By Bhaswati Mukherjee*

From an Indian perspective, Europe and the EU appear to be facing multiple crises which are adversely impacting both the India EU strategic partnership as well as Indian public opinion. Is Europe in terminal decline? Should India turn its back on a partner which prefers using soft power to hard power and look across the Atlantic to the India US Alliance as the preferred option from 2017 onwards?

Some analysts say that these new challenges confronting Europe are linked to the tectonic events in the last two decades of the last century. The dramatic changes in the global order with the collapse of the former USSR and the reshaping of Europe after the end of Cold War resulted in the end of bipolarity and a new resurgent EU. Europe spoke openly and jubilantly of the decline of Russia and invited the newly independent Baltic States to join NATO.

Post Lisbon Treaty, multiple new global challenges started posing a threat to the cherished ideal of European unity and solidarity. India too took time to adjust to the new emerging world order. India remained wary to the EU’s suggestion that it become a new pole in a multi-polar world. The Indian leadership at that time felt the European definition of multi-polarity was a challenge to its cherished principles of non alignment.

When the India-EU Strategic Partnership came through in 2004, India was careful to convey that it continued to be non-aligned. Nor did India at that time pronounce itself strongly in favour of multi-polarity despite some prodding from the EU. Today, it appears remarkable that after so many challenges, including the European sovereign debt crisis, talk of Grexit and now a looming Brexit, both sides continue to have differing perspectives on the challenges, their impact on India EU relationship and the way forward.

To redefine the partnership and make it relevant is the need of the hour. Both sides should agree on a common strategic paradigm. In addition, negative perceptions from both sides should be fully addressed. EU and India need to better understand and appreciate each other.

In order to revive interest among Indian public opinion makers about Europe and its potential, the European Union needs to project itself as a major global power centre, whose strategic perceptions globally and in India’s neighbourhood, coincide with India’s perspectives.

The EU, with two permanent members in the Security Council, should demonstrate that it is a global political player, capable and willing to use military power when required or to play the role of a power broker during a global crisis.

The EU continues to be in a state of denial regarding the crises. Many EU member states continue to believe that the EU remains a major pole in an emerging multi-polar world. There is also a reluctance to give priority to the relationship with India, over China.

Senior officials in Brussels insist that the economic partnership with China must be nurtured and given the highest priority. India can at best be at second place. As a result, sensitive political issues from a Chinese perspective are very carefully handled. This is privately commented upon by senior Indian officials who contrast it with the American approach. They are also baffled by the EU insistence on a human rights dialogue with India. Most EU ambassadors here also privately acknowledge that that continuous finger-pointing and focusing on India’s “flaws” or a one sided dialogue do not make for a good relationship.

On the political level, EU-Indian relations appear to be deadlocked. The 13th Summit in March 2016 was held after a long gap. Dates suggested by India in April 2015 met with no response. Some attribute it as fallout of the Italian Marine crisis. Held in the shadow of the terrorist attacks in Brussels, the 13th Summit Joint Statement could have recognised the multiple threats emanating from India’s neighbourhood which constitute a threat to international peace and security. It did not do so and missed a valuable opportunity to demonstrate the relevance of the strategic partnership to a sceptical Indian public.

The challenge posed by the Indo-US partnership to the India EU strategic relationship has hardly been publicly discussed. Many Indians believe that given the complexities and sensitivities of India’s difficult neighbourhood and the threat of terrorist strikes from across its borders, an alliance with the US is the need of the hour, rather than with the EU which appears divided and in decline.

What is the way forward? To respond to these multiple challenges, both sides need to respect each other’s strengths and global relevance. Both need a similar understanding of multipolarity. In an emerging multi-polar world, India and EU would be two important poles, essential to maintaining a transparent, democratic and strategic global narrative. The partnership must not stagnate and become marginalized; international peace and security would be at stake.

*Bhaswati Mukherjee is a former India Ambassador to the Netherlands and UNESCO and has dealt extensively with Europe

The Spanish government said that 55 refugees have arrived in Spain from Greece under the European Union relocation program set up to tackle the humanitarian consequences of the war in Syria. The refugees, 36 of Syrian nationality and 19 of Iraqi nationality, arrived at Adolfo Suárez Madrid-Barajas Airport.

Of the 55 refugees, 22 are men, 11 are women and 22 are children, who will be relocated to Almeria (4), Malaga (4), Huesca (7), Palencia (5), Tarragona (14), Castellon (17), Murcia (2) and Caceres (2).

Spain has now taken in a total of 1,034 applicants for international protection, 745 under the relocation programme and 289 under the resettlement programme.

The Spanish System for the Reception and Integration of applicants/beneficiaries of international protection offers its beneficiaries a stay at a reception centre of the Ministry of Employment and Social Security or of an NGO (subsidised by the government) at which they are guaranteed lodging, meals, legal advice, psychological assistance, social care and advice, accompaniment to education centres, public health and social centres, language learning and basic social skills, guidance and intermediation for vocational training and job reinsertion, cultural activities and economic aid.

India is eager to present itself as a sport giant in contrast to an apathetic looking Pakistan that is without money to promote even joint sport exercises. As such, India seeks strategic partnerships with foreign teams and players in cricket and sports and buys them to make India shine. Since cricket is known as a fake sport, while football has some positive image, India has purchased some foreign football players to play with Indians in ISL. And, the foreign players have also helped India to claim some victory in sports

India, through sponsorship by its top corporate lords, has been able to parade some outside players in football, badminton, hockey etc, for joint sport exercises in Indian towns to make its neighbors especially Pakistan look very small. NATO terrorism operations have ended in disallowing foreign players and crickets to play in Pakistan and Pakistan finds Arab venues to play cricket and other entertainments with foreign teams. India is doubly happy that Pakistan is now a destabilized weak nation though both share corrupt practices. India uses Pakistani cricketers, among others, to praise Indian batboys in order for the government to offer them national awards.

Indian efforts to extend joint cricket exercise to football field have badly failed, though it has managed to present football also as a “fixable” sport with predetermined outcomes.

Notwithstanding all the dirty tricks of BCCI-Sachin mafia to bring the Kerala team to the finals, Kolkata has managed to win the title for the second time this year, drowning the dreams of Sachin Tendulkar and his Kerala Blastards team, though the final was had been in advance fixed for Kerala as Sachin has been given a bungalow the state’s Kochi soon after he built a new bungalow in Mumbai Bandra without obtaining the Corporation clearance.

Of course, Sachin is now big guy with a lot of money made available by BCCI and governments, and also exerts influence in the government and with corporate lords, but Indian Modi government considers cricket batboys as a special category and does not find out his sources and search for black money if any because it has already made him Bharatratna that carries with it immunity at par with president of India. So an officially “safe” Sachin and others like him are safe even without Bharatratna because Indian government does not want to insult itself by punishing the fake celebrities. The ongoing search for black money holders looks like just a pure state gimmick as the Modi government still refuses to take the public into confidence.

Indian corporate sponsors think Sachin’s presence would force other teams to budge and let his favored teams win.

Sachin is supposed to be the owner of Kerala team. Does Kerala have any rich guy to buy the Kerala Blastards team and it hoisted Sachin in Kochi? No one asks this in Kerala because they know everything happens cording to a central scheme and they have to just promote all sorts of fanaticism.

Eight teams, 60 matches, more than two months of joint football exercises selectively promoting team Mumbai and Kerala this time, finally come down to two teams – Atletico de Kolkata and Kerala, playing one last match this year to go for the title itself. Atletico de Kolkata and Kerala Blastards have both gone wayward on multiple occasions this season. But they have pushed forward with sheer determination and now have the title within touching distance.

Fixing from IPL to ISL

Successful gambling in IPL has led to gambling in ISL, making many billionaires over night. Huge money was on grab that has the backing of corporate controlled Indian regime as well.

Kolkata team players played very seriously and apparently it looked none could play mischief in support for Sachin’s Kerala Blastards team.

On Dec 18, 2016, the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium in Kochi, where the final drama took place plunged into stunned silence as Atletico de Kolkata’s Jewel Raja sent goalkeeper Graham Stack the wrong way and buried the ball into the right corner of Kerala Blastards’ net with the fifth and decisive penalty of the shootout. To say the Kerala fans turned up in numbers is an understatement.

A popular belief among the supporters of the losing semifinalists of the third season especially Mumbai team is that neither of the two most exciting sides of the league stage qualified for the ultimate showdown, and the two finalist clubs, circumspect as ever, did nothing to denounce that notion.

Kolkata finally won the race 2-1, (in a penalty shoot out Atletico de Kolkata won 4-3) dismantling all hopes of yellow shirtwalas that occupied the stadium as a strategy to threaten the opponents from Kolkata. The strike saw Atletico de Kolkata lift their second ISL crown. On both occasions, the unlucky losers were the Blasters. If it was a goal from Mohammad Rafique in the added-on time which saw Kolkata beating Blastards in the summit clash in the inaugural season of ISL in Mumbai, the shootout left the Blasters heartbroken at home this time around.

It has finally ended and Atletico de Kolkata are the ones that have come out on top against all odds. More than 50,000 people were in the stadium and they were all screaming for their opposition but they stayed firm. They managed to come back into the game as soon as they conceded and gave nothing away after that.

From blue to yellow

The Kerala team chose to wear yellow and Sachin threw away his favorite blue color to sport a yellowish look. The efforts of BCCI and the Sachin mafia to paint the entire Kerala city Kochi in yellow color and Sachin himself removed his favorite blue color shirt and sported yellow color in the hope of winning the title somehow, have brought disgrace to fully literate Kerala state and Malayalees

The bosses BCCI, IPL and ISL had decided to hold the ISL 2016 final in Kochi so that Sachin can celebrate as new god of Kerala state and other teams get the message one again what these hoaxes want form ISL teams. They had fixed the final for Kerala and Mumbai- both belong to Sachin and sought to make Kochi Kerala Blastards team the winners. That did not happened however, though Kerala was promoted meticulously up to the finals stage while Mumbai was crushed by Kolkata at semi finals despite the mischief by a couple of Kolkata players (possibly heavily paid by Sachin mafia) in supporting Sachin Mumbai team.

The stadium was jam-packed in yellow color- a trick Mumbai in blue color while India plays cricket against nay nation, two hours before the match started and stories of thousands queuing up to get tickets because of a mere rumor of extra tickets at the stadium. “It will obviously be a comfortable atmosphere for us because it’s our home crowd but the crowd doesn’t play but our camera focuses on them to encourage the team to hit continuously. They give us huge support. The crowd is nothing more than a great background for us to play against but it won’t give us a goal-start or stop goals going in,” said Coppell.

On a night, when a ‘sea of yellow’ took over the stands at the Jawaharlal Nehru Stadium in Kochi, which has catered to packed houses through the tournament, the quality of football on display was similar to the one Steve Coppell has witnessed first-hand on a cold Sunday evening during his time in England.

The tone of the game was set as early as the eighth minute when Kerala countered from an Atletico corner through a clever run from Duckens Nazon. CK Vineeth’s poor touch in a 3-vs-3 situation helped Atletico break off the move and devise a counter-attack of their own. Lalrindika Ralte’s pinpoint long ball found Iain Hume (running off the shoulders of Aaron Hughes and Cedric Hengbert) at the edge of the 18-yard-box but Hume’s heavy touch took the ball out for a goal-kick.

Kerala Blasters vs Atletico de Kolkata

Between Kerala Blasters and Atletico de Kolkata there is a big gap as Kerala is no match for the strong Kolkata players who had won the first season. But Kerala and Mumbai teams were favorites of Indian corporate lords because both belong to cricketer Sachin tendulkar. Kerala was supposed to win the title this year but Kolkata eventually decided not to let Sachin enjoy at their expanse.

As Kolkata, for unknown reasons, began very slowly, soon, the Kerala Blastards broke the deadlock against the run of play through a corner in the 37th minute. The goal came due to some sluggish defending from ATK’s Kotal who failed to keep hold of Blasters’ Mohammad Rafi and the Kerala striker rose high above the defender to head Mehtab’s corner past Majumder into goal. But Kolkata didn’t take long to equalise. In the 44th minute, Henrique Sereno headed past Stack from a Doutie corner leaving defender Sandeep Jhingan a spectator.

Display in the final is a mere extension of both club’s footballing ideologies. As soon as Alireza Faghani blew the final whistle at the 90th minute with the scores tied at 1-1, Atletico de Kolkata made history with Jose Molina’s side drawing for the tenth occasion (in seventeen matches). In the brief history of the ISL, no other club had drawn so many matches in a single season.

As speculated, the final match went into extra-time and tiebreaker after the teams was level on 1-1 at the end of regulation time. After Antonio German put Blastards ahead in the penalty shootout, the darling of Kerala fans two seasons ago, Iain Hume, strode out to take the first kick for the Kolkata side. Much to his dismay, the Canadian saw his kick being saved by Blasters keeper Stack, guessing correctly and diving to his left and the yellowish Kochi boys fans rejoiced. But that joy was short-lived as Ndoye hit the ball over the bar with the third spot kick for Blasters and the scores were tied 2-2. The next set of penalties saw Rafique and Lara finding the target for Blasters and Kolkata respectively. But the final penalty in tie-break for Blasters taken by Cedric Hengbart was saved by Kolkata goalkeeper Debjit Majumder. Raja then made no mistake in converting the final penalty to send his team into ecstasy. Kolkata won.

ATK Kolkata gave Blasters a taste of their own medicine as they relied on the speed of the wingers to create chances. Though the home team successfully closed out Postiga and Borja Fernandez, Hume was given a lot of space in the Blasters box and he nearly scored the opener in the 32nd minute. Doutie smartly cut past Ishfaq along the right and received a ball from the centre before giving a low cross to Hume. Though the Canadian forward stretched himself and got past an advancing Stack, he missed the target by inches. Four minutes later, Coppell was forced to substitute injured Aaron Hughes with Elhadji Ndoye. Atletico outshot their opponents, but both clubs registered four shots on target, the visitors’ marquee signing Helder Postiga being particularly wasteful in the final third.

Kerala Blasters preferred to sit back and look for an opportunity to hit on the break, a ploy ATK neutralised with their defensive organisation. This, after routing initial forays through the inside left channel, making the most of Doutie not tracking back. Central defender Tiri prevented one such move from assuming dangerous proportions with a sliding effort.

The Atletico central midfield grew into the match as the game progressed, with Borja and Jewel Raja completing nine tackles, four blocks and five interceptions between them. Mehtab Hossain was stellar in midfield with six tackles and two blocks, apart from 43 passes and four crosses – his immaculate corner had brought in the Blasters’ goal in the thirty seventh minute.

In spite of an underwhelming performance from four key players, ATK had more chances, or half-chances, because of Raja who moved up fearlessly in the first half, stealing possession and, in the 17th minute, making a strong run down the middle.Twice in the next six minutes, Raja created opportunities that ATK might have put away on another night. After two hours of ordinary football, it was fitting that the evening’s best player would have the last word. Or the last shot, as it were.

The fact that the clubs were playing a match of enormous proportion for the third time in a week took a toll on both squads – with Kerala’s Aaron Hughes and Atletico’s Keegan Pereira forced to be substituted in the first half itself.

Kolkata was slow but somehow outsmarted Sachin’s biggy team. Chennai was the champions last time and it appears there was an understanding, and planning, to make Sachin’s Kerala team the winners this time. That did not happen mainly because it is not cricket where India can deadly influence other team s to let it win or get 100 runs for Sachin.

It looked like Kolkata decided to promote god Sachin and his adopted Kerala Blastards. Both teams have had to deal with some unneeded news before the match started with Kerala and Kolkata being fined Rs 6 and Rs 7 lakh respectively for separate disciplinary cases. ATK won’t be able to play the suspended Juan Beloncoso.

Iain Hume the man very important for Kolkata did not make the team happy by missing out his penalty shoot attack. The last time he was in the ISL finals, Iain Hume was in Kerala Blastards colors and lost out against the very team he is playing for now. How much of a stick he is going to receive from the Kerala Blasters finals. The same goes for Mohammad Rafique who was the man who scored the winning goal for ATK in 2014 and is now one of the main cogs in the yellow wheel of the Kerala Blasters.

As Kolkata was slow, Sachin’s Kerala Blastards had their first opportunity in the ninth minute. After Belfort latched on to a clearance from Blasters defence, Kolkata’s back-four successfully stopped Blasters forwards along the wings. The fleet-footed Blasters striker messed u his first touch and gave away the ball easily. But ATK slowly gained the upper hand. It was in the front third that ATK looked lost because Iain Hume and Helder Postiga did little to make the evening memorable.

After a final that tasted like porridge, Atletico de Kolkata (ATK) regained the Indian Super League (ISL) title when Jewel Raja slotted home the last penalty in the tie-breaker. Regulation time and extra-time ended 1-1 after Mohammed Rafi’s goal was cancelled by Henrique Sereno Goalie Debjit Majumder got a leg in time to deny Kerala Blasters’ skipper Cedric Hengbart and that proved to be enough in the ISL final. ATK won 5-4 in what was easily the worst of the three finals but they surely weren’t complaining.

Iain Hume and Stephen Pearson (both of whom played significant roles in Kerala’s amazing run in the first season) experiencing the bitter taste of defeat. Hume, the all-time top scorer of the Indian Super League was bound to have recalled that dreaded feeling moments after he missed the first penalty in Atletico’s shootout. The Canadian (also ATK’s regular penalty-taker) tends to thrive under pressure but came up short against Graham Stack. His team-mates, however, did not miss from the spot with Doutie, Borja and Lara burying each of their penalties.

While a number of counter-attacking maneuvers were orchestrated by both clubs, mostly through the wide channels, the final ball was often lacking. Mohammed Rafi’s thumping header as well as Henrique Sereno’s equalizer came from set-piece situations – due to man-marking errors by Pritam Kotal and Sandesh Jhingan. While the Kerala Blasters forward timed their run perfectly, the Atletico defender overpowered his Indian counterpart with sheer physical strength.

The Indian goalie has been an integral aspect of the Atletico team all through the season and his save off Hengbart in Kerala’s final penalty made all the difference. As history repeated itself, the Yellow Army and their fans were once again destined for heartbreak, but Iain Hume and Stephen Pearson were not.

Observations: A game devoid of individual brilliance

This is Atletico de Kolkata’s only second ISL trophy and they have got the best players. It appears Sachin’s Mumbai and Kerala teams and other owners may have tried to woo or get on extra payment get Ian on their side while playing for the Kolkata team.

Atletico de Kolkata were crowned the ISI (Indian Super League) champions for the second time in three seasons when Jewel Raja’s successful penalty helped Atletico overcome a dogged Kerala Blasters side following a 1-1 draw after extra time. Here are the biggest takeaways from the ISL final.

The final at Kochi did give a lot of extra excitement as a lot of film world celebrities especially from Bollywood were paraded by ISL organizers to lend support for Sachin Kerala team. Amitabh Bachhan and co were being focused by the cameramen. The cameramen always focused on Sachin and film personalities hoping that would do miracle for Sachin’s team.

The final was defined by a distinct lack of superlative footballing moments. With both managers prioritizing to stay compact at the back right from kick-off and the humid atmosphere sapping players of energy as the game progressed, the 54,000-strong crowd was devoid of in-game dramatic occurrences.

Sure of a win, the Kerala Blastards went in with a 4-1-4-1 formation to counter Atletico’s two deep central midfielders who had taken the game away from Mumbai City FC just a few days back. As Coppell’s side pressed Borja and Jewel Raja high up the pitch, forcing them to misplace passes, the supply for Atletico’s front four was severely hampered. The penalties were neck to neck and ATK managed to come back after going one goal down due to Stack saving Iain Hume’s shot. Atletico de Kolkata are champions of the Indian Super League once again.

Atletico de Kolkata managed to come from behind to beat Kerala Blasters on penalties. Unlike a popular myth, penalty shootouts are more than sheer luck and spot kicks, their success depends mainly on how far the shooter is able to fool the goal keeper. Kolkata team has managed to brave the giant yellowish crowd screaming down their ears and have picked the ISL trophy a second time. They won the inaugural edition in 2014 as well. It has finally ended and Atletico de Kolkata are the ones that have come out on top against all odds. More than 50,000 people were in the stadium and they were all screaming for their opposition but they stayed firm. They managed to come back into the game as soon as they conceded and gave nothing away after that. The penalties were neck to neck and ATK managed to come back after going one goal down due to Stack saving Iain Hume’s shot. Atletico de Kolkata are champions of the Indian Super League once again.

Iain Hume has been the key to Kolkata successes. The last time he was in the ISL finals, Iain Hume was in Kerala Blasters colors but not found lucky and lost out against the very team he is playing for now. How much of a stick he is going to receive from the Kerala Blasters finals. The same goes for Mohammad Rafique who was the man who scored the winning goal for ATK in 2014 and is now one of the main cogs in the yellow wheel of the Kerala Blasters. Apart from Ian the other player who was a let-down for ATK was skipper Borja Fernandez. The central midfielder perhaps made more errors on Sunday than he had in all of the ISL. Maybe being booked early -– ATK’s only card in the game — affected his composure.

Kolkata struggled to win the trophy this time. .

Growing tensions in disputed waters and enforcement operations by maritime security agencies against various threats have resulted in warships and other vessels exchanging warning shots. The uncertainty posed by such actions can lead to conflict. The use of warnings at sea is increasingly critical.

By Bernard Miranda*

In the past few years there have been several incidents when warning shots were used at sea. In December 2015 a Russian warship fired warning shots at a Turkish fishing boat to “prevent a collision”. This action was carried out a month after a Turkish F-16 interceptor shot down a Russian Su-24 fighter-bomber for violating its airspace. In the same month, a South Korean naval vessel fired warning shots at a Chinese patrol boat thinking that it was a North Korean vessel near to the Yellow Sea Northern Limit Line.

In June 2016 the Indonesian Navy fired warning shots at a Chinese fishing boat operating within Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone. Purportedly a Chinese fisherman from a nearby boat was injured as a result of the action. More recently, a US destroyer fired warning shots at a group of four Iranian Revolutionary Coast Guard Corps Navy fast patrol boats that did not heed non-kinetic warnings and continued closing–in on the destroyer at high speed in the Strait of Hormuz.

Increasing Use of Warning at Sea

Tensions look set to continue building up in the areas like the South China Sea and the Strait of Hormuz, and maritime security threats like piracy and terrorism would remain a concern. These are coupled with an uncertain and changing outlook in international relations. It should therefore not be surprising if the occurrence of incidents requiring warning at sea increases.

Enforcement agencies that deploy forces at sea in the vicinity of disputed areas, areas where tension exists and in areas with maritime security threats should put timely emphasis on planning, preparation and readiness in the use of warning at sea.

Naval and other government forces like Coast Guard vessels are deployed all over the world for various reasons like show of flag; maintaining presence for deterrence; asserting territorial integrity; policing troubled areas; multi-national operations and routine passage.

Policy imperatives, especially in disputed waters and where tensions exist, necessitate that tactical actions by forces be used effectively yet calibrated to be non-escalatory so that it does not result in direct engagement. And if direct action is taken, it must be further calibrated to be proportional by using a graduated set of pre-approved responses.

Warning Measures

Warning measures that are normally used begin with hailing by radio communications, coupled with benign actions like sounding of the ships horn and shining powerful lights at night to get the attention of the contact of interest. Over the years, technology advances and user needs, has resulted in the development of more effective equipment like Long Range Acoustic Devices (LRAD) that direct sound from greater ranges towards the threat.

More advanced navies also deploy Unmanned Surface Vessels (USV) equipped with mini-LRADS and mounted weapons to ward off the threat at greater distances from high value targets. These USVs are currently being used as deterrence in protected areas such as naval bases to supplement other defences.

The next levels of warning are those that are visually noticeable like smoke generating devices and illumination by signal flares. These measures require physical deployment of visible non-lethal means from the vessel or deployed helicopters. It is hard not to notice these visual warnings and if they are not heeded, it triggers a higher degree of response in the form of kinetic actions.

Kinetic action can consist of “bumping” of ships and firing of warning shots. Bumping has been used in the past, for example as far back as February 1988, two Soviet warships bumped and grazed US warships that had sailed within seven nautical miles of the Crimean Peninsula. But such use of bumping is rare and any ship’s captain would refrain from such actions that can cause damage to one’s own ship if not executed skilfully with a high degree of seamanship.

The preferred mode of kinetic action therefore is to fire warning shots. The guns can be manually controlled from ships or deployed helicopters or preferably with more accurate super rapid system controlled guns.

Considerations in Use of Warning

Policy must dictate and allow the use of warning by tactical forces. The legal mandate and political implications of actions by tactical forces must be weighed heavily and take into consideration the area of operations and the mandate given under international law, relevant United Nations Security Council resolutions and with due consideration to safety of lives at sea.

These policies are translated into Rules of Engagement (ROEs) for the use of graduated, non-escalatory and proportional response with enough flexibility built in to allow forces to react with disabling or destructive fire if required.

Tactical forces at sea must be well connected with their national headquarters by robust means of communications. Clear command and control must be established to apply the ROEs and guide commanders on the use of appropriate measures. The ROE must also equip commanders with the ability to make sound and timely decisions to respond quickly to changing situations that can potentially escalate beyond warning.

Standard operating procedures and fire control orders and systems for warning shots must be fine-tuned such that human error is eliminated. The procedures developed must be trained and practiced at sea repeatedly to ensure competence and confidence. Safeguards must be made in the execution such that warnings do not end up with unintended consequences like loss of life and collateral damage. Tactical commanders must also be drilled to deal with the unexpected and must not flinch in deciding to execute warnings without doubt or delay.

*Bernard Miranda is an Adjunct Senior Fellow with the Maritime Security Programme, S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He was the Commander Task Group for three missions to the North Arabian Gulf in support of the reconstruction of Iraq; Mission Commander of the Republic of Singapore Navy’s first deployment to the anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden; and RSN’s first Commander CTF 151, the combined force dealing with Somalia piracy in the Gulf of Aden.

Ever wonder about the people who make our health care system work at a time when reports of greed, fraud, profiteering and harmful malpractice are rampant and remedies are not advanced?

I was recently reminded how hard these proficient and caring physicians, nurses and physician assistants are working day after day and how their commitment to patients and their profession receives so little recognition. The sad occasion for these reflections was the passing this month of Dr. George H. Haddad, an alert 101-year-old surgeon who had worked for many years in New York City’s public hospitals.

Growing up in Egypt, he graduated from the American University of Beirut Medical School and returned home to serve poor farmers in a small village in the Nile Delta. Later he would say that was one of the most fascinating experiences in his life.

He came to New York City in 1947, and began a life of singular commitment to patients.  He believed profit-seeking should be taken out of medical practice as much as possible. He certainly practiced what he preached as a staff physician who worked long hours for modest remuneration. Soon after his arrival in New York, fellow physicians and nurses noticed his drive toward perfection, his keeping up with developments in surgery, his quiet, reassuring bedside manner, his unfailing courtesy and mentoring of staff, and his readiness, as a bachelor, to take the place of other doctors wanting to spend holidays with their families.

He took the hard cases in emergency rooms where victims of crimes flowed into highly pressurized situations. One year he conducted more surgeries than any other physician in New York City. During these procedures, he noticed that many surgeons could not easily differentiate between the wounds that penetrated into the abdominal cavity from those that did not. As a result, the customary procedure was to operate into the abdominal cavity, which was often excessively invasive. Drawing on the medical literature and his experience, he was instrumental in introducing surgical techniques to save patients from unnecessary operations, an improvement that, since the late sixties, has spread all over the world.

Dr. Haddad also knew a great deal about the waste, redundancy and gouging in the health care economy. He favored a reorganization of medical care where primary care would be very local and the more technologically-intensive care would be in regional centers. He saw the increasing corporatization of his beloved profession as interfering with professional judgments, leading to profitable over-diagnosis,over-treatment, and higher prices resulting in patients, without universal health insurance, not being able to afford to pay for basic health care.

Inasmuch as he was my second cousin, I would often call and ask him for specialists to help friends and associates. He had an uncanny sense of who the best physicians in many field were, not just in their skills, but also for their character and personality.

He viewed the profession of medicine as one where self-renewal was critical, where prevention was the first duty and availability for treatment was to be maximized. He was always willing to be on call and ready for any emergency.

I would frequently query him whether any public official would ask for his advice on improving the healthcare industry, about which he knew so much, or whether anybody in the media ever wanted to interview him in place of the usual bloviators or hucksters. He would smile and shake his head no.

As far as disputes over medical behavior, he wished for lawyers not to be just adversarial but also technically informed. In that pursuit, he wrote a meticulous chapter in the encyclopedia, Proof of Facts, on foreign items left inside patients during operations and ways to avoid such damaging malpractice.

George Haddad’s self-effacing, honest, generous lifetime work for sick and injured people evokes the observation by the ancient Greek philosopher, Aristotle. The sage wrote that “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.”

Would that there be more public recognition of such regular, consistent and faithful excellence, if only to provide an exemplary legacy for future generations.

Women who had their first menstrual period when they were aged 11 or younger have an increased risk of an early or premature menopause and if they remain childless the risk is increased even more, according to results from the first large scale, multi-national study to investigate the links between age at puberty and menopause and whether or not a woman has had children.

The study, which is published today (Wednesday) in Human Reproduction [1], one of the world’s leading reproductive medicine journals, looked at 51,450 women who had agreed to take part in nine studies in the UK, Scandinavia, Australia and Japan that contribute to the Life course Approach to reproductive health and Chronic disease Events (InterLACE) international collaboration.

It found that women who started their menstrual periods aged 11 or younger had an 80% higher risk of experiencing a natural menopause before the age of 40 (premature menopause) and a 30% higher risk of menopause between the ages of 40-44 (early menopause), when compared with women whose first period occurred between the ages of 12 and 13. Women who had never been pregnant or who had never had children had a two-fold increased risk of premature menopause and a 30% increased risk of early menopause.

The risk increased even further for women whose periods started early if they had no children: the risk of premature or early menopause increased five-fold and two-fold respectively compared to women who had their first period aged 12 or older and who had two or more children.

In the general population of women in high-income countries (and also in this study) the prevalence of premature menopause is 2% and early menopause 7.6%. Therefore, the combination of starting periods early and having no children, means that the absolute risk of premature or early menopause for these women is 5.2% and 9.9% respectively.

The lead researcher for the study, Professor Gita Mishra, Professor of Life Course Epidemiology and Director of the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health at the University of Queensland, Australia, said: “If the findings from our study were incorporated into clinical guidelines for advising childless women from around the age of 35 years who had their first period aged 11 or younger, clinicians could gain valuable time to prepare these women for the possibility of premature or early menopause. It provides an opportunity for clinicians to include women’s reproductive history alongside other lifestyle factors, such as smoking, when assessing the risk of early menopause, and enables them to focus health messages more effectively both earlier in life and for women at most risk. In addition, they could consider early strategies for preventing and detecting chronic conditions that are linked to earlier menopause, such as heart disease.”

Most of the women in the study were born before 1960, with two-thirds born between 1930 and 1949. During these years contraception was less widely available, there were no advanced treatments for infertility, and women tended to start their first period (menarche) at a slightly older age than in more recent years (14% had reached menarche by age 11, compared to approximately 18% for women born after 1990). This means that some caution is needed when applying these findings to the current generation of young and middle-aged women.

However, Prof Mishra said: “We expect that the underlying relationship between these reproductive characteristics across life is still present, but it may be that our definition of early menarche would be revised. It is also possible that we will see a higher prevalence of premature menopause for the current generation of women. Another change worth considering is that fertility treatments today can enable women to have children, whereas previously they would have been childless.”

In this study only 12% of the women remained childless and it is possible that they may have remained childless due to ovarian problems, which may or may not have been detected, and which might also be implicated in the early onset of menopause. (Women who had their menopause as a result of an intervention, such as removal of the womb or ovaries, were excluded from the study).

Prof Mishra said: “In this study, women were of reproductive age when fertility rates were still relatively high, so we can speculate that childlessness may reflect underlying fertility problems, which might then lead to early menopause. In general, we know that women who do not become pregnant have an earlier menopause than women with children. It is also the case that common factors could explain the relationship and influence fertility, the timing of the first period and menopause; these range from genetics factors to environmental factors in childhood such as obesity, psychosocial stress and the social environment.

“The message for everyone to take on board from this and other similar studies is to think of the timing of menopause as a biological marker of reproductive ageing, which has implications for health and the risk of chronic diseases. So if we want to improve health outcomes in the later life, we need to be thinking about the risk factors through the whole of a woman’s life from the early years and the time of their first period through to their childbearing years and menopause.”

Menopause was defined as menstrual periods having ceased for at least a year.

[1] “Early menarche, nulliparity and the risk for premature and early natural menopause,” by Gita D. Mishra et al. Human Reproduction journal. doi:10.1093/humrep/dew350.

Trees may be easy to spot on the plains of Africa but they are often overlooked as a source of income for farmers. A University of Illinois study shows trees on farms may help reduce rural poverty and maintain biodiversity.

“Trees on farms in Africa often fall through the cracks — they’re not forests and they’re not agriculture,” said U of I’s Daniel Miller, who studies environmental politics and policy. “In our study, we found about one third of all rural farmers across five study countries have and grow trees on their farms. Among those farmers, trees on farms contribute 17 percent to their annual household income, so they’re very important for generating economic benefits for households.”

Miller’s study used satellite images showing forest cover and nationally representative household-level data gathered from in-person interviews in Ethiopia, Malawi, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Uganda.

One thing he learned is that there are more trees on agricultural lands than expected–about a third to more than half of the rural households report having on-farm trees. Fruit trees and cash crop trees such as coffee trees were the two most popular types of trees. Tree for timber and fuel were only reported by 5 percent of the households.

Ecologically, trees could act as biodiversity corridors, Miller said. “One of the findings is that trees on farms are more prevalent near forests. They can provide wildlife or bird habitat linking different forested or natural areas, while at the same time providing income potential to poor farmers. They promise a potential win-win for conservation and development.

“Overall, the results suggest that trees on farms should be given more attention in agriculture, food security and poverty-related policy debates in Sub-Saharan Africa, particularly as the need to tackle climate change becomes more urgent,” Miller said.

Trees can play an important role in both climate change adaptation and mitigation.

“Climate smart agriculture is a new buzzword,” Miller said. “The World Bank has committed to making their agricultural investments climate smart by 2019. Trees are climate smart because they aren’t as fragile as agricultural crops are to extreme shifts in climate. Oftentimes, trees can continue to produce when you might have a crop failure due to a drought. So, trees may provide a food source like mangoes or other fruit in times of difficulty.”

Trees on farms can also help mitigate some of the negative effects of climate change.

“Trees sequester carbon through photosynthesis, so by not clearing them, you’re not releasing the carbon into the atmosphere,” Miller said. Because Miller looks at data from several angles, including the political implications, he is particularly excited about the national scale of the study. For policy makers, information presented at this scale–as done in this study — is especially useful in showing how trees benefit the five countries.

“One of the major findings from this work is that national-level differences explained a lot of the variation in whether people adopt or don’t adopt trees on their farms,” Miller said. “Particularly in Francophone countries, which I personally know better, central governments have historically claimed any tree as being the domain of forestry, which may shape farmer willingness to grow and use trees. For example, for a long time in Niger, farmers were wary of having trees on their farms because the central government had a legal right to come on their land and claim the trees as their own. It’s a legacy of colonial law in those countries.”

“More recently, the law in Niger changed to allow greater farmer control of trees. This change is a big reason for the exceptional re-greening that has happened across a large band of Niger,” Miller said. “That’s an extreme case, but it illustrates how national-level policies can affect farmer decision-making. Tanzania, with its record of community forest management, provides a contrasting case.”

The Head of Hormozgan Province Department of Justice announced that 32 managers and users of the instant messaging service, Telegram in the province have been arrested on charges of publishing profanity.

Telegram is one of the only social media services that is not blocked by the Iranian government; however, conservative factions have repeatedly called for tightening of state control over its usage by the public.

The 32 detainees are being accused of “inciting sexual misconduct and creation of immoral content as well as false profiles” while some of them were attracting as many as three thousand viewers.

The Department of Justice maintains that the detainees posted “obscene” videos and photos in their chat rooms and pages which have become the basis of the arrest warrants for them.

The report adds that another 78 social media users have also been summoned and are under investigation.

Public complaints and warnings to the authorities have reportedly been instrumental in initiating these arrests.

“Publishing false information, disturbing public order, causing public panic, promoting culturally inappropriate content and disturbing public minds” are accusations that are brought against the 78 users. The authorities report that their pages have been blocked.

Hormozgan provincial authorities maintain that the wave of arrests were triggered by the “increase in public demand for police action against cyber-crimes and cleansing of cyber space from immoral content”.

Telegram is the most popular communication and messaging application in Iran as it is not subjected to censorship like other social media websites and apps.

The moderate administration of Hassan Rohani, the Iranian president, has tried to prevent the conservatives push for blocking of Telegram.

To appease their opponents, Rohani government, Iran Cyber Police and the judicial apparatus working with them have indicated that they are working on ways of exercising some form of control over Telegram without its complete blocking.

Iran’s cyber police have said recently that close to 70 percent of internet crimes across the country occur through Telegram, another 20 percent through Instagram and another two percent on Whatsapp.

While the nature of these crimes has not been clarified, many people involved in commercial ventures and high traffic channels on Telegram have faced threats of arrest and prosecution by the state.

Iranian government imposes tight control over the internet and its censorship efforts are concentrated on blocking social media sites such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to control public communication through these channels.

However, in recent years, state control tactics have become more focused on identifying and prosecuting users. Ironically, many top figures of the Islamic Republic including the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei use the blocked social media websites with their own active pages.

Underwater robots developed by researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego offer scientists an extraordinary new tool to study ocean currents and the tiny creatures they transport. Swarms of these underwater robots helped answer some basic questions about the most abundant life forms in the ocean — plankton.

Scripps research oceanographer Jules Jaffe designed and built the miniature autonomous underwater explorers, or M-AUEs, to study small-scale environmental processes taking place in the ocean. The ocean-probing instruments are equipped with temperature and other sensors to measure the surrounding ocean conditions while the robots “swim” up and down to maintain a constant depth by adjusting their buoyancy. The M-AUEs could potentially be deployed in swarms of hundreds to thousands to capture a three-dimensional view of the interactions between ocean currents and marine life.

In a new study published in the Jan. 24 issue of the journal Nature Communications, Jaffe and Scripps biological oceanographer Peter Franks deployed a swarm of 16 grapefruit-sized underwater robots programmed to mimic the underwater swimming behavior of plankton, the microscopic organisms that drift with the ocean currents. The research study was designed to test theories about how plankton form dense patches under the ocean surface, which often later reveal themselves at the surface as red tides.

“These patches might work like planktonic singles bars,” said Franks, who has long suspected that the dense aggregations could aid feeding, reproduction, and protection from predators.

Two decades ago Franks published a mathematical theory predicting that swimming plankton would form dense patches when pushed around by internal waves — giant, slow-moving waves below the ocean surface. Testing his theory would require tracking the movements of individual plankton — each smaller than a grain of rice–as they swam in the ocean, which is not possible using available technology.

Jaffe instead invented “robotic plankton” that drift with the ocean currents, but are programmed to move up and down by adjusting their buoyancy, imitating the movements of plankton. A swarm of these robotic plankton was the ideal tool to finally put Franks’ mathematical theory to the test.

“The big engineering breakthroughs were to make the M-AUEs small, inexpensive, and able to be tracked continuously underwater,” said Jaffe. The low cost allowed Jaffe and his team to build a small army of the robots that could be deployed in a swarm.

Tracking the individual M-AUEs was a challenge, as GPS does not work underwater. A key component of the project was the development by researchers at UC San Diego’s Qualcomm Institute and Department of Computer Science and Engineering of mathematical techniques to use acoustic signals to track the M-AUE vehicles while they were submerged.

During a five-hour experiment, the Scripps researchers along with UC San Diego colleagues deployed a 300-meter (984-foot) diameter swarm of 16 M-AUEs programmed to stay 10-meters (33-feet) deep in the ocean off the coast of Torrey Pines, near La Jolla, Calif. The M-AUEs constantly adjusted their buoyancy to move vertically against the currents created by the internal waves. The three-dimensional location information collected every 12 seconds revealed where this robotic swarm moved below the ocean surface.

The results of the study were nearly identical to what Franks predicted. The surrounding ocean temperatures fluctuated as the internal waves passed through the M-AUE swarm. And, as predicted by Franks, the M-AUE location data showed that the swarm formed a tightly packed patch in the warm waters of the internal wave troughs, but dispersed over the wave crests.

“This is the first time such a mechanism has been tested underwater,” said Franks. The experiment helped the researchers confirm that free-floating plankton can use the physical dynamics of the ocean–in this case internal waves–to increase their concentrations to congregate into swarms to fulfill their fundamental life needs.

“This swarm-sensing approach opens up a whole new realm of ocean exploration,” said Jaffe. Augmenting the M-AUEs with cameras would allow the photographic mapping of coral habitats, or “plankton selfies,” according to Jaffe.

The research team has hopes to build hundreds more of the miniature robots to study the movement of larvae between marine protected areas, monitor harmful red tide blooms, and to help track oil spills. The onboard hydrophones that help track the M-AUEs underwater could also allow the swarm to act like a giant “ear” in the ocean, listening to and localizing ambient sounds in the ocean.

After the inauguration, President Trump has begun to reset the White House trade policies. But the consequences of “America First” stance in world trade are wrought with threats.

Recently, President Xi Jinping gave a strong speech about the need for more inclusive globalization at Davos. World trade is a case in point.

In 2015, world export volumes reached a plateau. World trade is no longer growing. Any major protectionist initiative has potential to make a bad situation a lot worse.

Trump’s trade appointments and tariff plans

In the early 2010s, the Obama administration touted the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), which excluded China. On his inauguration day, Trump announced US withdrawal from the TPP and promised to renegotiate NAFTA; if Mexico and Canada would refuse a negotiation, he would have US withdraw also from NAFTA.

Trump has promised to renegotiate or reject other US international commitments. And he has threatened to use 35-45% import tariffs, while his team has floated 10% tariffs. The goal is to force some countries, particularly Mexico and China, to change their trade practices, which he has vowed to challenge with “cease and desist” letters and greater pressure for intellectual property rights (IPRs).

Trump’s appointments suggest potential for serious trade friction. He selected Peter Navarro, the author of sensationalist China-bashing books (The Coming China Wars, 2005; Death by China, 2011; and What China’s Militarism Means for the World, 2015), to head the new National Trade Council (NTC), which will oversee industrial policy in the White House.

Navarro’s anti-China buddy Dan DiMicco, former CEO of largest US steel company Nucor and vocal free trade critic, became Trump’s trade advisor and former Reagan administration trade hawk Robert Lighthizer, his US Trade Representative.

The three will work with Secretary of Commerce, billionaire Wilbur Ross, who made a fortune by offshoring American jobs and as bankruptcy expert. He calls China “the world’s most protectionist country.”

Targeting US deficit

Targeting the US deficit Trump has also named Japan as one of the deficit contributors, which Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso has considered inappropriate. In terms of trade imbalances, “China is No 1,” Aso says.

In protectionist initiatives, the blame is in the eye of the beholder because one country’s deficit is another’s surplus. Trump’s trade warriors will begin by singling out nations that have large trade surplus with the US. That makes big trading economies obvious targets. In 2015, the list was topped by China ($367 billion), Japan ($69) and Mexico ($61 billion), and Germany ($60 billion)

However, they are likely to ignore the size of these surpluses on a per capita basis. If we take into account the population size, Germany ($720) is the deficit leader followed by Japan ($543), Mexico ($488), but China ($262) is far behind.

Now, if the Trump administration really is serious about targeting deficit leaders, it should probably consider a trade war with Ireland. After all, US has a deficit of $30 billion with Ireland, which translates to $6,380 in per capita terms – that’s 9 times the German and 24 times the Chinese figure, respectively.

In reality, trade deficits are likely to serve as pretexts for protectionism – even if such policies penalize the rest of the world.

Regional trade deficits, nationalist tariffs

Trump’s goals may well be dictated by realpolitik. Deficit criticism serves largely as an effort to undermine European unity (hence his anti-Merkel tirade), the rise of China and Mexico, and Japanese reforms. In such a win-lose world, “America First” is not possible through cooperation or even competition, but only by winning and harming perceived adversaries.

And yet, historically, US trade deficits did not start with China, or any other single country. Rather, they are regional and have prevailed for more than 41 years with Asia – first with Japan, then with newly-industrialized Asian tigers and recently with China and emerging Asia.

A single-minded focus on trade deficits ignores the fact that global economic cooperation is not just about trade in goods, but about trade in services and high-technology. It also includes investment, which Trump would like to attract from the very same countries that he risks alienating with his trade policy.

And it includes migration flows, which Trump would like to restrict dramatically, which would hurt US long-term growth, reduce remittances to poorer nations and boost anti-US resentment particularly in the Middle East.

Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act Déjà vu

Trump’s stated protectionism does have a historical precedent. In 1930, the US Congress passed the notorious Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act, which sharply raised the cost of foreign imports.

While the Tariff Act seemed to work initially, it soon caused other nations to retaliate. As rounds of tit-for-tat retaliation contributed to the Great Depression, the way was soon paved for another world war.

Trumping world trade is a bad idea, but its timing is even worse.

The original, slightly shorter commentary was released by China Daily on January 23, 2017

By Osama Al-Sharif*

Those who had hoped that the proposed peace talks on Syria, which opened in the Kazakh capital on Monday, would stumble at the last minute may feel miffed. They include a desperate Syrian regime, its main backer Iran, and a number of hard-line opposition groups.

The two-day talks, co-sponsored by Moscow and Ankara, represent a serious attempt to seek a political settlement to the six-year bloody war in Syria, which has claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands, displaced millions, and left more than a third of the country in ruins.

The convening of the Astana talks, in the presence of a regime delegation and one representing most opposition groups, is a major political victory for the evolving Russian-Turkish alliance. The meeting will seek to bolster last month’s fragile cease-fire, and approve a series of agreements to facilitate the provision of humanitarian aid, especially to besieged areas.

Behind this accelerating process is Russia and its President Vladimir Putin. He has emerged as the main power broker in Syria, having intervened militarily more than a year ago to rescue the regime of President Bashar Assad, but realizing that an open-ended civil war is no longer an option.

For Iran — which has dispatched tens of thousands of its Revolutionary Guards, backed by Hezbollah, in addition to Shiite fighters from Iraq and Afghanistan — the stakes in Syria are too high to let go. Tehran’s support for the Assad regime exceeds the declared objectives of backing legitimacy, fighting terrorism and liberating the entire Syrian territory.

It is an integral part of a sectarian scheme that seeks to extend Tehran’s influence over much of Iraq and Syria, altering demographic realities there and securing a permanent presence in both countries. Moscow’s intervention in Syria, and subsequent control by Russia of the Syrian dossier, threaten such plans.

Furthermore, Turkey’s recent breakthrough as a sponsor and guarantor of the truce in Syria is a major source of concern for Tehran’s ardent rulers. Ankara’s close relationship with, and influence over, opposition groups is an essential component in the Russian-Turkish understanding on Syria. Both have important cards to play in moving toward a final political settlement that will eventually allow the Syrian people to decide their own destiny.

In the long run, both Ankara and Moscow believe that once a transitional phase has begun — in accordance with Geneva I principles and UN resolutions, particularly Resolution 2254 — Assad’s role will have to be negotiated at some stage. Tehran will not accept this.

Putin and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan have more in common today, in terms of their regional outlook, than do Russia and Iran. The latter remains a pariah state with mounting evidence that it has become a destabilizing force in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and the Arabian Gulf.

The incoming US administration is openly hostile toward Tehran, and President Donald Trump will seek closer cooperation with Moscow and Ankara mainly to confront Daesh. He is unlikely to challenge Moscow’s political efforts in Astana and beyond.

On the other hand, the Syrian opposition is beginning to understand the changing geopolitical realities in the region, and will seek to re-evaluate its position on various issues in order to remain relevant and engaged in the political process. It now views Russia’s role as positive, with the head of the Syrian opposition delegation claiming that Moscow is trying to play a neutral role in Astana. Those who abandon the talks risk being cast as terrorist groups.

For Putin, Russia’s strategic objectives following its incursion have mostly been met. Moscow now has significant naval and air bases in Syria. Furthermore, America’s untidy withdrawal from the region under former President Barack Obama has allowed Russia to become a major regional player.

It maintains good working relations with the Gulf countries, Egypt, Jordan and Israel. Putin is even pushing for a new role in war-torn Libya, and Moscow is attempting to mediate between Palestinian factions.

Russia’s resurgence is bound to clash with Iran’s regional ambitions, particularly in Syria. The two agendas will collide sooner rather than later. However, Tehran can still sabotage the budding political process in Syria. Its power over the Assad regime remains considerable. Assad must now decide if he wants to turn Syria into a client state for Iran, with its sinister agenda, or embark on a long and arduous path toward a peaceful and all-inclusive settlement.

Both the regime and the opposition will have to be encouraged to make meaningful, even painful compromises if they want to end the bloodbath in Syria. This is where Russian-Turkish mediation becomes especially important as the two warring sides succumb to exhaustion after six grueling years.

Astana is but a small step forward in a long and unpredictable journey in search of a workable political settlement in Syria. It is a complicated process, especially as some opposition groups refuse to join while Turkey insists on excluding Syria’s Kurds.

However, it is encouraging that both Moscow and Ankara appear adamant on preserving the current cease-fire and blocking a return to military confrontations. Iran may not be pleased with the Russian-Turkish attempt to launch a political process, but it can do little to stop it — for now.

* Osama Al-Sharif is a journalist and political commentator based in Amman.

By Ja’far Haghpanah

The international meeting held for two days in Kazakhstan’s capital city, Astana, is very important for the following reasons, because it aims to achieve a diplomatic solution to the ongoing crisis in Syria, which has lasted for almost six years.

First of all, at a time that an international will and solution to put an end to such crises as that of Syria are lacking, regional initiatives stand a high chance of effectiveness provided that they are sufficiently supported by big powers. According to theories of regional studies, under present conditions and following the Cold War, various regions of the world have more room to act independent of international system. As a result, regional powers are sometimes even more capable than global powers in establishing security and playing negative or positive roles through strengthening or undermining those security arrangements, which are at odds with their interests. We see that at the present time and with regard to crisis management in Syria, Iran and Turkey, as two regional powers, enjoy such a position. The influence of these two governments, along with cooperation from Russia as a global power, has had such effects as reduction of the crisis in the Arab country, management of the war in eastern part of the city of Aleppo, and opening a way for people to leave the eastern part of this city followed by establishment of a nationwide fragile, though more or less sustainable, ceasefire for the first time in the country. Therefore, continuation of efforts aimed at finding a diplomatic way out of this major catastrophe cannot be possible unless in this way.

Secondly, despite its serious root causes and various domestic aspects, the crisis in Syria is by nature a regional and international phenomenon and this issue makes maximum cooperation from all international actors and organizations inevitable. Naturally, the interests that all governments have in Syria crisis are not the same and it is basically the conflict among their interests, which has caused prolongation of this civil war. The spread of crisis under present circumstances has created a situation in which a high number of actors, though with different interests, have reached the conclusion to cooperate in order to repel common threats. Spread of terrorism, sectarianism and immigration have caused governments like Turkey to make a serious change in their foreign policy toward Syria. Continuation of this trend and taking revisionist steps by more actors can create more hope for the management of Syria crisis. In the meantime, it seems that European governments, which already feel threatened more than before by extremism, mass immigration and terrorism, are now more ready to join the peace making process in Syria. Therefore, efforts made by the Islamic Republic of Iran can be focused on convincing the European Union to cooperate and interact with this process more than before.

Thirdly, the new administration in the United States is more willing and motivated compared to its predecessor to intervene in Syria crisis. The political and security team set up by new US President Donald Trump is more aware of and skillful with regard to issues in the Middle East, and despite certain differences between Trump and his defense secretary, James Mattis, this team is on the whole expected to give a bigger impetus to Washington’s policy in the Middle East. This is true, especially taking into account that throughout his election campaigning, Trump put the highest stress on the need to fight Daesh (which he described as Islamic terrorism). At the same time, the necessary condition for involvement of any political actor, including the United States, in the management of Syria crisis is to accept the status of the incumbent government in Damascus and to avoid of repetition of wrong policies of the past, which mainly led to further strengthening of terrorist groups. Naturally, under conditions when new officials at the White House are in a state of transition before taking official office, involvement of the United States in regional and international initiatives, including international talks in Astana, cannot be very effective. This is why the United States has sent no diplomatic team to these talks and its presence in Kazakhstan’s Syria talks is limited to participation of US ambassador to Astana as observer. As a result, it is clear that this presence is merely aimed at keeping abreast of this affair and the content of negotiations, and will be devoid of any serious effect. However, the role of the United States is expected to increase in the future through heightened interaction and bargaining with Russia. At the same time, both officials in Washington and Moscow are aware that when it comes to operations in the field, they cannot ignore the role played by such effective regional actors as the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Fourthly, instead of a great number of countries, which had taken part in Geneva 1 and 2 conferences on Syria in the past and failed to achieve any results, this time only a few number of effective actors have come together in Astana. This change is indicative of a major development in management of Syria crisis. The importance of each actor is now clear and we must expect that through cooperation of these governments and addition of a few other regional and international actors, management of Syria crisis will enter a new phase of effectiveness in order to reduce intensity of the crisis.

The goal to global trade in health data is new treatments, but government regulations do not keep pace.

By Adam Tanner*

In 1956, the head of one of Madison Avenue’s leading medical advertising agencies dispatched a copywriter to West Germany to set up a new company for producing surveys of the pharmaceutical market. The young executive had never been abroad and spoke no German.

The firm, initially called Institut für Medizinische Statistik, quickly won clients by providing insights on which drugs sold well in which markets. Drug companies eagerly bought these reports, and IMS expanded to other European countries, North and South America, and Asia.

Today, the US-based data-mining firm, recently renamed QuintilesIMS, operates in more than 100 countries and is at the heart of a for-profit global trade in anonymized patient data. The $20 billion company assembles dossiers on more than half a billion patients worldwide from physician records, prescriptions, insurance claims, lab tests and more.

US competitors include IBM Watson Health, GE Healthcare, LexisNexis and firms linked to insurers such as UnitedHealth’s Optum Anthem’s HealthCore and Blue Cross Blue Shield’s Blue Health Intelligence. Rivals exist in other countries as well.

Privacy can be at risk. Patient dossiers omit obvious identifiers such as names and national ID numbers, but have become more vulnerable to re-identification as computing power advances and a constant influx of data provide ever more clues into who is who and where patients live and work. Another complicating issue is the growing availability of insights from DNA testing, identifying by its very nature.

The growing possibility of re-identification from such dossiers poses risks of discrimination against people with mental health issues or any array of medical complications. In some cases, such action would be legal, such as in denying life insurance, and in others not, such as in hiring and promotion decisions. Medical information could be used to blackmail and embarrass anyone from common citizen or national leader.

Data miner dossiers are legal under US rules and serve mostly to help pharmaceutical firms market and advertise their drugs. Data miners also highlight the promise of big data leading to new discoveries and cures. “The future of medicine rests on data: the evidence that is the basis for the discovery, development and dispensing of prescription products and all other healthcare decisions,” noted QuintilesIMS in an October report. “Mastering the collection and interpretation of data is therefore vital for the vitality and continued global contributions of the biopharmaceutical industry.”

So far, industry executives admit to garnering interesting insights rather than stunning breakthroughs.

The ability of commercial firms to assemble dossiers on individuals comes at a time that few Americans have access to complete records for their own health care. The fractured nature of US medicine complicates this issue compared to countries with national systems.

Officials in many countries suggest that they enjoy stronger privacy protections than the United States, either through law or tradition. Yet increasingly, American-style accumulation of sensitive medical data on millions of patients is becoming commonplace.

For example, many Japanese officials contend that the aggregating and selling anonymized patient files does not occur in Japan as it would violate Japanese sensibilities. “The difference between IMS in Japan and in the United States, in Japan they treat data and privacy in a more sensitive way,” said Yoshitake Yokokura, president of the influential Japan Medical Association. “Medicine should be for the public benefit, not for business.”

For-profit ventures are expected to secure patient consent.

Yet IMS advertises the sale of Japanese longitudinal data, including “actual prescription data from pharmacy records for individual patients.” Japan’s guidelines on selling anonymized patient data are blurred because the nation lacks US-style privacy rules, including the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Officials often speak of a gray zone of practices neither explicitly allowed nor forbidden.

Data miners typically do not seek patient consent and maintain that properly anonymized information does not belong to an individual. A group of patients and doctors in South Korea disagreed and launched a legal case against IMS in 2014. After a whistleblower released anonymized records from some of these data-miner transactions, it turned out that a simple code could unlock the patients’ national ID numbers.

Sung Bae Kim, among the South Korean physicians who brought the lawsuit, described his shock: “If it’s syphilis or hypertension or diabetes, if you have information about me without my understanding. If they do not get consent, they have no right. It is very unethical.”

QuintilesIMS is fighting the lawsuit and defends its practices, arguing that only anonymous healthcare data is mined. “IMS Health then takes further steps to ensure the information remains anonymous, such as additional cryptographic coding,” said spokesman Tor Constantino.

Europe boasts of stronger personal data protections than the United States. Yet data miners advertise anonymized patient dossiers from a number of European Union countries. For example, in Germany QuintilesIMS sells details from electronic health records, prescriptions, hospital discharges and patient registries.

Some European countries such as the Nordics maintain national health databases with information on patients suffering from heart disease, cancer and HIV among other ailments. Such efforts, led by the state, are not aimed at making a commercial profit.

Some IMS veterans who worked at the company during the era when focus was limited to broader pharmaceutical market surveys are uneasy about the commercialization of anonymized patient data that have become more commonplace over the past two decades.

Former IMS Japan CEO Shunsuke Keimatsu questions the value of such anonymized individual data for IMS clients and how clients use the data. He also wonders whether anonymous data may violate privacy laws. “To be blunt, I feel that they went too far unless there are legitimate answers to the above two questions,” he said.

Sabrina Chan, executive director of the Hong Kong Association of the Pharmaceutical Industry, expresses a similar sentiment: “No matter that it is anonymous, the consent from the data owner is the most important. My principle is without the patient’s consent, actually it is unethical to disclose their data to anyone.”

The trade in patient data is so opaque that many even in health care and government do not know about it. A top Japanese government official who did not want to be named insisted initially that trade in anonymized patient data did not occur in his country. He then expressed surprise as a researcher detailed how such a trade has emerged in Japan.

Part of the problem is that data miners are reluctant to talk publicly about how the process works.

“The entire US health care system, as well as the entire political system, has devolved into this shadow game,” said Joel Kallich, the founder of Big Health Data who used to work at Amgen and has consulted for IMS. He adds that anyone privy to the data can lie, scheme, manipulate or steal data from the people to whom it belongs.

The example of Japan and many other countries shows that in the absence of specific guidance or government restrictions, market forces will continue to expand personal data collection quietly, even in a traditionally cautious business climate.

There is hope that the commercial circulation of anonymized patient data contributes to science and treatments. Yet given the growing privacy risks, countries should encourage an open, informed public debate for shaping regulations on anonymized patient data in what is increasingly a big and globalized health data bazaar.

* Adam Tanner is the author of the new book Our Bodies, Our Data: How Companies Make Billions Selling Our Medical Records and writer in residence at Harvard University’s Institute for Quantitative Social Science.

There was much vitriol surrounding the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 45th President of the United States. One thing that struck me was the frequency with which commentators threw around the words fascism and fascist. For example, The Huffington Post warned that Trump’s Emerging Fascism Threatens The Nation; Salon chastised the country with the headline Congratulations, America– you did it! An actual fascist is now your official president; The Nation predicted that Anti-Fascists Will Fight Trump’s Fascism in the Streets. There is even a website called refusefascism.org that urges Americans to “stay in the streets to stop the fascist Trump/Pence regime.”

With all the voices warning of the rise of fascism in America, it would serve us well to define fascism to ensure we understand each other and can discuss the matter with intelligence and civility. Our friend Sheldon Richman is helpful on this point with his thorough entry in The Concise Encyclopedia of Economics. Here is an excerpt:

As an economic system, fascism is socialism with a capitalist veneer. . . . Fascism substituted the particularity of nationalism and racialism –”blood and soil”–for the internationalism of both classical liberalism and Marxism. . . .Where socialism sought totalitarian control of a society’s economic processes through direct state operation of the means of production, fascism sought that control indirectly, through domination of nominally private owners. . . . Under fascism, the state, through official cartels, controlled all aspects of manufacturing, commerce, finance, and agriculture. Planning boards set product lines, production levels, prices, wages, working conditions, and the size of firms. Licensing was ubiquitous; no economic activity could be undertaken without government permission. Levels of consumption were dictated by the state, and “excess” incomes had to be surrendered as taxes or “loans.”

Trump is undoubtedly a nationalist and proudly declared during his inauguration address that he would put “America First.” Inasmuch as nationalism is a critical ingredient of fascism, it is indeed present. But notably absent from the Trump agenda is cartelization of American business, planning boards, or control of economic activity or consumption. Instead, Trump seeks to reduce government regulation, has imposed a hiring freeze on federal agencies, and advocates cutting taxes–the lifeblood of the state.

While there are many criticisms one can raise about Trump and certain of his policies, fascism is not one of the them. Unfortunately, fascism has become a label attached to anything a speaker does not like. Modern use of “fascism” is empty and imprecise. If you want to criticize Trump feel free to do so–but please offer reasoned arguments rather than lazily labeling the man as something that he clearly is not.

This article was published by The Beacon.

By C. Jay Engel*

US Fed Chair Janet Yellen’s recent speech at Stanford University certainly was much like Ms. Yellen herself: predictable and safe. She is less opaque than Alan Greenspan, and less combative that Ben Bernanke. But she shares both men’s ability to say very little that is interesting or controversial.

Yellen opened with self-congratulatory Fed-speak. Citing the falling official unemployment number as a sign of Central Planner heroism, Yellen completely washes over the troubling reality of the participation rate. The statisticians, in true form, put the attention on how many in the labor force have a job, but shoo away the fact that the denominator— the labor force itself— is hardly in a healthy state. After all, if tens of millions who need a job have given up looking and are no longer calculated in the labor force, how can this be a labor market recovery?

Consider the problem in graph form, courtesy of Jeff Snider at Alhambra Partners.

Yellen expressed resolve to achieve even more devaluation of the currency on her quest toward 2% inflation. Of course, being well-trained central bankers Yellen and Co. are completely oblivious that their interest rate manipulation devastates the very pillar of a sound economy: the intertemporal structure of production. The aim to “heat up” the economy by tampering with interest rates doesn’t just put upward pressure on consumer prices, it also sets the economy up for a future recession.

Yellen thoroughly defends the honor of the discretionary policy advocates by clearly warning about the dangers of a policy rule. That is, whether monetary policy should be left up to the “discretion” of the FOMC (discretionary monetary policy) or in accordance with predetermined rules, such as the Taylor Rule, Yellen upholds the former. She argues that the Fed needs a level of flexibility to respond to unforeseen events that various “rules” don’t provide. Of course, this entire debate over discretionary vs. rule-based is ludicrous: both of these positions aim to set money supply and interest rates at variance with what the market would provide.

What we need is the market to properly allocate scarce capital according to price signals and in response to the desires and decisions of individual actors throughout “the economy.” In other words, we don’t need more “policy.” We’ve suffered enough.

About the author:
*C. Jay Engel is an investment advisor at The Sullivan Group, an independent, Austrian-School oriented, wealth management firm in northern California. He is especially interested in wealth preservation in lieu of our era of rogue Central Banking. He is an avid reader of the Austro-libertarian literature and a dedicated proponent of private property and sound money. Visit his blog, TheAustrianView.com.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Brandon Capece*

With the confirmation of former CEO of ExxonMobil Rex Tillerson to the office of Secretary of State, the Trump Administration is poised to relive the mistakes of the Reagan era foreign policy towards Latin America in a way that may fundamentally destabilize the region for decades to come. From the earliest days on the campaign trail, there has been one clear message espoused by Trump that defined how the United States would begin to approach international affairs: “America First.” Now, formalized in his first address as President of the United States, “America First” is set to define a new global order that will challenge pre-existing alliances and long-held norms. Far from reassuring, the confirmation hearing of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State has finally brought into public discourse the Trump Administration’s full intention to strong arm the region into getting what it wants, a strategy that has failed U.S. presidents for decades.

In his opening statement to the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs, Secretary Tillerson spoke to the new role of the United States as it departs from the Obama Administration’s foreign policy of promoting cooperation through bilateral and transnational institutions and organizations. In brief, this position can be summarized by the following declaration that, “To achieve the stability that is fundamental to peace and security in the 21st century, Washington’s leadership must not only be renewed, it must be asserted.”[i] From this, Tillerson has effectively espoused a new doctrine of foreign policy that resumes the Reagan Doctrine’s acceptance of active interference in the domestic affairs of nations reconstituted under the banner of self-interest, rather than a genuine desire to promote a liberal democratic world order. To demonstrate this, one only needs to look at the remarks that Tillerson has made with respect to Cuba and Venezuela, and how closely he tows the rhetorical line between regime change and promoting democratization.

Cuba

In the waning days of his second term, President Barack Obama made substantive efforts to redefine the US-Cuba paradigm through the renormalization of diplomatic ties in hopes that gradual exposure to the population of the United States would bring about a measured transition to a truly democratic civic society. To accomplish this goal, the Obama Administration undertook three forceful actions: the opening of travel to Cuba; the reopening of embassies between the nations; and the ending of the Clinton-era “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy towards Cuban refugees. With respect to the opening of diplomatic ties, the resumption of embassy functions in Havana and Washington marked the first formal diplomatic links between the two nations since 1961 when President Eisenhower ended formal connections between the two nations during the heightened tensions of the Cold War.[ii] Although heavily criticized by some Republicans and Miami-based Cuban-Americans as well as several prominent Democrats, his actions have been widely welcomed by almost all of Latin America, who stood in solidarity with Havana at the 2012 Summit of the Americas which called for an end to this outdated U.S. foreign policy.[iii] The ending of the “Wet Foot, Dry Foot” policy also marked a substantive shift towards opening. With this executive action, Obama removed a special exemption to U.S. immigration policy that allowed any Cuban national who made it to the United States to obtain legal permanent resident status along with all its perks.[iv] This long-standing policy has been widely criticized by those in the U.S. for its lack of application to migrants from other Latin American nations who flee from their country due to lack of economic opportunity, large-scale violence, and its status in for the political status quo in the region.[v]

To date, Secretary Tillerson has offered only pallid generalities when speaking about how he would advise President Trump in order to deal with fast-moving events in Cuba. With a clear vision that he does not support the liberalization of the normalization process begun by President Obama, instead preferring a resumption of the traditional heavy-handed approach. More than just reversing many of the executive orders issued by Obama in his opening statement, Tillerson remarked that he believes the actions of Obama “[served] neither the interest of Cubans or Americans.”[vi] He has also remarked that he “will press Cuba to meet its pledge to become more democratic and consider the resumption of more generous trade conditions on trade and travel policies to motivate the release of political prisoners.”[vii] This method of attempting to force policy reforms, as emblemized by the long-standing U.S. trade and travel embargo against Cuba, has been largely ineffective and has been repeatedly condemned by most nations.[viii] That is not to say Tillerson is wrong to suggest that the United States needs to continue to work towards the active promotion of human rights and democracy in Cuba, but his rhetoric suggests an active process that would radically interfere without clear limits as to what would be appropriate conduct in dealing with equally sovereign nations.

Venezuela

With respect to Venezuela, Tillerson has been far more explicit in his denouncement of the Maduro Administration and his desire for the United States to play a much more active role in litigating the domestic affairs of the nation. In response to a series of questions posed by Latin America Goes Global, Tillerson wavered between wavered between the role foreign actors should play in resolving the ongoing dispute between President Maduro and the National Assembly. At one point, Tillerson remarked, “The U.S. should continue to support legitimate dialogue to resolve the political crisis between the Maduro government and the opposition that now controls the National Assembly.”[ix] At another point he asserted, “We will continue to strongly support the efforts of OAS Secretary General Almagro in invoking the Inter-American Democratic Charter to promote the normalization of the situation in Venezuela and restore democratic institutions.”[x] The Inter-American Democratic Charter (IADC) has long been controversial within Latin America since its establishment on September 11, 2001, as seen through the ongoing debate about whether or not the IADC is tantamount to interventionism and a violation of the Organization of American States’ (OAS) principle of national sovereignty.[xi] The IADC authorizes the suspension of membership of the Organization of American States (OAS) as well as the implementation of sanctions against countries whose democracies have been compromised, for which there is no agreed upon definition.

Additionally, as former CEO of ExxonMobil, Tillerson has a storied history with Venezuela, which may impact how he approaches diplomatic relations with the Maduro Administration. When Maduro’s predecessor, President Hugo Chavez, elected to renationalize the oil industry in 2007, it was Tillerson who led ExxonMobil through the ongoing legal battle over fair compensation for the loss of its assets.[xii] Needless to say, in attempting to address ongoing issues within Venezuela such as human rights abuses, the promotion of democracy, an economic crisis, and a migrant crisis, Secretary Tillerson uniquely challenged in his attempt to play an active role in these conversations. That is not to say he does not recognize where problems exist or he lacks serviceable solutions to some of them, but watchdogs should be actively monitoring his Department of State and how his refusal to completely abstain from decisions concerning ExxonMobil after statutory obligations expire should impact his foreign policy priorities.[xiii]

Conclusion

The Council on Hemispheric Affairs has a longstanding commitment to advocate for the respect of human rights, the promotion of democratic governments, and the promotion of rational U.S. foreign policy initiatives towards Latin America. Despite his rhetoric, it is clear that it is the intention of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State to put these values in jeopardy through an active intervention in the domestic affairs of a nation when it is in the best interest of the United States. The regression back to this historically present conservative foreign policy towards Latin America that views nations not as partners in regional affairs but as liabilities for the United States has every potential to destabilize the region as it did time and time again from President Ronald Reagan to President George W. Bush. It is imperative to recall that President Trump remarked to CIA officers the day following his inauguration, “I am so behind you. I know maybe sometimes you haven’t gotten the backing that you’ve wanted and you’re going to get so much backing.”[xiv] As such, although Tillerson’s policy prescriptions have not been blatantly aggressive to date, taken in this context, the liberal democratic order should be constantly concerned about being undermined by both the overt and subversive actions of the current administration with the active consent of Tillerson as the new Secretary of State.

*Brandon Capece, Research Associate at the Council on Hemispheric Affairs

Notes:
[i] “Trump Secretary of State Choice to Say Russia Must be Held to Account.” Fox Business. January 11, 2016. Accessed January 23, 2017. http://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/2017/01/11/trump-secretary-state-choice-to-say-russia-must-be-held-to-account.html.

[ii] Hirschfield Davis, Julia. “Announcing Cuba Embassy Deal, Obama Declares ‘New Chapter’.” New York Times. July 1, 2015. Accessed January 23, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/02/us/us-cuba-restoring-diplomatic-ties-and-reopening-embassies.html?_r=1.

[iii] Zibechi, Raul. “The Failure of the Summit of the Americas VI – FPIF.” Foreign Policy In Focus. May 10, 2013. Accessed January 23, 2017. http://fpif.org/the_failure_of_the_summit_of_the_americas_vi/.

[iv] Teran, Kate. “Obama Puts His Foot Down: U.S. Ends.” Council on Hemispheric Affairs. January 18, 2017. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://www.coha.org/obama-puts-his-foot-down-u-s-ends-wet-foot-dry-foot-policy/.

[v] “What The End Of ‘Wet-Foot, Dry-Foot’ Means For Cubans.” NPR. January 14, 2017. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://www.npr.org/2017/01/14/509807177/what-the-end-of-wet-foot-dry-foot-means-for-cubans.

[vi] “Tillerson: U.S. has not held Cuba ‘accountable’ in reengagement.” Miami Herald. January 11, 2017. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://miamiherald.typepad.com/nakedpolitics/2017/01/tillerson-us-has-not-held-cuba-accountable-in-reengagement.html.

[vii] “Secretary-of-State-designate Rex Tillerson’s confirmation answers on Latin America policy.” Latin America Goes Global. January 20, 2017. Accessed January 23, 2017. http://latinamericagoesglobal.org/2017/01/secretary-state-designate-rex-tillersons-comments-latin-america-policy-confirmation-hearing.

[viii] http://www.un.org/ga/search/view_doc.asp?symbol=A/71/91

[ix] “Secretary-of-State-designate Rex Tillerson’s confirmation answers on Latin America policy.” Latin America Goes Global. January 20, 2017. Accessed January 23, 2017. http://latinamericagoesglobal.org/2017/01/secretary-state-designate-rex-tillersons-comments-latin-america-policy-confirmation-hearing.

[x] Ibid.

[xi] Perina, Rubén M. The Organization of American States as the advocate and guardian of democracy: an insider’s critical assessment of its role in promoting and defending democracy. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 2015.

[xii] Levy-Carciente and Maria Teresa Romero, Sary, and Maria Teresa Romero. “Rex Tillerson Has a Long, Troubled History in Venezuela.” TeleSUR English. January 10, 2017. Accessed January 23, 2017. http://www.telesurtv.net/english/opinion/Rex-Tillerson-Has-a-Long-Troubled-History-in-Venezuela-20170110-0025.html.

[xiii] Everett, Burgess, Andrew Restuccia, and Nahal Toosi. “Key moments from Tillerson’s confirmation hearing.” Politico. January 11, 2017. Accessed January 25, 2017. http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/rex-tillerson-confirmation-hearing-key-moments-233469.

[xiv] Rucker, Philip, John Wagner, and Greg Miller. “Trump, in CIA visit, attacks media for coverage of his inaugural crowds.” The Washington Post. January 22, 2017. Accessed January 25, 2017. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-in-cia-visit-attacks-media-for-coverage-of-his-inaugural-crowds/2017/01/21/f4574dca-e019-11e6-ad42-f3375f271c9c_story.html?utm_term=.6dc188e89090.

By Roger Cliff*

On the evening of May 21, 1941, the German battleship Bismarck, escorted by the heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen, departed the Norwegian port of Bergen, intending to conduct commerce raiding against Allied merchant shipping in the Atlantic Ocean. The Bismarck was the world’s largest warship in operation at the time and proved to be virtually unsinkable by naval gunfire; it ultimately absorbed more than 400 direct hits from naval guns, roughly a quarter of which were main battery rounds from other battleships, without sinking.

And yet less than 6 days into its first combat mission, the Bismarck had nonetheless been sunk. Better armor or a more powerful armament might have made the Bismarck even more dangerous and difficult to sink, but would not have prevented it from being sunk. Similarly, recent changes to the organizational structure of China’s military have made clear improvements, but do nothing to address its most important weaknesses.

Recent Changes

Over the past few months the leadership of China’s military has announced several major changes to the organizational structure of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). One change has been the dismantling of the four “general departments” that formerly served as both the headquarters of the PLA Army (PLAA) and as a joint staff for the entire military.

Most joint staff–type functions have been moved to the Central Military Commission (CMC) while a separate PLAA headquarters has been created, comparable to the headquarters of the PLA Navy, Air Force, and Rocket Force (formerly known as the Second Artillery Force), to oversee the PLAA. In addition, the Rocket Force has been elevated in stature from an independent branch (兵种) to a full-fledged service (军种). A new organization, the Strategic Support Force (战略保障部队), has been created and is apparently independent of the four services, although precisely how it will be organized and function are unclear as of this writing.

The other major area of organizational change has been the replacement of the former seven military region commands (军区) by five theater commands (战区). Aside from the enlarged geographic areas of responsibility, a key difference between the new theater commands and old military region commands is that the former are explicitly designed to be joint headquarters similar to the geographic combatant command headquarters of the U.S. military.

Under the old system, although the commanders of the military region air forces (MRAFs) and, if applicable, PLA Navy fleets who were based in a military region were deputy commanders of the military region, the MRAFs and fleets themselves were not subordinate to the commander of the military region but rather to the headquarters of the PLA Air Force and Navy. Now each theater command has established a joint command post and, presumably, at least in a small-scale contingency, the PLA Air Force, Navy, and Rocket Force forces in a region would be under the command of the theater commander.

Assessment

These changes have rightly been recognized as significant steps toward resolving some longstanding problems caused by the PLA’s previous organizational structure, particularly in the area of “jointness.” Creating a separate PLAA headquarters and moving the joint staff functions previously performed by the general departments to the CMC eliminate the inherent institutional bias caused by having a single organization responsible for both PLA army specific and joint functions. Elevating the PLA Rocket Force to the level of a full-fledged service increases its stature and influence relative to the other services in general and helps counterbalance the PLAA dominance in particular. The creation of the Strategic Support Force may further dilute the influence of the army. And creating theater commands, in the place of collections of single-service organizations that just happen to be located in the same place, means that the PLA can now conduct truly joint operations at the theater level.

These changes have rightly been recognized as insufficient to achieve true jointness. The key remaining obstacle is continued army dominance of PLA command organizations, even if those organizations are now officially joint. Once reason for this is that even if all 300,000 troops to be eliminated from the PLA, as announced in September 2015, are members of the army, more than half of the remaining PLA personnel will still be army personnel. Thus everything else being equal, on average more than half the qualified personnel available to fill positions in joint organizations will be from the army. Continued army dominance appears to be the result of more than just the numbers of available personnel, however, as all the commanders and four of the five political commissars of the ostensibly joint theater commands are PLAA officers.1

Even if the dominance of the PLAA is gradually reduced over time, however, the PLA faces more serious challenges than a lack of jointness, and the recent organizational changes do nothing to resolve these challenges and, in some cases, make them worse.

The PLA has made significant improvements in many areas over the past two decades in an effort to transform itself into an effective, modern fighting force. These improvements have been greatest in the areas of personnel quality, weaponry, and training. Nonetheless, fundamental flaws remain that, in a conflict, would likely prevent the PLA from effectively employing its weaponry, personnel, and training. Most crucially, the operational doctrine of the PLA is inconsistent with both its organizational culture and its organizational structure.

Organizational Structure

Organizational theorists use several general characteristics to describe an organization’s structure. One is organizational height (that is, the number of organizational layers between the lowest ranking person and the highest ranking person in an organization). To operate at maximum efficiency, an organization should have the smallest number of layers needed to ensure that supervisors at each level have no more direct subordinates than they can adequately manage. The optimal height of a specific organization depends on its size and the nature of its activities, but in general adding organizational layers tends to reduce efficiency. In this regard the PLA’s recent structural changes do not appear to have made a significant difference.

One organizational level, the general departments, was eliminated, but their functions were simply moved up to the CMC—in effect adding a layer to the CMC’s chain of command—and horizontally, in the creation of the PLAA headquarters. Comparison with the U.S. military, however, suggests that the PLA’s structure is not overly “tall.” The PLA has roughly the same number of organizational layers between top commanders and frontline troops, even though the PLA will have roughly 50 percent more personnel than the U.S. military even after the current round of troop reductions. Thus, there does not appear to be a need for the PLA to eliminate organizational layers.

Other characteristics used to describe an organization’s structure are its degrees of centralization, standardization, and horizontal integration. The type of organization that is optimal for a military in these dimensions depends on the nature of its operational doctrine. If the military’s doctrine emphasizes maneuver and indirection, such as the Israeli military and German army during the early part of World War II, then it needs an organization that is decentralized, has a low degree of standardization (that is, allows its personnel to deviate from standard practices as the situation warrants), and has a high degree of horizontal integration so that field commanders can coordinate directly with their local counterparts in other units and services without having to get approval all the way up and down their respective chains of command. But if the military has a doctrine that emphasizes direct engagement (that is, defeating an enemy through direct assaults on his main forces, such as most of the U.S. and Soviet armies during World War II), then it needs an organization that is highly centralized, has a high degree of standardization, and has a low degree of horizontal integration.

Since 1999 the PLA has had a doctrine that emphasizes indirection and maneuver. Authoritative PLA publications advocate avoiding directly engaging an adversary’s main forces and instead conducting “focal point” strikes on targets such as command and control centers, information systems, transportation hubs, and logistics systems, with the goal of rendering the adversary “blind” and “paralyzed.” The transient and unpredictable nature of opportunities to attack such targets means that effectively implementing this doctrine requires an agile organization that is decentralized, has a low degree of standardization, and has a high degree of horizontal integration.

By all accounts, however, the PLA has precisely the opposite type of organization. The PLA is highly centralized, with low-level officers and enlisted personnel having limited authority to make their own decisions. The PLA is highly standardized, with minimal latitude for individuals or sub-organizations to deviate from prescribed practices. And the PLA has low levels of horizontal integration, with most personnel spending their entire careers within a single chain of command and most units having only infrequent contact with units outside their chain of command. Thus there is a fundamental incompatibility between the nature of the PLA’s doctrine and its organizational structure.

The recent structural changes to the PLA have done little to alter this incompatibility. The joint command posts set up in each theater employ tens of personnel drawn from each of the services. For many of these personnel, working in the command post will be the first time they have had to work with personnel from another service. If the average term of assignment to a joint command post lasts, for instance, 3 years, then in 15 years’ time there may be several thousand PLA members, mostly officers, who are experienced working with personnel from other services and branches. This will expand their personal networks beyond their own chains of command and strengthen their ability to communicate and coordinate their actions with members of other branches and services. These will represent a tiny percentage of the several hundred thousand officers and two million members of the PLA, however, and will not address the fact that, unless current PLA personnel practices change, the vast majority of PLA members will not have experience working in, or with, another division, much less a unit in a different military region or service than the ones in which they have spent their entire career.

Other aspects of the recent structural changes, moreover, are designed to increase the centralization of the PLA, not decrease it. Abolishing the general departments and moving their functions to the CMC, although this does not change the number of organizational layers between them and the commander of the China’s armed forces (President and CMC Chairman Xi Jinping), will tend to have the effect of increasing central control over these functions. In addition, the PLA has adopted a “CMC chairmanship responsibility system,” under which “all significant issues in national defense and army building” will be “planned and decided by the CMC chairman,” as compared to previously, when senior officers at the CMC, general departments, and military regions were allowed to make some of these decisions on their own.2 The effects of this movement toward more centralized control at the upper levels of the PLA are likely to permeate down to lower levels, resulting in an organization that is even more centralized than previously. Thus the recent structural changes to the PLA have not only not resolved the fundamental inconsistency between its operational doctrine and its organizational structure, but they also have made the situation worse.

Organizational Culture

The recent structural changes do not address another fundamental flaw in the PLA, which is an incompatibility between its operational doctrine and its organizational culture. Just as a military with a doctrine that emphasizes maneuver and indirection needs an organizational structure that is decentralized, has low levels of standardization, and has high levels of horizontal integration, it needs an organizational culture that values initiative, innovation and creativity, adaptability and flexibility, and risk-taking. But these are among the qualities that are least valued by PLA organizational culture. The recent structural changes, moreover, the effects of which are to increase central control over the PLA, are likely to result in a further discouragement of initiative, innovation and creativity, adaptability and flexibility, and risk-taking. Thus, the recent structural changes have likely made this weakness of the PLA worse as well.

Conclusion

The Bismarck’s sinking resulted from a fundamental mismatch between its capabilities and those of what turned out to be the dominant platform for conducting naval warfare in 1941—the airplane. The Bismarck was unable to defend itself against attacks by a total of just 24 British torpedo bombers that resulted in three torpedo hits, one of which jammed the Bismarck’s port rudder, rendering the ship unmaneuverable. Not only did the jammed rudder prevent the Bismarck from escaping the two British battleships and two heavy cruisers that were pursuing it, but it was also unable to return fire when they did.

As a result, even though the British ships were unable to sink the Bismarck with gunfire, they were able to put its main armament out of action, set the entire ship aflame, and eventually sink it with torpedoes launched from close range. The recent changes to the organizational structure of the PLA will unquestionably improve its capabilities to conduct military operations, but without fundamental changes to its organizational structure and organizational culture or, alternatively, to its operational doctrine, the PLA will be unable to take full advantage of the considerable improvements it has made to its personnel, weaponry, and training over the past two decades. This is not to say that the PLA would not be a dangerous and formidable foe for the armed forces of the United States or other nation. After all, the Bismarck sank a British battlecruiser and damaged a battleship before itself being sunk, but it would be a flawed giant, vulnerable to an adversary that can exploit its weaknesses.

About the author:
*Dr. Roger Cliff is a Senior Research Scientist at the Center for Naval Analyses.

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

Notes:
1 The fifth political commissar spent most of his career in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) before transferring to the PLA Air Force.

2 See Phillip C. Saunders and Joel Wuthnow, China’s Goldwater-Nichols? Assessing PLA Organizational Reforms, Strategic Forum 294 (Washington, DC: NDU Press, April 2016), 6, available at <ndupress.ndu.edu/Portals/68/Documents/stratforum/SF-294.pdf>.

This morning, here in Minneapolis, I’ll learn whether six jurors believe beyond a reasonable doubt that Dan Wilson and I are criminals.  The court case stems from an action protesting the execution of Jamar Clark, age 24, who died in the early morning of November 15, 2015 outside a north Minneapolis apartment complex. Two Minneapolis police officers, Mark Ringgenberg and Dustin Schwarze, were involved in the shooting. Jamar Clark died after a bullet was fired directly into his head. Several witnesses say that he was handcuffed and motionless when he was shot dead. The police officers have been cleared of all charges and are back on the job.

Dan and I are among 25 defendants charged with obstructing a Minneapolis Metro transit vehicle on April 11, the opening day of the Minnesota Twins baseball season.  The Legal Rights Center lawyers working with us arranged a calendar so that small groups would be tried weekly.  Earlier this month, two people were acquitted of all charges and one person has been convicted. Two days ago, Andrew Gordon and Priyanka Premo, lawyers from the Minneapolis Legal Rights Center who are representing Dan and me, began the jury selection process. Yesterday, evidence was presented and the six-person jury was asked to determine a verdict. The jury didn’t arrive at a verdict last night. We felt grateful they are not rushing to judgement on what many would see as a cut and dry case. The prosecution presented, as evidence, a photo of me standing, arms linked with others, in front of a bus.

Before the April 11 action, Black Lives Matter activists facilitated a retreat for about 100 Midwesterners who gather, annually, for a “Faith and Resistance” retreat. The retreats invite communities that operate Catholic Worker houses of hospitality, along with other companions, gather for education, reflection and action. The communities try to live simply, share resources more radically and prefer service to dominance. They also promote nonviolent resistance to injustices.

During the retreat, we learned more about Jamar Clark’s execution and the many protest actions already organized by Black Lives Matter activists. In Chicago, I knew of an earlier execution that took place five miles from where I was raised. On October 20, 2014, a police officer, Jason Van Dyke pumped 16 bullets into Laquan McDonald’s body after he had already fallen to the ground. Laquan’s executioner was initially held without bail for one month. Officer Van Dyke was released on November 30^th, 2014.

My court proceeding was exceedingly polite and well-mannered, like a game of “Mother May I” on steroids as lawyers preceded every action they took with an address to Judge Shereen Askalani:  Your Honor, may I publish Exhibit #1 (hand it to the jurors). Your Honor, may I step to the side so that I can view the video? Scripted, choreographed, utterly careful.  In my mind’s eye, I kept seeing videos of people of color, like Laquan McDonald and Jamar Clark, dying in pools of their own blood. The prosecutor insisted that any mention of the signs we had on April 11, signs that read “White Silence Equals Violence” and “Justice for Jamar,” could inflame the passions of the jury. Judge Askalani instructed our lawyers not to mention, in opening remarks, anything that would reveal our intentions for protesting.

It’s odd. In court, witnesses promise to “tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth” but then proceed to disclose only a tiny sliver of the truth in order to comply with the Court’s myriad instructions. There was barely a mention of Jamar Clark, or of police executions. There was no discussion of the systemic racism that afflicts people in every community where people of color are executed with no questions asked. The police officers become the judge, jury and executioner.  It reminds me of targeted assassinations conducted through drone warfare.

I’m not sure, this morning, if a jury of our peers will judge Dan and me criminals.

I am quite sure that I didn’t travel to Minneapolis with the intent of blocking a Metro Transit bus. I came in response to an unjust execution. I couldn’t find myself standing idly by, as though mesmerized, while these executions continue. Does anyone favor unjust executions? If we don’t favor them, how do we plan to stop them?

On April 11, 2016, I linked arms with people who wanted to raise voices, sound an alarm, and create a tension within the wider community that could initiate a discussion on police executions and violence. We linked arms with the knowledge other arms will ache for loved ones who will never return.

If a guilty verdict is rendered, I’ll still act in accordance with my belief that we didn’t act criminally. And, truthfully, we can never be acquitted of our responsibility to continue breaking the terrible silence surrounding unjust executions that afflict people of color in the U.S.

Update: The jury rendered its verdict. My co-defendant, Dan Wilson, was found not guilty.  I was found guilty. The prosecutor recommended the judge sentence me to 30 days in the Minneapolis Workhouse. Judge Askalani sentenced me to 10 days in the workhouse, but stayed the sentence, meaning it will be imposed only if I am arrested under similar circumstances within one year.

Although the sentence, “If facts contradict to my theory, the worse for the facts,” has been attributed to the famous German philosopher George Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, within the world of 21st Century we can see a lot of examples of that phrase hidden under the two magic words of “populism” and “alternative facts”.

While in Europe everything is falling apart due to the rising populism of the neo-right parties that have made the foundation of their political program out of the recent massive immigration wave from the Near and Middle East countries, at the same time, abroad, in the United States of America there has arisen a new sociological attempt of the creation of “alternative facts” with the appearance of the new US president — whose name I do not want to mention for the reason who knows what might happen even to me (after all his spokesman confirmed on Tuesday that his boss, the US president, is a conspiracy theorist).

Also, I disagree with Slavoj Zizek’s statement that the new US president is a “liberal centrist” because behind, or even more, on the scene we have visible devotions of him being a “neo-liberal populist”.

I am really afraid that irregardless of having already survived one war (back in ’90s of the XXth Century during the dissolution of former Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia – in Bosnia and Herzegovina) that now the word “truth” has lost its meaning, and is being faced with adaptable and vivid “alternative facts” within the creation of the new recreational political establishment whose goal is to continue making totally “blind” those who are living within the reality of being already slightly-blinded people of the Earth.

The attacks on the mainstream media, coupled with a lack of media literacy within the wider areas of population, along with the information that eight people hold 50% of the world’s wealth and more money than 3.6 billion people of our planet, all simply shows that we are faced with an abyss that is just one step in front of us, while, in the same time, behind us we just have lost hope.

What is the solution for the World as Global Sin in this moment of living for all of us, and, above all, for the future generation, if there will be any?

Before answering that question, an aside to note that we might be in the near future faced with the plot of possible election hacking in Europe by Russian hackers, as US intelligence service have warned their allies in Europe this January. However, having on one side a new president who is really a New World Order leader, a populist and a person devoted to alternative facts (and who does not hide that a “lie” for him is just a tool within his agenda of gaining a new “truth” of the World), and on the other side we have a deeply and destructively divided intellectual power of the World, we can just hope and try to shake up this new status quo by the following:

1. 2017 might be a new light for the World – only if liberal, conscious and open and free-minded people of all ethnicities, race and/or gender and/or age, using Social Media rise up and establish a new conscious of the World, respecting thee differences among us as our advantages for the benefit of all.

2. The goal is the survival of the World, but not for the benefit of a few.

3. The tool for that is our consciousness in connection with the ultimate objective that we are humans in the first place, and after that everything else.

Although, the loss of consciousness is simply connected with consumerism, neo-liberalism, must have it that everyday society within which the using of new technologies does not exist, as mentioned, for the benefit of all, but for the benefit of the few. The introduction of robots working instead of people creates new unemployed, instead of creating a society within which less work will be more devoted for more inspirational creation of other skills, that is focused on our own social development through knowing more about other cultures and by the creation of more cultural competencies for the benefit of the masses.

Is that a new vision of devil word of “socialism”?

No, and my opinion is that we have to establish a new word that will suck into its meaning the full and devoted respect for others who are different from us, and establish a World of mutual trust and joint work that is devoted to the creation of an education system that will be devoted to skills and critical thinking – through the communicating of hope and trust in our time, as Pope Francis underlined on January 24, 2017.

Furthermore, being faced with terrorism we have to stress that when we say “Muslim terrorism” and/or “Islamic terrorism” we have to understand that those terrorists are not Muslims at all and they do not belong to the Islamic religion. No, this terrorists are simply the trash of the humanity, because terrorism has no religion, and the same goes for even those who committed extremist acts supposedly on behalf Christianity, hiding behind so-called “white supremacy” and/or defending a faith, even in the USA.

So, is religion an answer? What is needed is not just a proper, joint and open discussion of the religious leaders of the leading religion of the world, but also an open and fair talk about the real issues for the world’s survival.

Let us call this new word SOCIO-ALTERNATIVISM, because, believe it or not, if do not start talking and talking and talking about the alternative solutions to our problems, we will be faced with the further development of the World as Global Sin – regardless of our race, ethnicity, gender and/or religion. Simply put, the first part of the word is related to society in general, while the second part shows that we have to seek for alternatives, as the current societies in the World cannot show us the light at the end of tunnel.

Having in mind that, as mentioned above, the new US president is a conspiracy theorist … will the lies of conspiracy theories become the alternative facts of the New World Order?

The answer is within the consciousness of all of us. We have to start working on a Brand New World Order of socio-alternativism. For the benefit of all, through the interactions, integrations and innovations of the souls within and around all societies of the World.

At least 10 people died Monday when gunmen opened fire and detonated bombs at a hotel in Mogadishu, Somalia, local authorities said.

It’s unclear how many people were injured in the attack and the death toll is expected to increase, authorities and ambulance service personnel said. The Islamist militant group al-Shabaab, which has carried out similar attacks in Somalia, took responsibility for the incident in a post on its website.

Eyewitnesses said an explosives-laden truck detonated at the Hotel Dayah, which is near the Somali Federal Parliament and presidential residence. Attackers then entered the hotel, shooting; another vehicle, which delivered some of the shooters, exploded about 40 minutes after the first, killing and injured those who had gathered.

The hotel attracts Parliament members and other officials. The attack Wednesday came as Somalia prepares for a parliamentary election of its president.

The second bomb Wednesday injured at least seven journalists, said Mohamed Ibrahim Moalimu of the National Union of Somali Journalists.

By Ed Adamczyk, original source