich and big corporations a huge tax cut, and putting in place a cabinet that doesn’t believe in the Voting Rights Act or public schools or Medicare or the Fair Housing Act.

Our 100 days of resistance begins a sustained and powerful opposition. Here’s what you can do (it will take about an hour of your time each day):

1. Get your senators and representatives to pledge to oppose Trump’s agenda. Reject his nominees, prolong the process of approving them, draw out hearings on legislation. Call your senator and your representative and don’t stop calling.

2. March and demonstrate. The Women’s March on Washington will be the day after the Inauguration. There should be “sister” marches around the country. And then monthly marches against hate. Keep the momentum alive and keep the message going.

3. Make your city and state sanctuaries that won’t cooperate with federal immigration authorities in deporting undocumented immigrants, especially people who have been here since they were very young.

4. Boycott all Trump products, real estate, hotels, resorts, everything. And then boycott all stores (like Nordstrom) that carry merchandise from Trump family brands.

5. Write letters to the editor of your newspaper and op-eds, with a steady flow of arguments about the fallacies and dangers of Trump’s First 100 Day policies and initiatives.

6. Contribute to social media with up-to-date daily bulletins on what Trump is up to, and actions in your region in opposition.

7. Contribute to the most effective opposition groups. The American Civil Liberties Union, Common Cause, the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Economic Policy Institute, Inequality Media, MoveOn, and others.

8. Make the resistance visible with bumper stickers, lapel pins, wrist bands.

9. Push progressive causes at your state and local level – environmental reform, progressive taxes, a higher minimum wage, ending gerrymandering, stopping mass incarceration. Make your state a model of what the federal government should do.

10. Start a move in your state to abolish the electoral college by committing your state’s electors to vote for the presidential candidate who wins the popular vote.

11. Reach out to independents and even Trump supporters who agree with this agenda, and get them involved.

12. Your idea goes here. Meet with family and friends this weekend, and decide what you’ll contribute.

The First 100 Days Resistance Agenda. An hour a day. Send a powerful message. We aren’t going away.

Queen Elizabeth Was Almost Accidentally Shot By Guard

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A startled guardsmen at Buckingham Palace reportedly almost shot Queen Elizabeth after she went for an unexpected 3am walk around the gardens.

According to the Times, the soldier was on patrol on the palace perimeter during the early hours of the morning when he spotted a figure in the darkness.

He reportedly challenged the potential intruder by shouting: “Who’s that?”

On realizing it was Queen Elizabeth, who had ventured out after a bout of insomnia, he said: “Bloody hell, Your Majesty, I nearly shot you.”

Expecting a serious dressing down by the monarch, he was surprised when the 90-year-old monarch responded: “That’s quite all right. Next time I’ll ring through beforehand so you don’t have to shoot me.”

The near-miss was reported as it emerged that the venerable military ceremony of handing over the guard may be rescheduled due to security concerns.

The changing of the guard parade, in which one group of soldiers takes over from another, will now take place on fixed days during autumn and winter.

Normally, the handover takes place on alternate days between August and March, but will now happen on Mondays, Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays, during which time roads in the area will be closed off by police.

The move has been informed by fears that a Berlin-style lorry attack such as that which killed 12 people in December could be launched against the crowd which gather to watch the famous spectacle.

The red-coated Guards regiments are also meant to be a functioning infantry unit, but recently, fears have been raised that some of the five units – Grenadier, Coldstream, Irish, Welsh, and Scots – are so undermanned that they cannot fight effectively.

According to Ministry of Defence figures seen by the Express in November, the Scots Guards can only muster 260 Guardsmen – the equivalent to privates – for operations.

The Irish and Welsh Guards, meanwhile, can only muster 230, despite the operational requirement for an infantry battalion of between 330 and 410.

US Intelligence Chief Clapper Claims Russia ‘Meddled’ In Elections

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By Mike Eckel and Carl Schreck

(RFE/RL) — The United States’ top intelligence official has said a suspected Russian cyberhacking campaign constituted unprecedented meddling in the American electoral process.

Director of National Intelligence James Clapper made the assertion on January 5 at an extraordinary hearing of a leading Senate committee focusing on the question of alleged Russian interference in the presidential election campaign.

“I don’t think we’ve ever encountered a more aggressive, a more direct effort to interfere in our elections processes than in this case,” Clapper told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The hearing is the first of several congressional inquiries looking into the scope, intent, and purpose of what Washington says was a Russia-government-orchestrated intrusion into the computer servers and e-mail accounts of U.S. political organizations.

The conclusions by U.S. intelligence agencies in October that hackers — backed by top Russian officials — compromised U.S. computer servers roiled the November 8 presidential vote. It also cast a shadow over Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s victory over Democratic rival Hillary Clinton.

Adding to the tensions is the fact that Trump has repeatedly dismissed the intelligence assessments, which also reportedly concluded that Russia intended to help ensure victory for the president-elect, who has pledged to seek better ties with Moscow.

The Kremlin has repeatedly rejected allegations that Russia was behind the intrusions.

A day before the Senate hearing, Trump appeared to endorse a claim by Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks, that Russia was not the source of the leaked e-mails that were published by the website. That endorsement drew criticism from top Democratic and Republican lawmakers.

And just before the hearing began, Trump published a series of posts on Twitter, denying he was agreeing with Assange but also suggesting that Assange’s claim might be considered credible.

“I simply state what he states, it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth,” Trump wrote. “The media lies to make it look like I am against ‘Intelligence’ when in fact I am a big fan!”

In a joint statement released before the hearing, Clapper and two other witnesses — National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers and Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Marcel Lettre — singled out Russia and its cyberefforts.

“We assess that only Russia’s senior-most officials could have authorized the recent election-focused data thefts and disclosures,” they said.

“Russia is a full-scope cyberactor that poses a major threat to U.S. government, military, diplomatic, commercial and critical infrastructure,” they said.

The committee’s Republican chairman, John McCain, a well-known hawk on Russian matters, has publicly endorsed the intelligence findings. He also suggested such hacking might be considered an act of war.

There is “no escaping the fact that this committee meets today for the first time in this new Congress in the aftermath of an unprecedented attack on our democracy,” McCain said in opening remarks at the hearing.

Clapper, whose office coordinates the work of 17 different agencies, demurred when asked by McCain whether he agreed.

“Whether or not that constitute an act of war…is a heavy policy call that the intelligence community is not capable of making,” he said. “It would certainly, in my view, carry great gravity.”

Clapper told the committee that alleged hacking was only one aspect of Russian interference in the U.S. electoral process.

“It was a multifaceted campaign, the hacking was only one part of it, and it also entailed classical propaganda, disinformation, fake news,” he said.

On December 9, The Washington Post reported that the CIA had determined the intent of the Russia hackers was to help Trump win the presidency, not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system.

The New York Times later reported that intelligence officials had concluded Russian hackers accessed Republican Party computers but didn’t release potentially damaging e-mails or other materials.

In contrast to Trump’s announcements, the findings of the U.S. intelligence community have been publicly endorsed by President Barack Obama. On December 29, the White House announced new sanctions in response to the hacking, targeting Russia’s leading intelligence agencies, the GRU and the FSB.

It also expelled 35 Russian diplomats in response to what Washington calls a campaign of harassment of its diplomats in Russia.

Obama had also ordered a full investigation of the alleged Russian hacking and promised to make it available prior to leaving office on January 20.

Clapper told the committee that he wouldn’t discuss details of the report, a classified version of which was delivered to Obama on January 5. But he said an unclassified version will be released publicly next week.

Two other Senate committees are also taking up investigations of the matter.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was scheduled to hear classified testimony on January 5 from Victoria Nuland, an assistant secretary of state who has been one of the Obama administration’s leading officials in dealing with the Russian government.

Afghanistan: Mosques Turn Up The Volume

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By Qayum Babak*

Haji Qiamuddin currently lives in the Baba Yadgar neighbourhood of Mazar-e Sharif city, right next to a local mosque.

His proximity to the religious institution had made his life a misery, he told IWPR. Five daily calls to prayer broadcast at high volume – as well as sermons, Koran recitals and other announcements – were proving to be a constant source of noise pollution.

No one in his family could hear themselves think, Qiamuddin explained.

“I have a child, and whenever something is broadcast through the loudspeakers he always starts, looks fearfully around and begins yelling,” he said. ‘It’s making him mentally ill.”

Qiamuddin said that it was particularly awful to hear scholars reciting the Quran through the loudspeakers during intimate moments such as while he was relieving himself in the bathroom or having sexual relations with his wife.

“Isn’t it a sin? These scholars make us and themselves both sinful,” Qiamuddin continued.

His pleas to mosque officials had gone unanswered, he continued. Finally, in desperation, he had put his house up for sale and was planning to move as soon as possible.

Residents of the Balkh provincial capital complain that frequent broadcasts from many dozens of mosques now amount to an unacceptable level of noise pollution. Officials say that they try to control the volume of broadcasts from registered mosques, but that other unlicensed centres of worship operated outside their control.

Hanan Hamid, in charge of mosques at the Balkh department of Hajj and religious affairs, acknowledged that he had received numerous complaints, with some Mazar residents even forced to move home.

Loud calls to prayer calls and in fact any religious practice that caused discomfort to others was not allowed, he said.

Almost 50 mosques were registered with his department, and his office was in weekly contact with them, he continued, noting that they were frequently warned to avoid annoying people with overly loud broadcasts from their minarets.

“The mosques that are registered with us accept our orders but the others do as they wish,” he said, adding that Koran recitations and other broadcasts were a fairly recent innovation.

Raziqdad Qulzari, acting director of Balkh’s Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission (AIHRC), confirmed that they had received dozens of complaints about environmental concerns, including noise.

“Sound pollution is any kind of loud noise which causes people discomfort including car horns, ambulance sirens, loud music in wedding halls and record shops as well as loud calls to prayer and other things,” he said.

Balkh mayor Jan Mohammad also agreed that noise pollution was a concern in the city.

“When I travel through Mazar-e Sharif, I am forced to put my fingers in my ears because of the sound pollution,” he said, vowing to clamp down on the problem.

Locals say they want something done about the issue.

“In all the developed countries of the world, followers of religion cannot disturb other people to hold their religious ceremonies,” said Mazar resident Zakir Zarifi.

He added, “I lived in America for many years. The mosques in America don’t broadcast the call to prayer at a high volume and they don’t cause any disturbance. Even the churches and centres of worship of other religions are not allowed to disturb people.

“Worshipping is the right of every Muslim, but it should be according to the Sharia and civil rights and should not annoy people,” he concluded.

Mohsin, a driver in Mazar-e-Sharif, said that the sound issuing from local minarets was “just like the sound of a rocket,” adding that he would not be surprised of pregnant women simply miscarried as a result of the blasting calls to prayer.

Some people have taken the law into their own hands, according to Ahmad Fareed who owns a shop near a mosque in the Chaghdak area.

“During the azan [call to prayer], many mullahs speak nonsense and rubbish and the volume of their loudspeakers is so high that I cannot hear my customer’s voice,” he told IWPR.

This had infuriated other locals, he continued.

“One day three youths came and beat up the man who calls people to prayer. They said, ‘We told you many times not to turn up the volume of the loudspeakers, but you didn’t listen to us… because of you we can’t sleep either day or night.’”

But local clerics do not appear keen to address the problem. One Sunni imam, Mawllawi Niamatullah, insisted that it was followers of Shia Islam who were particularly guilty of noise pollution.

“My mosque’s loudspeakers aren’t as loud as those of Mullah Sultan’s mosque, which is Shia,” he said, adding, “People who complain about our mosque’s loudspeakers should one day stand near to a Shia mosque and then they will really hate start hating loudspeakers and the call to prayer.”

This report was produced under IWPR’s Promoting Human Rights and Good Governance in Afghanistan initiative, funded by the European Union Delegation to Afghanistan. This article was published by IWPR’s ARR 562

India, Afghanistan And Heart Of Asia: Reading Between Lines – Analysis

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By Sarral Sharma*

On 4 December 2016, the sixth ministerial conference of the Heart of Asia – Istanbul Process (HoA-IP) on Afghanistan concluded in Amritsar, India. The Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi voiced their concern over common issues such as terrorism and trade connectivity in the region in a bid to corner Pakistan. In their respective speeches, they made direct and indirect references to Pakistan’s reluctance to effectively counter terrorism in the region.

For instance, Modi appealed to the participating countries to take “resolute action” against those “who support, shelter, train and finance” terrorism in Afghanistan. Although, his less aggressive posturing and no direct mention of Pakistan may have signalled a slight shift in India’s offensive policy against its western neighbour. Domestically, it was perceived as a missed opportunity to publicly denounce Pakistan at a multilateral forum.

In comparison, Ghani was far more blunt and sarcastic in denouncing Pakistan. Ghani has seemingly lost faith in Pakistan’s efforts to normalise the situation in Afghanistan. The failed peace negotiations with the Taliban, the killing of Mullah Mansour in Balochistan, and regular terror attacks are a constant reminder of Pakistan’s broken promises that have lead to a deterioration of bilateral relations. Mocking Pakistan’s financial assistance of $500 million to Afghanistan, Ghani derisively advised Pakistani Prime Minister’s Adviser on Foreign Affairs Sartaz Aziz to spend it on stopping “cross-border terrorism” instead.

In the light of Ghani’s failed attempts to normalise ties with Pakistan, Afghanistan has continued to tilt towards India. Modi has also acceded to Kabul’s request to provide both financial and military assistance. India recently delivered the fourth Mi-25 helicopter to Afghanistan and further pledged $1 billion aid for future development assistance in September. On the sidelines of the conference, Modi and Ghani agreed to establish a “cargo air corridor”, bypassing Pakistan, which could potentially enhance bilateral trade between the two countries. New Delhi is keen to actively pursue the shortest land route access to Afghanistan. However, Pakistan has consistently refused to allow Indian goods to pass through its territory to Afghanistan. Hosting the conference in Amritsar (close to Attari-Wagah crossing) could be a signal to Pakistan regarding the transit of Indian goods to Afghanistan.

Ghani and Modi’s overlapping of objectives were based on Afghanistan and India’s own assessment of their national interests vis-a-vis Pakistan. Hence, the overall objective was not really to ‘isolate’ Pakistan, as was appropriated by the media. Presumably, it would have been a difficult objective to achieve as both leaders understand Pakistan’s potential role in Afghanistan’s future stability. Aziz’s presence also indicates Islamabad’s willingness to continue engagement on Afghanistan. However, it should not be seen as Pakistan’s attempt to genuinely reach a resolution on the issue. Rather, Pakistan’s absence from the conference may have contributed to its isolation in the region.

Aziz’s attendance at the conference was a reciprocal gesture to Indian Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj’s visit to Islamabad in 2015.More importantly, he attended the conference despite significant domestic resistance. In the light of recent developments, he may have sought to convey the foreign office’s willingness to defreeze tensions with India at the time of Pakistan’s military transition. Expectedly, there were no developments as far as the bilateral dialogue process was concerned. Contrastingly, Swaraj met Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif during her visit to Islamabad, which paved the way for Modi’s Lahore visit on Christmas last year. India, at present, may not be willing to resume talks unless Pakistan tightens the noose around the outfits indulging in cross-border terror activities from its soil.

This year, the names of the Pakistan-based India-centric terror groups Lashkar-e-Taiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad were mentioned in the unanimously adopted HoA ‘Declaration’. Pakistan justified the ‘unanimous’ declaration by citing that it also includes anti-Pakistani outfits such as Tehrik-e-Taliban and Jamaat-ul-Ahrar. It is unlikely that this move will stop the terror activities of these groups in the future. Nonetheless, it was a move in the right direction. Also, it brought some respite for India, which could not convince China and Russia to include these outfits in the ‘Goa Declaration’ at the 2016 BRICS Summit.

The attempts to corner Pakistan in the region can be seen as a joint tactical move by Afghanistan and India. This move may be workable in the short-term. However, it might, prove insignificant in the long-term given that Pakistan is deepening its ties with other players in the region, such as China and Russia. Ghani and Modi managed to send across a strong message on the issues of terrorism and regional trade connectivity in South Asia. Some positive takeaways for India include the growing understanding between Kabul and New Delhi over Islamabad’s role in the region and the inclusion of Pakistan-based terror outfits in the declaration. Still, the overall success of the initiative will primarily depend on how Afghanistan, India and Pakistan engage with each other in the future.

* Sarral Sharma
Researcher, IReS, IPCS
Email: sarral.sharma@ipcs.org

EIA Projects US To Be Net Energy Exporter In Most Cases – Analysis

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EIA’s Annual Energy Outlook 2017 (AEO2017), released Thursday presents updated projections for US energy markets. This AEO is the first to have projections through 2050 in the AEO tables.

The United States becomes a net energy exporter in most AEO2017 cases as petroleum liquid imports fall and natural gas exports rise. Exports are highest, and grow throughout the projection period, in the High Oil and Gas Resource and Technology case, because favorable geology and technological developments result in the production of oil and natural gas at lower costs.

The High Oil Price case provides favorable economic conditions for crude oil and natural gas producers while restraining domestic consumption, enabling the most rapid transition to net exporter status. In all cases but the High Oil and Gas Resource Technology case, which assumes substantial improvements in production technology and more favorable resource availability, U.S. energy production declines in the 2030s, which slows or reverses projected growth in net energy exports.

The eight cases considered in AEO2017 incorporate different assumptions that reflect market, technology, resource, and policy uncertainties that affect energy markets. Other key findings include

Energy consumption is consistent across all AEO cases, bounded by the High and Low Economic Growth cases.

In the Reference case, total energy consumption increases 5% between 2016 and 2040. Because a significant portion of energy consumption is related to economic activity, energy consumption is projected to increase by approximately 11% from 2016 to 2040 in the High Economic Growth case and remain nearly flat in the Low Economic Growth Case. In all AEO cases, the electric power sector remains the largest consumer of primary energy.

Energy production ranges from nearly flat in the Low Oil and Gas Resource and Technology case to growth of nearly 50% over 2016–40 in the High Oil and Gas Resource and Technology Case.

Unlike energy consumption, which varies less across AEO cases, projections of energy production vary widely. Production growth is dependent on technology, resource, and market conditions. Total energy production increases by more than 20% in the Reference case from 2016 through 2040, led by increases in crude oil and natural gas production.

Energy related carbon dioxide emissions decline in most AEO cases, with the highest emissions projected in the No Clean Power Plan case.

All AEO2017 cases except the No Clean Power Plan case assume the Clean Power Plan is implemented.

To better focus EIA’s resources on expanding its understanding of rapidly evolving energy markets and to better represent new information in EIA’s models and publications, EIA has adopted a two-year release cycle for the AEO. Like AEO2015, AEO2017 is a shorter edition of the AEO. A full edition of the AEO, including Issues in Focus articles, in-depth updates on changes in Legislation and Regulations, and a larger set of side cases with browser tables and spreadsheets for all cases is produced every second year.

In years between the full editions, a shorter edition provides a smaller number of cases summarized in annotated presentation slides with the standard set of AEO browser tables and spreadsheets containing the detailed modeling results. EIA will continue to update and refine the market dynamics and technologies in future AEOs, especially for the projections between 2040 and 2050.

Obama’s Propaganda Gift To Trump – OpEd

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Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign the corporate media, Democratic Party operatives and the pundit class all proclaimed that Donald Trump is a fascist. The fascistic nature of our political, law enforcement and economic systems were conveniently omitted from these warnings, but assertions of Trump’s untrustworthiness were repeatedly endlessly. If that characterization has any validity at all then Barack Obama’s establishment of a de facto Propaganda Department is a terrible blow to democracy.

On December 23, 2016 Obama signed the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a federal law that is passed every year. NDAA authorizes defense appropriations but it is also used as a Trojan horse to hide attacks on civil liberties. In 2011 the NDAA authorized indefinite detention of anyone deemed a terrorism suspect. Tucked inside this year’s NDAA was the passage of the Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act which establishes the little known or discussed Global Engagement Center.

The title seems benign enough until one reads its mission. “The purpose of the Center shall be to lead, synchronize, and coordinate efforts of the Federal Government to recognize, understand, expose, and counter foreign state and non-state propaganda and disinformation efforts aimed at undermining United States national security interests.”

In plain English, this act establishes an official propaganda arm of the United States government. Of course there has always been governmental coordination used to spread lies about American foreign policy. The government doesn’t even have to work very hard because the corporate media usually march in lock step and repeat their every claim uncritically. But these are dangerous times for the American hegemon. Its ability to continue exercising imperial control has been damaged by foreign governments successfully resisting its efforts and by the election of Donald Trump.

Trump has questioned the need for NATO, pledged to end regime change, and to improve relations with Russia. These are reasonable policy decisions or rather they would be if the world wide neo-liberal regime didn’t feel so threatened. What should be simple disagreements are treated as omens of the end of the world. Perhaps they do signal the end for some members of the ruling classes who believe that their survival depends on America controlling or crushing the rest of the world.

The Global Engagement Center makes real the Democratic Party plan to silence dissent and create a network of propaganda partners. The act provides for grant making appropriations to “civil society groups, media content providers, nongovernmental organizations, federally funded research and development centers, private companies or academic institutions…”

The recent Washington Post/Jeff Bezos/Democratic Party effort to name websites such as Black Agenda Report as agents of Moscow will now be official government policy. The anonymous minders of the Is it Propaganda or Not site will no longer have to be invisible. They can come out of the closet and apply for grant money just like a university or an NGO with all the right connections. They can then work hand in hand with the bipartisan war party as it demonizes and silences anyone who refuses to make common cause with their schemes.

The head of this Global Engagement Center will be appointed by the president and that means Donald Trump. On the one hand we are told that Trump’s presence in the White House is a fundamental danger to democracy. But in true presidential fashion Obama has handed off to Trump what he thinks is most important to continue.

That is a consistent pattern from one administration to the next. Despite any differences they may highlight before an election, they all act like made men in the gangster clique after the votes are cast. Presidents pardon one another and their associates, and in so doing let criminals go free. Trump won’t “lock up” Hillary Clinton because he will want his successor to let him off the hook for any crimes he should commit during his term in office. The man whom Obama labeled unfit for the presidency will now be the propaganda commander-in-chief.

While Democrats wait for inauguration day in nervous anticipation of Trump policy changes the rulers continue to ignore them. Obama hasn’t spoken to the concerns of the rank and file since Election Day. He has, however, repeated warnings about “fake news” and Russian influence. His legacy is dead, a sham. His signature achievement, the Affordable Care Act, will be repealed. All of his foreign policy machinations have come to nothing. His interference in Ukraine and regime change attempt in Syria succeeded in bringing Russia and China closer together to counter American influence. Russia, Syria, Turkey and Iran meet to discuss the future and fortunately do so without an American presence. Vladimir Putin no longer bothers with trying to engage the people he used to call “our American partners.” When Obama expelled Russian diplomats in a fit of impotent pique, Putin declined to do the same. Why bother when he knows he has won.

Progressives are being exhorted to protest Trump on January 20th and fight back against Republican policies. That is a good and worthy goal but it will also mean fighting against Democratic Party treachery. There should be no reason for dismay or consternation when Trump appoints the Global Engagement Center chief propagandist. After all, Barack Obama, the darling of many progressives, will have laid the groundwork for his “fascist” successor.


Sectarianism And War In Iraq And Syria – Analysis

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By Brandon Friedman and Uzi Rabi*

(FPRI) — In mid-December 2016, outgoing U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon referred to Aleppo as a “synonym for hell“ and said that Adama Dieng, the U.N.’s Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide, warned of the risk of genocide there. Others will judge whether what has happened in Aleppo constitutes genocide or not; however, the Assad regime and its backers have tried to “impose maximal damage on a civilian social category in order to force a change of behavior,” in the belief that committing atrocities against the rebellious civilian population will pressure the armed opposition to relent. This coercive strategy is known as “mass categorical violence” and its logic is similar to genocide; the principal difference is that in genocide the perpetrators believe that the target population is both uncontainable and threatening, and therefore must be destroyed.[1] The period following the U.S. military withdrawal from Iraq in 2010-2011[2] and the Syrian rebellion against the Assad regime that began in 2011[3] transformed the politics of these two countries into a zero-sum Sunni-Shiʿi war. The violence in Aleppo, and elsewhere in Iraq and Syria, has been legitimized by sectarian narratives that dehumanized the sectarian “other,” marginalized alternative identities, and transformed the nature of sectarian relations into a zero-sum equation.

The sectarianism in today’s Iraq and Syria has been the product of collective action fueled, in part, by “the question of who is a true Muslim and, equally important, who should dominate the Muslim world.”[4] The exaggerated sense of Sunni Arab marginalization, which gave rise to the Islamic State, draws on Sunni political exclusion as well as how the Sunnis collectively perceive Islamic history and their place in it. In turn, when Qais al-Khazali, the leader of the Iraqi Shiʿi militia Asaʾib Ahl al-Haq, promised that the military operation to retake Mosul from the Islamic State in October 2016 would be revenge for Imam Hussein’s death at Karbala (at the hands of forces led by the Sunni Umayyad Caliph Yazid) in 680 C.E., he was invoking the idiom and power of Shiʿi collective memory as a call to action. Therefore, historicized grievances, “whether well-founded or questionable,” have provided the easiest way of mobilizing and ultimately weaponizing sectarian identities.[5]

Sectarian war in Iraq and Syria was not a return to repressed sub-national identities based on a “seething cauldron” view of the region as permanently divided along deeply encoded ethnosectarian divisions.[6] Instead, the political crises of 2010-2011 led the Islamic State, the government in Baghdad, and the Assad regime to sectarianize public life, stripping away non-sectarian alternative identities and forcing Iraqis and Syrians to choose a side in order to survive.[7] This process of politicizing sect in Iraq and Syria was similar to the politicization of ethnicity during the Balkan wars of the 1990s in the former Yugoslavia.[8] For example, a Croat described the process of “being pinned to the wall of nationhood:”

That is what the war is doing to us . . . I am nobody because I am not a person any more. I am one of 4.5 million Croats . . . I am not in a position to choose any longer. Nor, I think, is anyone else . . . something people cherished as part of their cultural identity . . . has become their political identity and turned into something like an ill-fitting shirt. You may feel the sleeves too short, the collar too tight. You might not like the color, and the cloth might itch. But there is no escape; there is nothing else to wear. One doesn’t have to succumb voluntarily to this ideology of the nation – one is sucked into it. So right now, in the new state of Croatia, no one is allowed not to be a Croat.[9]

Substitute Sunni or Shiʿi for “Croat,” and sect for “nation,” and this statement could easily apply to Iraq and Syria. There, rather than the ill-fitting shirt of nationalism, sectarianism serves more like a straightjacket.

The Obama administration politically disengaged from Iraq in 2010-2011, and Nuri al-Maliki reneged on a promise to integrate the Sunni sahawat (“awakening”) militias into the Iraqi Security Forces (ISF), which was just one example of a series of Maliki’s decisions that left the Sunnis in Iraq feeling marginalized.[10] In the first year of the Syrian rebellion in 2011, the Assad regime, for its part, relied on shabiha brutality in an unsuccessful attempt to cow the predominantly Sunni opposition into submission.[11]

As violence became an integral part of the Syrian rebellion and Bashar al-Assad appeared to be losing control in 2012, the regime received critical military support from Lebanese Hizballah and Iranian-supported Shiʿi foreign fighters from Iraq. Under the pretext of protecting the Sayyida Zaynab shrine in Damascus, Shiʿi militias, armed and directed by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Forces (IRGC), rushed into Syria from Iraq and Lebanon to buttress the Assad regime. Iranian advisers also embarked on restructuring the pro-Assad militias into the Syrian National Defense Force. During the same period that Hizballah and Iran were organizing Shiʿi foreign fighters to defend Assad’s regime, Mohammad al-Jolani was organizing Jabhat al-Nusra, which, until April 10, 2013, was the Islamic State’s operation in Syria.[12] This parallel flow of Sunni and Shiʿi jihadists into Syria from abroad transformed the Syrian rebellion from a national uprising into a regional war,[13] which was increasingly defined by the sectarian violence between Sunnis and Shiʿis and their respective allies.

Cyrus Malik and “Washington’s Sunni Myth”

In August 2016, a pseudonymous Cyrus Malik argued that Washington elites were being persuaded to imagine a Sunni identity in Iraq and Syria that does not exist—what Malik labeled as “Washington’s Sunni myth”—and further claimed that some American analysts have “accepted the [Sunni] sectarian victimization narrative.” Malik argued that there were two central claims to the sectarian victimization narrative: first, only a Sunni Arab force could defeat the Islamic State; and, second, the Islamic State could not be defeated as long as Assad was president in Syria. Malik maligned the argument that the Sunnis in Syria are deserving of U.S. support because they “feel like they lost everything since 2003 and remain oppressed.” According to Malik, Washington, including President Barack Obama, “is listening to the wrong Sunnis,” and in doing so “reinforcing and legitimizing a dangerous sectarian narrative.” Instead of searching for moderate Sunnis to support in Syria, Washington, in Malik’s estimation, should promote citizenship and a secular state in Syria.[14]

Malik’s articles were notable as much for their timing as for their content: they were written as the humanitarian crisis unfolded in Aleppo, which generated  a renewed debate in Washington about a U.S. intervention in Syria in support of the anti-Assad rebels,[15] potentially jeopardizing four years of strategic gains by Iran, Assad, and Russia. Iran, for example, was reportedly closing in on one such gain by creating a long-sought secure land corridor from Tehran to Latakia on the Mediterranean coast.  Ironically, the Sunni narrative, which Malik was attempting to debunk as a myth, argues that the Obama administration—through its inaction or lack of support for Iraq’s and Syria’s Sunnis—has given its tacit support to the Shiʿis in the region.[16] Despite Malik’s concerns, U.S. intervention in support of Syria’s Sunnis against Assad seemed unlikely in the final months of the Obama administration.

This argument was not new. It was a more subtle and nuanced presentation of Bashar al-Assad’s argument from January 2012 when the Syrian president labeled the opposition regime terrorists and claimed “chaos now is a partner in terrorism and in shedding Syrian blood. We cannot separate the first from the second.” Since 2011-2012, the Assad regime and its supporters have crafted a narrative to convince the world that the choice was binary: Assad and stability or terrorism and chaos. In Cyrus Malik’s words, “Most of the country [Syria] has fallen into chaos or into the hands of the jihadists who cooperated with U.S.-backed groups.”

Sectarianism has undergone a qualitative shift in Iraq and Syria since 2010-2011. While characterizing sectarianism in Iraq prior to 2011, Fanar Haddad argued that “no matter the level of mistrust, disdain, or even violence, at any given time, there has been no desire for the total elimination of the other.”[17] Yet, since 2011, as Peter Harling points out, the belligerents have borrowed “from every conceivable genre of human cruelty. Organs were eaten, heads chopped off, children gassed, and whole neighborhoods starved to death.” Aleppo is but the most recent example. Since 2011, Assad, elements of the Syrian opposition, and the Islamic State have used brutal sectarian war to eliminate space for the other in Iraq and Syria, creating an environment of zero-sum politics that forced citizens to choose a side or exit as refugees.[18] Second, and most germane for the U.S. foreign policy community, Malik was trying to forestall the possibility that Sunni grievances would find a sympathetic audience in the U.S. and lead to a more interventionist U.S. policy in the waning days of Obama’s second-term in office.[19]

Malik’s core assumption is that politics are a zero-sum exercise: you either accept or reject the notion that Sunnis have been victimized in Iraq and Syria. And if you reject it as a myth, as Malik encourages you to do, then you must support the alternative narrative that holds that secular citizenship is embodied and safeguarded by the Shiʿi-backed Assad regime in Syria. However, Malik’s argument in support of the Assad regime as the guardian of citizenship and secularism is also a myth. It ignores the twentieth-century history of Baʿthism in Iraq and Syria, which failed to create secular citizenship and led to regimes that ultimately relied on fear, and, to some extent, totalitarian control, more than any notion of consensual secular citizenship to preserve order.[20] Furthermore, Malik conveniently ignored how the Assad regime dehumanized the Sunni opposition as terrorists in the early days of the Syrian rebellion in order to legitimize its response to the popular uprising.[21]

The “myth” of Sunni disenfranchisement or marginalization has, according to Malik, “led to the region’s descent into hell.” He dismisses the notion that the Assad regime’s “harsh methods” were to blame, instead depicting sectarian hatred as inevitable when the state collapsed and extremist militias emerged. To be sure, Malik is correct to point out that Sunni disenfranchisement does not provide a complete explanation for Sunni radicalization. What’s more, Salafi-Jihadis have targeted not just Shiʿis and religious minorities in Iraq and Syria, but largely fellow Sunnis. Yet, Malik—by framing the descent into sectarian war and the triumph of zero-sum ethnosectarian solidarity as inevitable—would like the international community to ignore that the Assad regime and its backers, in addition to how the Sunni Salafi-Jihadi opposition used sectarian violence to burn the middle ground, have left most Iraqis and Syrians pinned to the wall of sectarianism.[22]

The Sunni-Shiʿi war is not the product of “ancient hatreds” unbound by the collapse of state institutions in Iraq and Syria. And sectarian violence cannot simply be blamed on foreign intervention either. Rather, sectarian conflict has emerged from the struggle of local actors—whether the Assad regime, the Baghdad government, the Islamic State, or Jabhat Fateh al-Sham—to impose an uncompromising, exclusivist political identity on their countries. This history remains to be told in full, but historical grievances deeply rooted in collective memory have been mobilized and then weaponized in service of these competing exclusivist goals, which has resulted in the kind of ruthless coercive violence that brought Aleppo to the brink of genocide at the end of 2016.

*About the authors:
Uzi Rabi
is the Director of the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle Eastern and African Studies, and a senior researcher at the Center for Iranian Studies, both at Tel Aviv University.

Brandon Friedman, a Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s Program on the Middle East, is a Research Fellow at the Moshe Dayan Center for Middle East and African Studies at Tel Aviv University.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

Notes:
[1]  For a detailed explanation of the difference between mass categorical violence and genocide, see: Scott Strauss, Making and Unmaking of Nations: War, Leadership, and Genocide in Modern Africa (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015), pp. 24-27.

[2] Fanar Haddad, “Sectarian Relations in Arab Iraq: Contextualising the Civil War of 2006-2007,” British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies 40:2 (2013), 115-138.

[3] Fouad Ajami, The Syrian Rebellion (Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, 2012).

[4] Ofra Bengio and Meir Litvak, Sunna and Shi‘a in History: Division and Ecumenism in the Muslim Middle East (Gordonsville, VA: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), pp. 1-16. The notion of collective action refers to Craig Calhoun, “The Problem of Identity in Collective Action,”in Joan Huber, ed., Macro-Micro Linkages in Sociology (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage, 1991), as cited in Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1996), fn. 16, p. 20.

[5] Jeremy Black, Clio’s Battles: Historiography in Practice (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2015), pp. 216-219.

[6] Rogers Brubaker, “Myths and misconceptions in the study of nationalism,” in The State of the Nation (Cambridge University Press, 1998), John A. Hall, ed., pp. 272-306.

[7] Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 20.

[8] For a thorough explanation of the politicization of ethnocultural identity, see: Azar Gat with Alexander Yakobson, Nations: The Long History and Deep History of Political Ethnicity and Nationalism (Cambridge University Press, 2013).

[9] Slavenka Drakulic, The Balkan Express Fragments from the Other Side of War (New York: W.W. Norton, 1993), pp. 50-52 as quoted in Rogers Brubaker, Nationalism Reframed: Nationhood and the national question in the New Europe (Cambridge University Press, 1996), fn. 17, p. 20.

[10]  On the U.S. disengagement from Iraq, post-2009, see: Christopher R. Hill, “How the Obama Administration Ignored Iraq,” Politico, October 2, 2014; Weiss and Hassan, pp. 87-98; and, Kenneth Pollack, “Fight or Flight: America’s Choice in the Middle East,” Foreign Affairs 95:2 (March/April 2016), 62-75. See also, Nicholas J. Kramer, “Waking Up to the Truth About the Sunni Awakening,” Warontherocks.com, November 23, 2016.

[11] “Syria’s Phase of Radicalisation,” International Crisis Group, Middle East Briefing No. 33, April 10, 2012; Katherine Marsh, Matthew Taylor, and Haroon Sidiqque, “Syria’s crackdown on protesters becomes dramatically more brutal,” The Guardian, April 25, 2011; Sara Ghasemilee, “Syria’s Shabiha: Killing in Bashar al-Assad’s name,” al-Arabiya, June 5, 2012.

[12] In April 2013, the organization broke away from al-Qaʿida, and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi changed the name of the organization from al-Qaʿida in Iraq to al-Dawla al-Islamiyya fi al-Iraq wa-l-Sham [Islamic State in Iraq and Sham (ISIS)]. See Cole Bunzel, “Introducing “The Islamic State of Iraq and Greater Syria,” Jihadica.com, April 10, 2013. The Islamic State’s break with al-Qaʿida also marked its break with Jabhat al-Nusra. Nusra, and its leader, al-Jolani, remained loyal to Ayman al-Zawahiri and affiliated with al-Qaʿida until August 2016, when it broke with al-Qaʿida and renamed itself Jabhat al-Fatah al-Sham. See: Charles Lister, “Profiling Jabhat al-Nusra” Analysis Paper No. 24, Brookings Institution July 2016; and, Hassan Hassan, “Syrian war enters a new phase as factions realign,” The National (Abu Dhabi), August 7, 2016.

[13] Weiss and Hassan, pp. 131-151, 181-182.

[14] Cyrus Malik, “Washington’s Sunni Myth and the Civil Wars in Iraq and Syria,” WarontheRocks.com, August 16, 2016; and Cyrus Malik, “Washington’s Sunni Myth and the Middle East Undone,” WarontheRocks.com, August 23, 2016. In response, see: Emile Hokayem, “Assad or We Burn The Country: Misreading Sectarianism and the Regime in Syria,” WarontheRocks.com, August 24, 2016; and, Amil Khan, “Myth-Making and Sectarian Secularists in the Middle East,” WarontheRocks.com, September 1, 2016.

[15] Thanassis Cambanis, “The Case for a More Robust U.S. Intervention in Syria,” The Century Foundation, June 19, 2016; Dennis B. Ross and Andrew J. Tabler, “The Case for (Finally) Bombing Assad,” The New York Times, August 3, 2016; Charles Lister, “A Plan for Winding Down the Syrian Civil War: Surge, Freeze, and Enforce,” Warontherocks.com, September 30, 2016; Marc Lynch, “What’s Really at Stake in the Syria Debate,” Warontherocks.com, October 10, 2016; Steven Cook, “The Perplexing Problems of Solving Syria,” Warontherocks.com, October 17, 2016; Thanassis Cambanis, “Are We All Interventionists,” Warontherocks.com, October 14, 2016.

[16] See, for example: Nawaf Obaid, “Saudi Arabia’s Master Plan Against ISIS, Assad, and Iran in Syria,” The National Interest, February 16, 2016; and Nawaf Obaid, “The Salman Doctrine: The Saudi Reply to Obama’s Weakness,” The National Interest, March 30, 2016.

[17] Fanar Haddad, “Sectarian Relations and Sunni Identity in Post-Civil War Iraq,” in Sectarian Politics in the Persian Gulf (London: Hurst & Co. Ltd, 2014), Lawrence G. Potter, ed., pp. 67-115, here 71; See, also: Fanar Haddad, “Sectarian Relations in Arab Iraq: Contextualising the Civil War of 2006-2007,” BRIJMES 40:2 (2013), 115-138; Fanar Haddad, “A Sectarian Awakening: Reinventing Sunni Identity in Iraq After 2003,” Current Trends in Islamist Ideology Vol. 17, The Hudson Institute,  pp. 70- 101.

[18] Shadi Hamid, “The End of Pluralism,” The Atlantic, July 23, 2014; David Ignatius, “‘Surrender and you can eat again’: Aleppo on the brink,” Washington Post, October 4, 2016.

[19] See footnotes 14 and 15, above.

[20] Aaron Faust, The Baʿthification of Iraq: Saddam Hussein’s Totalitarianism (University of Texas Press, 2015); Radwan Ziadeh, Power and Policy in Syria (London: IB Tauris, 2011); Sami Moubayed, “Letter from Damascus: Will Syria Descend into Civil War?” Current History 110:740 (December 2011), 339-344; Eyal Zisser, Commanding Syria (London: IB Tauris, 2007). For the failure of secularism in Iraq and Syria, see: Bruce Maddy-Weitzman and Asher Susser, “State Cohesion in the Middle East: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives,” in Inglorious Revlutions: State Cohesion in the Middle East after the Arab Spring (Tel Aviv: The Moshe Dayan Center, 2014), Brandon Friedman and Bruce Maddy-Weitzman, eds., pp. 13-36; see, also: Asher Susser, Secularism, Islamism, and Sectarianism: The Inevitable Linkage,” Bustan: The Middle East Book Review 7:2 (Winter 2016), 130-142.

[21]  For evidence that the Asad regime played a role in stirring-up sectarian strife at the outset of the Syrian rebellion, see: “Unchartered Waters: Thinking Through Syria’s Dynamics,” International Crisis Group, Middle East Briefing No. 31, November  24, 2011, p. 2; Roy Gutman, “Assad Henchmen: Here’s how we built ISIS,” The Daily Beast, December 1, 2016; see, also: footnote 23, above.

[22] For Asad’s logic of violence in Syria, see: Emile Hokayem, “Assad or We Burn The Country: Misreading Sectarianism and the Regime in Syria,” WarontheRocks.com, August 24, 2016 ; For the Islamic State, see: Hassan Hassan, “Isis has reached new depths of depravity. But there is a logic behind it,” The Guardian, February 8, 2015.

Robert Reich: Government By Tweedict – OpEd

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Trump’s tweets are a new form of governing by edict. They’re tweedicts.

Incoming White House press secretary Sean Spicer says “Whatever he tweets, he is going to drive the news.”

That’s the problem. In driving the news, Trump’s tweedicts gain the power of  implied threats – that he’ll, for example, sanction a particular company (Ford, General Motors, Carrier, or Boeing); unilaterally alter foreign policy (recognize Taiwan, encourage Israel to expand on the West Bank, not back NATO against Russian aggression); unleash his angry followers on a particular critic  (a local union leader in Michigan, a teenage girl in New Hampshire, a TV news host); cause customers or readers to boycott a media outlet (CNN, the Arizona Republican, Saturday Night Live, the cast of Hamilton); or impose high political costs on Republican members of Congress (for pursuing an investigation against Russia, gutting an ethics office).

The United States is supposed to be a government of laws, not of edicts. Yet Trump’s tweets are gaining power even though they aren’t legislation. They aren’t executive orders (which can be reviewed and overturned by courts). They aren’t even the statements of a president using his “bully pulpit” to make a general point, because they single out particular companies and people.

They are arbitrary and capricious, reflecting the daily whims of Donald Trump.

And he’s not even president yet.

The media argue that the thoughts of a president-elect are “inherently newsworthy.” Rubbish. They’re newsworthy only because they drive the news. And they drive the news only because they’re considered by the media to be newsworthy.

That tautology can turn into a vicious cycle leading to tyranny.

The media should pay less attention what Trump is tweeting and more attention to what Trump is actually doing.

Sri Lanka’s Constitutional Reform: Rajapaksa Backlash? – OpEd

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The incumbent Sri Lankan government comprising of the two major political parties, the Sri Lanka Freedom Party (SLFP) and the United National Party (UNP), and a number of small political groups represented in the national legislature initiated a constitutional reform process almost in the immediate aftermath of ascending to power in 2015. The move was influenced partly by the fact that the coalition won both the presidential and the general election with the tacit support of the Tamil National Alliance (TNA), which mainly represents the Tamil people.

Parliament has been converted into a constitutional assembly and subgroups have been appointed to study specific areas of constitutional reform. A number of subgroups have already submitted their reports. Moreover, a panel of experts appointed to study public opinion on constitutional reform has also handed over its findings. Despite the progress, the process is also expected to face some serious hurdles from within Sri Lankan polity.

Rajapaksa Defeat

Mahinda Rajapaksa, the former president of Sri Lanka, not only provided leadership to the military campaign, which eventually crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE), but also claimed that his government was solely responsible for the end of the war (in 2009). Even the role of the armed forces was understated. Ending the war, Rajapaksa believed, would enable him to rule to the country in the long term. This belief was also reinforced by the increasing popularity of Rajapaksa and his family. The constitutional limit of two terms in office for the president was removed in 2010 through the 18th Amendment to the constitution. This enabled Rajapaksa to contest the presidential election for the third time.

A confident Rajapaksa decided to conduct the presidential election in 2015, two years ahead of schedule. He lost. In August of the same year, his government also lost the general election to the incumbent ruling coalition. Since Rajapaksa believed that he was unfairly defeated in 2015 due to the influence of minority groups and interference of international forces, instead of going into retirement, he entered parliament as an ordinary member. He also opposed the SLFP’s decision to form a coalition government with the UNP. Periodically, he was also criticizing the government.

Meanwhile, the government investigated the allegation of corruption by Rajapaksa and members of his family. Basil Rajapaksa, one of the younger siblings and a former minister was arrested and detained. Two of his sons are being investigated for corruption and abuse of power. Many Rajapaksa loyalists make regular visits to the Financial Crimes Investigations Division (FCID) to make statements and answer questions.

New Party

The idea of forming a new political party under the leadership of Mahinda Rajapaksa has been discussed ever since he lost the presidential election in January 2015. In the early days, the idea was used as a tool to blackmail the government. The goal was to pressure President Maithripala Sirisena to nominate Rajapaksa as the prime ministerial candidate in the general election. Later the idea of a new political party was also used to halt the criminal investigation or what Rajapaksa loyalist called harassments against the Rajapaksa family. However, the idea was never materialized partly due to Rajakapksa’s unwavering commitment and loyalty towards his party, the SLFP. He took pride in the fact that he never betrayed the SLFP.

However, now, it has become clear that recapturing power from within the SLFP will be extremely difficult, if not impossible. Therefore, the only way out for the Rajapaksa and his loyalists to have any impact would be to form a new political party. Consequently, a new political party has been formed by renaming an old party registered with the Department of Elections.

The new group is called the Sri Lanka People’s Front (SLPF). One of the staunch supporters and former minister, G.L.Peiris has been appointed leader of the SLPF. Basil Rajapaksa has already officially joined the new party. It is believed that at an opportune time Rajapaksa will take over the new group.

Resistance

This is where the constitutional reform process could face some serious challenges. Rajapaksa and his loyalists represent the nationalist Sinhala faction of the Sri Lankan polity. Nationalists are opposed to any form of devolution of power. Devolving powers to the North-East Provinces has been one of the stated objectives of the current constitutional reform process. A concrete proposal for the new constitutional is expected to be released in early 2017. Therefore, Rajapaksa and the SLPF will most certainly become active with the release of the proposal and mobilize the people against any form of devolution of power. The new group will argue that the devolution of power would disintegrate the country. Rajapaksa has already declared that 2017 will be a decisive year for Sri Lanka and hinted that he intend to target the devolution proposal as he stated that the government’s devolution package will divide the country.1

It is imperative to note that any drastic changes to the present constitution would require the approval of the people in a national referendum. Moreover, currently, about 50 members of parliament, who are loyal to Rajapaksa, sit in the opposition benches of the national legislature. The group calls itself the Joint Opposition (JO) and serves as the de facto opposition party. The group obviously opposes any concessions to the Tamil minority. When the new constitution is presented to parliament for approval, some more members could join the JO, which will make getting the necessary two-thirds majority cumbersome. Hence, Rajapaksa’s opposition to the devolution of power and his ability to mobilize Sinhala people against constitutional reform would create a major impediment to conflict resolution and reconciliation in Sri Lanka.

Notes:
1. http://www.slguardian.org/2017/01/2017-will-be-decisive-for-sri-lanka/

Trump Applies Lessons Of Iraq Backwards – OpEd

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By Mitchell Blatt*

A survey by the Charles Koch Institute and the Center for the National Interest is being touted as showing Americans want “restraint” in their foreign policy. According to the write up, 52 percent believe that U.S. foreign policy has made America less safe over the past 15 years, and twice as many want the U.S. to pull troops out of Europe compared to those who want to increase troop levels. (60 percent chose to keep troop levels the same or had no opinion.) Daniel DePetris a fellow at Defense Priorities, an organization that advocates for a “more prudent, restrained foreign policy that assesses the world as it exists,” writes this means “Americans want restraint.”

His view is supported by a growing trend towards anti-interventionist sentiment amongst Americans over the years, illustrated in Donald Trump’s campaign promises to renegotiate trade deals and demand changes to America’s defense treaty obligations with his allies, and playing down the threat of Russia—even to the point of denying that Russia hacked into the DNC’s and Hillary Clinton’s servers (while saying on the trail that Russia should hack Hillary’s server).

There’s one narrative about Barack Obama’s presidency that he intervened in too many countries—causing Libya to become destabilized, fueling war in Syria, and inflaming relations with Russia.

On the other hand, there’s another opposite narrative about Obama that Obama wasn’t interventionist enough. By staying out of Syria, ignoring ISIS until it was too late, and failing to see the threat of Russia (remember he would have more “flexibility” in dealing with Russia after his reelection, he told Dmitry Medvedev), he projected “weakness” and emboldened America’s enemies.

Donald Trump buys into both narratives. Even as Trump has put Article 5 defense of NATO allies into question, he has also called for “bombing the shit” out of ISIS in Syria and invading to steal Iraq and Syria’s oil. Barack Obama smartly didn’t send large numbers of ground troops to Syria or Iraq to get stuck in another quagmire. Trump has said about sending troops, “We really have no choice. … I would listen to the generals, but I’m hearing numbers of 20,000 to 30,000.”

The lesson in Iraq should be that wars in unstable Middle Eastern countries are rarely quick and easy. Trump has apparently not learned that lesson. Instead, he appears to buy into into the argument that Obama was “weak” for either not overthrowing Assad or not taking on ISIS with a ground war.

A related lesson should be to not overreact to terrorist attacks. For all the attention to ISIS, there have been no attacks directed by ISIS in the United States and only five attacks inspired by ISIS between October 2015 and July 2016, resulting in 53 of the more than 16,000 murder that occur in the country every year. The amount of Americans who would be killed directly in battle and indirectly as a result of massive American war in Syria could easily exceed the number killed by terrorism each year by many factors.

On the other hand, Trump takes the critique of Iraq and applies a broad “anti-interventionist” messages to parts of the world that are comparatively safe—namely Europe and Northeast Asia. Because Russia isn’t invading Poland, we should pull back from NATO. But America’s commitment to NATO hasn’t cost the U.S. anywhere near as much as its previous attempts to bomb the shit out of the Middle East and destroy terrorism have. NATO expansion, I have argued, unnecessarily lead to Russia feeling antagonized, and NATO countries could contribute more, but that implies reforms, not scraping the project. Trump’s plan amounts to pulling down your umbrella in a rainstorm because you’re not getting wet.

The American public is fickle and poll questions are not made for capturing nuance. Politicians will use any kind of argument they can think of to hit the other party; hence Republican House Majority Leader Paul Ryan praising Obama’s Russia sanctions while slamming him for doing too little, too late—while ignoring that his party’s leader wants even less to be done. The solution, then, isn’t a false choice between “intervention” and “restraint” but a smarter foreign policy. Trump, as it stands, espouses the wrong answers for both sides of the equation.

About the author:
*Mitchell Blatt moved to China in 2012, and since then he has traveled and written about politics and culture throughout Asia. A writer and journalist, based in China, he is the lead author of Panda Guides Hong Kong guidebook and a contributor to outlets including The Federalist, China.org.cn, The Daily Caller, and Vagabond Journey. Fluent in Chinese, he has lived and traveled in Asia for three years, blogging about his travels at ChinaTravelWriter.com. You can follow him on Twitter at @MitchBlatt.

US Boosts Presence In Western Pacific, Europe With Deployments

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By Karen Parrish

Pentagon Press Secretary Peter Cook announced operational deployments that will boost US presence in the western Pacific and in Europe.

“Ships and units from the Carl Vinson strike group will depart San Diego for a regularly scheduled deployment to the western Pacific,” Cook told Pentagon reporters Thursday.

Approximately 7,500 sailors will deploy and focus on maritime security operations, theater security cooperation efforts and bilateral exercises, he said.

Separately, Cook said, the United States is demonstrating its continued commitment to collective security through a series of actions designed to reassure NATO allies and partners of America’s dedication to enduring peace and stability in the region in light of Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.

“Tanks, trucks and other equipment are scheduled to arrive in Europe this weekend, beginning a nine-month rotation of U.S. Army forces supporting Operation Atlantic Resolve,” the press secretary said.

The arrival of troops and equipment from 3rd Armored Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division, out of Fort Carson, Colorado, marks the beginning of the presence of an ABCT and back-to-back rotations of U.S. troops and equipment in Europe, he added.

After the equipment arrives at Bremerhaven, Germany, it will move by rail, commercial line haul and military convoy to Poland, Cook said. Troops and equipment will later be relocated throughout the region for training and exercises with European allies.

“This effort is part of our European Reassurance Initiative to maintain persistent, rotational presence of air, land, and sea forces in Central and Eastern Europe,” he said.

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