The Trump era begins with the World Economic Forum at Davos ending in shivers and a threat to globalization. The summit – the world’s biggest economic forum, embracing global, regional and industry agenda – was dormant without active participation from the USA. The Gaurdian said Davos without Donald Trump was like Hamlet without the prince .

Eyebrows were raised over Chinese growth, which depends on its globalization plank. This was reflected in the President Xi Jinping ‘s inaugural speech, when he said, “The point I want to make is that many of the problems troubling the world are not caused by economic globalization.”

The threat to globalization was reinforced by President Trump’s executive order to pull the US out of the TPP as one of the first moves, coupled with his committing to reduce corporate taxes to 15 percent to 20 percent from 35 percent provided they bring back their production to USA. Nullifying the guesses that his campaign was just rhetoric, these moves signaled Trump’s style of economic diplomacy is in tune to his campaign pledges. Isolating the USA from multilateral trade deals and flexing American manufacturing muscles premise his prime objectives to promote Make in America through protectionism.

Trump’s moves can be viewed to being similar to Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Make in India initiatives that are aimed at triggering growth . Both are pursuing inclusive growth, overturning globalization as a tool for growth. The force behind the growth for both leaders is job creation. Trump’s America First campaign aims is to create more jobs for Americans, by curbing US potential for foreign cheap labor and Modi’s Make In India aims for more job creation focusing on the expansion of manufacturing in the country.

Given the focus on Trumpnomics and Modinomics to spearhead job oriented growth, globalization in the world is poised for a downturn, which could mean China will be forced to embrace ‘hard times’ to retrieve its growth. Trump’s isolationist policy, bolstered by America First, will impede Chinese growth.

China is an export-oriented economy. Trump’s import substitution plus approach through tariff barriers and encouraging domestic production through corporate tax incentives will bring back American investors back to the USA. Similarly, Modi ‘s Make in India will reduce dependence on imports from China. Currently, China accounts for the biggest share of India’s imports, fueling a wide trade deficit. The policies from both the US and India will prove a double whammy for the export-led Chinese growth, which is already reeling under over-capacity due to stagnation in the global export market.

The USA has been the engine for export–led China’s economic growth. It is the biggest export destination for China. Trump’s threat to impose a 45 percent tariff on Chinese exports will stir up a trade war between the USA and China. China has vowed to initiate retaliatory measures. But, when looking at the trade powers of both countries in their respective economies, this suggests that China will be in a weaker position in such a race.

The USA shares 18 percent of China’s export, while China accounts for just 7 percent of American exports. The USA is much wealthier and stronger than China and has more room to withstand China’s retaliation. This means that China will be a loser in terms of export damage, resulting in the loss of thousand of Chinese jobs if the Asia country initiates retaliatory measures.

Even though China’s President Xi Jinping jeered in World Economic Forum at Davos that, “ No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war”, historically, the USA has been a good wager in betting for trade wars. Japan is a case in point. In 1985, the Reagan Administration’s Plaza Agreement between the USA, France, UK , Germany and Japan to intervene in currency market and devalue the US Dollar against Japanese yen to decimate Japan’s vehement exports to the USA brought Japanese exporters to the table. When the Japanese yen value skyrocketed, Japanese exports turned expensive, letting American goods become insulated from cheap Japanese goods  particularly the US automobile industry, and created a safety net. Japan faced major damage to its domestic industry, resulting in Japanese manufacturing shifting to low-cost countries and creating a hollow investment in the country.

China admitted that it is the biggest beneficiary of globalization. This is the prime reason that China has been a big supporter of free trade deals. Anti-globalization will restrict Chinese growth. According to the Beijing custom official Huang Songpin, “The trend of anti-globalization is becoming increasingly evident, and China is the biggest victim of the trend .” Given the protectionism intensifying in Trump era, fears looms large over Chinese growth.

In 2016 China witnessed a three-decade slow pace of economic growth. It pinned 6.7 percent growth in 2016 against 6.9 percent in 2015 and the weakest since 1990’s 3.9 percent. Beijing warned of L-shaped growth, meaning once the downturn ends, growth is unlikely to rebound.

Similar concerns were leveled against Chinese growth by India’s gear up in manufacturing, triggered by Make in India initiatives. According to a Chinese daily, China’s manufacturing will rally behind India. It warned China for losing its competitive edge in manufacturing that could spin a major dent to job opportunities in China.

Foreign investors were on a spree to dislocate their manufacturing activities to low-cost countries, and targeting countries such as India and Vietnam.

The recent decisions of Apple for setting up manufacturing facilities and Chinese largest telecom company Huawei Technologies Co Ltd to set up smart phone manufacturing plant in India unnerved the Chinese daily. Along with Apple, the daily warned, its production chain Foxconn will shift to India, causing the loss of thousand of jobs in China. Foxconn is the contract manufacturer for Apple and is the world’s largest contract manufacturing company in electronic industry . Foxconn has decided to invest US$5 billion in India.

If Apple expands in India, it may lure other tech giants in India–  and China is likely to face more transfer of supply chains to India, the Chinese daily warned.

As such, the world will witness a turnaround in the global strategy for economic growth – from globalization to inclusive growth. This will reinforce the return of inward oriented growth, leaving behind the globalization plank as the trigger for growth. Given the situation, China needs to spur its domestic demand to reinvigorate growth, instead of retaliation.

*S. Majumder, Adviser, Japan External Trade Organization (JETRO), New Delhi. Views are personal.

It is with a heavy heart and somber mind that we remember and honor the victims, survivors, heroes of the Holocaust. It is impossible to fully fathom the depravity and horror inflicted on innocent people by Nazi terror.

Yet, we know that in the darkest hours of humanity, light shines the brightest.‎ As we remember those who died, we are deeply grateful to those who risked their lives to save the innocent.

In the name of the perished, I pledge to do everything in my power throughout my Presidency, and my life, to ensure that the forces of evil never again defeat the powers of good. Together, we will make love and tolerance prevalent throughout the world.

Throughout his Christmas message and in keeping with the hymn of the time, Pope Francis repeatedly called for Peace in our World. “Not merely the word, but a real and concrete peace” brought about by changing those attitudes, patterns of behavior and socio-economic systems that bring about conflict. Peace not simply in relationship to armed conflict, but peace for all people in a range of situations.

“Peace to our abandoned and excluded brothers and sisters, to those who suffer hunger and to all the victims of violence. Peace to exiles, migrants and refugees, to all those who in our day are subject to human trafficking. Peace to the peoples who suffer because of the economic ambitions of the few…. [and] peace to those affected by social and economic unrest.”

Ending War

If we are to find answers to the many crises facing humanity, we must first end conflict and establish peace, – within ourselves, our communities, between groups and nations. It sounds like a platitude but it’s the simple and urgent truth – we must learn to live peacefully together.

Since the ‘Cold War’ ended in 1989 violent conflict had been decreasing, but according to the Global Peace Index (measures: ‘the level of safety and security in society; extent of domestic or international conflict; and the degree of militarization’), in 2016 this trend was reversed, albeit marginally.

Terrorism, they found, is at an all time high, battle deaths are at a 25-year high, and the number of displaced people is greater than it’s been for sixty years. The ‘impact of terrorism and political instability’ measure was the area with the most severe levels of deterioration: Deaths from terrorism increased by 80% compared to 2015, with 94 of the 163 countries surveyed recording at least one terrorist incident, and 11 countries suffering over 500 deaths, compared with five the previous year.

In addition to the heightened terrorist threat, of significant concern is the US military build up in the South Asia Sea, where China is being encircled (see, ‘The Coming War On China’ by John Pilger). As well as the concentration of NATO forces in Eastern Europe, where Russia is being contained – or threatened depending on your point of view. Whilst American and allied nations paint China and Russia as the aggressors, such US sabre rattling is provocative and increases, rather than defuses tensions.

The Roots of Conflict

So in the midst of a world in turmoil and transition, what do we need to do to create peace? What are the causes of conflict and the obstacles to peace? In order to approach these questions it is essential to understand the relationship between society, in all its forms, and the individuals that make up society.

Is society and all that takes place within it, something separate from us, or, as the great Indian philosopher J. Krishnamurti repeatedly said, we are the world and the world is us; “our problems are the world’s problems.” It is a statement of fact that in many ways is self-evident; there is violence and intolerance within society e.g., because we ourselves are violent and intolerant.

Any change within the world is therefore dependent upon there being a change within us; “to put an end to outward war, you must begin to put an end to war in yourself.” One follows, and flows from the other.

Recognizing the inter-relationship of the individual and society opens up other enquiries, chief amongst them what we might term agitation, or elicitation.

A multitude of qualities and tendencies rest within all human beings – some good, some not so good, and whilst we accept the logic of Krishnamurti’s assertion, it must also be true that the nature of the society within which people are living, its values, beliefs and methods, encourage certain attitudes and types of behavior. Therefore the ‘question of peace’, and how it can be realized, needs to be approached both from the perspective of the individual and his/her role and responsibility in bringing it about, and from an understanding of the collective atmosphere within which we are living, and how one impacts on the other.

Injustice and tension

We live within a world fashioned by certain structural constraints, political, economic and social systems (including religious), ideologically rooted, promoting certain values. Ideals, many of which, feed selfish attitudes of ambition, and self-aggrandizement that in turn strengthen divisions and engender separation. And is peace possible in a world where such attitudes are encouraged?

These systems have been designed in an attempt to order society, to exert and maintain control, and, so the models proponents maintain, to establish practical methods of meeting humanity’s needs. These needs are universal: Food and water, shelter, clothing, health care and education, all of which are decreed to be, not simply needs, but rights – Human Rights, and are enshrined as such (articles 25 and 26 UDHR). But, much like peace, these dedicated ‘Rights’ remain little more than pretty words upon a dusty page of exploitation and apathy.

In every country in the world such Rights are dependent upon the size of a person’s bank account. If you happen to be born into a poor family in a either developed or developing country, and/or are part of a ‘minority’ group, your rights will be denied or restricted; if fate decrees you live in Sub-Saharan Africa or rural India e.g., the chances are food will be scarce, housing basic, health care and education poor or non-existent. In contrast, if you are born into an affluent family, why the world and all that is in it, is yours. The wealthy live in complacent bubbles, and have little or no idea or indeed interest in how the majority of people exist.

The prevailing economic system has allowed for the concentration of wealth and with it political power, into the hands of a hideously wealthy elite, whilst condemning billions to lives of poverty and suffering. Income and wealth inequality is greater than it has ever been, a recent report by Oxfam revealed that “ the world’s eight richest billionaires control the same wealth between them as the poorest half of the globe’s population [3.6 billion people].” Can there possibly be peace in a world where such inequality exists?

This division of men, women and children based on money, privilege and social standing is totally unjust. There seems to be an assumption amongst the privileged that those living in the developed nations are entitled to be as greedy, selfish, rich and powerful as they like, whilst billions live in crushing poverty. Such inherent injustice is a cause of tension, resentment and conflict – all of which run contrary to the cultivation of peace.

These feelings of hostility have been suppressed for years, for generations, but are now beginning to surface as anger and frustration directed towards systemic injustice, and governments that have constructed policies for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.

Neo-liberalism is the inherently unjust and blind system – devoid of compassion. It promotes the decrepit idea that some are more deserving than others; some are entitled to live lives of excess whilst hundreds of millions literally have nothing. It pollutes democracy and relies on voracious consumption, which is poisoning the planet, for its survival.

Social injustice promotes separation and works in opposition to humanity’s underlying unity. It is one of the principle causes of conflict, and if we are to inculcate peace it is a poison that must be driven out of our world. This means we need to design new, just systems, which work for everyone; economic and political models that hold as their principle aim the goal of meeting the needs – addressing the Rights, of every human being.

To achieve this requires nothing more than the principle of sharing being firmly planted at the heart of human affairs; sharing of the world resources, including food and water, as well as the skills, knowledge and technologies, amongst the people of the world – based on need. Making sharing the guiding ideal of systemic change will allow trust to flower, and where there is trust peace becomes possible.

Change of Heart

In order for sharing, along with cooperation, tolerance and understanding, to fashion the political, economic and social systems and thereby create the conditions in which peace becomes possible, a major change in attitudes is required. A shift in consciousness that allows social responsibility and a new imagination to flower, because as Krishnamurti states, “to bring about peace in the world, to stop all wars, there must be a revolution in the individual, in you and me.”

A revolt against ingrained, selfish ways of thinking and acting is needed to bring about such a movement, and fundamental to such a change is the recognition that humanity is one.

We are brothers and sisters of one humanity, and when this underlying unity is sensed the focus on the individual self, with its various self-centered constructs, begins to fade. Harmlessness and responsibility for the group, which is humanity, is fostered, allowing peace within to grow. As the Dalai-Lama states, “what leads to inner peace is cultivating a compassionate heart.”

New systems that take the fear and uncertainty out of life, and unite people instead of dividing, will aid such a shift, but as Krishnamurti made plain, an economic revolution, “without this inward revolution is meaningless,” and would probably not take place. “For hunger is the result of the maladjustment of economic conditions produced by our psychological states: greed, envy, ill-will and possessiveness.”

An ‘inward revolution’ that recognizes our essential unity, dissipates selfishness and allows for peace of mind to quietly settle, will lead to a revolution in how life is organized, and will quite naturally lead to peaceful relationships within individuals, amongst communities and between nations.

Brazilian authorities should ensure a prompt, thorough, and independent investigation into the killing of a military police officer in the northern state of Pará on January 20, 2017 and a subsequent wave of possibly retaliatory killings, Human Rights Watch said Friday.

Rafael da Silva Costa, a 29-year-old member of an elite police unit, was killed on January 20 in the city of Belém during a shootout with suspects. Between that time and midday the following day, 30 people were killed in the Belém metropolitan area. State authorities said 25 of those homicides appear to have been executions, and may have been a response to Costa´s killing.

“Any killing of a police officer deserves a swift and serious response, but retaliatory killings spread terror to whole communities and are totally unacceptable,” said Maria Laura Canineu, Brazil director at Human Rights Watch. “All of these killings need to be thoroughly investigated and punished within the bounds of the law.”

The victims appear to have been targeted at random, based on accounts by witnesses to local media. In several cases, men were killed by shots fired from inside cars. In one case, hooded men opened fire inside a bar, injuring five people. They executed one of them, a 21-year-old man, as he lay wounded on the ground, his mother told the media.

In 2015, 26 police officers were killed in Pará, while police officers on and off duty killed 180 people, according to the latest official data compiled by the Brazilian Public Security Forum, a non-governmental organization.

In recent years, police officers in several states have been implicated in death-squad-style killings. In Pará state, 10 people were killed in November 2014 after the killing of a police officer who had led a death squad, an investigation by the state legislature found. Prosecutors have accused 14 military police officers of failing to help the victims or pursue the killers.

In the northern state of Amazonas, prosecutors allege that a group of 12 police officers who killed traffickers to steal drugs and weapons used the killing of a military police officer as a pretext to kill an additional 8 people in July 2015.

In São Paulo, prosecutors accused three military police officers and a municipal guard of being members of a death-squad that murdered 18 people in retaliation for the killing of a military police officer and a municipal guard in August 2015. In the northeastern state of Ceará, prosecutors charged 44 police officers with involvement in the November 2015 killing of 11 people –including 7 children– after the killing of a police officer.

By Chris Miller*

(FPRI) — From the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh to Azerbaijan’s painful economic crisis, there are many reasons why residents of the South Caucasus are hoping that 2017 will be better than last year. The challenges facing the region are many. The crash in global energy prices in 2014 and 2015 continues to ricochet around the region, hitting Azerbaijan, a major energy exporter, and Armenia and Georgia, which face lower trade and remittances from workers in Russia. Meanwhile, the complicated geopolitics of the Caucasus remains divisive, as disputes in Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, and South Ossetia appear no closer to resolution.

Yet, even as the region’s conflicts appear as intractable as ever, other spheres show rapid change. Georgia’s domestic politics, for example, is in a state of great flux. Azerbaijan’s government appears committed to stamping out all opposition groups. And relations between powers that border the Caucasus are as unsettled as ever. In 2016, a rapprochement occurred between Turkey and Russia after a period of sharp disagreement. Some analysts think that 2017 might bring a resolution to some of the disputes that separate the U.S. and Russia. However, as relations between these powers develop, it will shape politics within the Caucasus.

This month marks the launch of the Caucasus Cable, a new publication series from the Eurasia Program at the Foreign Policy Research Institute. The publication is designed to provide in-depth analysis of countries that only occasionally make it into Western media, but shape broader trends in Eastern Europe and the Black Sea region. The Caucasus Cable will publish analytical essays with a focus on highlighting research by experts from countries in the Caucasus and their neighbors.

This first issue of the Caucasus Cable provides insight from six scholars, who examine the main developments they expect in 2017.

External Threats Risk Destabilizing the Region

Robert Hamilton is a Black Sea Fellow at FPRI.

It has been said that the Caucasus produces more history than it can consume. In 2017, the reverse might be true. Instead of events in the Caucasus rippling out to impact the rest of the world, events outside the Caucasus might send shock waves into this important but turbulent region. The fact that the Caucasus might be an “importer” rather than an “exporter” of history is not to suggest that the situation there has stabilized. Indeed, in some respects, the region continues to deteriorate, as evidenced by the periodic re-escalation of the conflict in Nagorno-Karabakh and Russia’s continued provocations in Georgia, especially the moving of the South Ossetian “border” further into territory formerly under Tbilisi’s control.

But events outside the Caucasus may damage the long-term stability and security of the region. First, its proximity to the Middle East means that the Caucasus cannot remain immune to the convulsions there. A significant number of Russian, Georgian, and Azerbaijani citizens have left to fight for ISIS in Syria and Iraq. Upon returning home, these radicalized former fighters will be a destabilizing influence on the Russian North Caucasus, Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge, and northern Azerbaijan, all of which are home to concentrations of Sunni Muslims.

A less acute but potentially more serious long-term problem for the Caucasus is the erosion of the post-World War II global order. The wave of nationalism and protectionism sweeping Europe and North America could result in the breakdown of collective efforts to resolve important global issues. At worst, it could lead to war among Great Powers, which would almost certainly engulf the Caucasus as well. Even absent Great Power war, the breakdown of the post-war consensus could reduce the states of the South Caucasus to geopolitical spoils in a competition among regional powers.

The bright spot in the picture is the emerging Turkish-Russian “reset.” Although the prospects for a long-term rapprochement between the two are dim, in the short-term, Turkish-Russian cooperation might bring a form of stability to Syria and improve the chances for peace in Nagorno-Karabakh. Given the gloomy outlook for the states of the Caucasus in other areas, these developments would be welcome.

After an Economic Crisis, Azerbaijan is Under Pressure

Alex Nice is a Manager and the lead Russia & CIS Analyst at The Economist Intelligence Unit in London.

Azerbaijan faces another tough and potentially turbulent year in 2017 as it continues to grapple with the impact of low oil prices. Azerbaijan’s economy – which depends on oil for 80-90% of exports and around 50% of budget revenue – contracted by just under 4% in 2016, making it one of the worst performing economies in the world.

The government projects the economy will return to modest growth in 2017, but the risk of a second year of recession remains high. Major currency devaluation in December 2015 triggered a banking crisis that led to the closure of 10 lenders last year. Despite a modest rebound in oil prices, the central bank has struggled to restore confidence in the currency. Azerbaijan remains at risk of being drawn into a cycle of currency depreciation and financial instability, particularly if oil prices should fall back from their current level. In early January 2017, the government took the unprecedented step of drawing on the sovereign wealth fund to prop up the central bank’s foreign currency reserves.

The authorities publicly acknowledge the need for a fundamental overhaul of Azerbaijan’s economic model. But radical institutional change looks unlikely, given the concentrated ownership structure of the economy and the overlap between corporate and political interests. However, incremental reform does appear possible in some areas as shown by the apparent success in reducing corruption in the customs service over the past year.

The key unknown is the extent to which these economic difficulties will translate into political instability: will it be similar to what happened in the wake of the December 2015 devaluation? The government is planning a sharp reduction in public spending in 2017 to reduce reliance on oil revenue. After years of high investment in prestige international events and wasteful infrastructure projects, there is plenty of fat that can be cut with little cost to public welfare. But it could potentially destabilise inter-elite relations, as state contracts are an important element of the system of patronage. Given Azerbaijan’s large sovereign reserves, a serious debt and currency crisis appears unlikely. But the situation is precarious, and the regime is under pressure.

Unpredictability Will Define Caucasus Politics

Joshua Kucera is a journalist based in Istanbul and the Turkey/Caucasus editor of EurasiaNet.

The most volatile area in the Caucasus in 2017 will almost certainly be Nagorno-Karabakh. After the “four-day war” in April 2016, the worst fighting since a ceasefire was signed in 1994, the Azerbaijani government gained substantial confidence in its armed forces. They achieved an unprecedented military success, while rallying Azerbaijanis—who had been increasingly discontented amid a deep economic crisis—around the flag. With the country’s economic crisis showing no signs of abating, the temptations will be strong for Azerbaijan to attempt another offensive, possibly one aimed at taking back the entire territory.

The Caucasus also will be vulnerable to shifts by global and regional powers. A new, unpredictable administration in the United States, on-again-off-again relations between Russia and Turkey, and an Iran emerging from international isolation will affect the region in unforeseeable ways. Armenia is slated to take over the leadership of the Collective Security Treaty Organization, a hitherto Russia-led military bloc. But the transition away from Russian leadership is going far from smoothly, with a series of unexplained but suspicious roadblocks emerging, raising serious questions about the level of support Armenia might receive in case of a more serious war in Karabakh.

The region will likely be somewhat of a refuge from the global populist trend. A nationalist party did have unprecedented success in Georgia’s parliamentary elections in 2016, but 2017’s elections—in Armenia and the de facto states of Nagorno-Karabakh and South Ossetia—will take place in more tightly controlled political environments and are unlikely to offer big surprises. Nevertheless, illiberal forces, like Armenia’s Sasna Tsrer movement, Georgia’s powerful Orthodox Church, and increasing religiosity in Azerbaijan seem destined to grow in strength and will place pressure on their respective governments.

Watch Elections in Armenia and South Ossetia

Nelli Babayan is a Black Sea Fellow at FPRI.

In 2017, the South Caucasus will likely remain a political hotspot; the region is, however, often left out of the spotlight. The three countries of the region host a plethora of issues, some of which may unravel in the following months:

As a result of a constitutional referendum in 2015, Armenia moved from a semi-presidential to a parliamentary system: a move that the opposition saw as an attempt by the incumbent president Serzh Sargsyan to stay in power beyond his two presidential terms. The first post-referendum parliamentary elections are scheduled for April 2017. Currently, political alliances remain uncertain as tycoon Gagik Tsarukyan returns to politics after a year-long absence following his spat with President Sargsyan. Meanwhile, traditionally oppositional politicians are joining forces with the president’s former allies. Given the incumbent’s low popularity and the country’s worsening socio-economic conditions, these elections will likely generate popular demonstrations, especially if infringements are widespread.

Presidential elections are expected in April 2017 in South Ossetia, a breakaway region of Georgia. Tbilisi, of course, does not recognize the validity of any elections held in South Ossetia or Abkhazia. At the same time, internal disputes brew in Georgia, as Mikheil Saakashvili’s party, the United National Movement, is preparing for his political comeback, while it also accuses the ruling Georgian Dream party of halting Georgia’s development and serving the interests of its de-facto leader Bidzina Ivanishvili.

The Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan is unlikely to be resolved in 2017. Yet, last year’s brief conflict, uncompromising and sometimes belligerent rhetoric flaring from both sides, an ongoing arms race, and dwindling attention from mediators point to the highly worrisome likelihood of conflict escalation.

South Caucasus politics does not happen in isolation. As with other former Soviet republics, it often follows the developments of EU-Russia and United States-Russia relations. On top of support for democracy and human rights, the EU has a vested interest in a stable South Caucasus due to its plans of diversification of energy sources and geographic proximity. The Trump administration has yet to produce a specific approach to the region. Admittedly, the South Caucasus is not directly pertinent to U.S. interests and based on the election campaign and Trump’s recent statements, this situation is unlikely to change.

Georgia Prepares for More Political Pluralism

Maia Otarashvili is a Research Fellow and Program Manager of the Eurasia Program at FPRI.

In 2017, Georgia will be shaped by several trends: corruption and lack of transparency in the government and the ruling party, economic uncertainty, divergent foreign policy priorities, and opposition party politics.

In recent years, Georgia has managed to enhance its political plurality. In 2012, for the first time since its independence from the Soviet Union, the country experienced a peaceful transfer of power. The country’s party politics are more diverse than ever before, and a transition from a semi-presidential to a parliamentary system of government has helped to balance the previous overconcentration of power in the president’s hands.

The results of the fall 2016 parliamentary election put the previously ruling United National Movement (UNM) in opposition again. This outcome meant that the Georgian Dream Coalition (GD) earned a parliamentary majority and that billionaire oligarch Bidzina Ivanishvili will continue to run the government from behind the scenes. The Ivanishvili factor alone makes many Georgians question government transparency. Reports of increased high and mid-level corruption and nepotism have also marred the GD’s time in government. The fall parliamentary elections also led to the UNM splitting. The UNM is currently the largest pro-Western opposition party in Georgia, and its split has created two separate and strong opposition forces to the GD government to deal with in 2017.

With continued economic turbulence and an unpopular deal to buy gas from Russia’s Gazprom, the GD government will lose some popularity. The GD government’s one success will be the signing of a visa-free travel agreement with the EU. But, there is a possibility that the UNM split will lead to the presence of two powerful opposition parties in the Georgian parliament. Greater political pluralism, further economic stagnation, and closer EU integration could all be in the cards for Georgia in 2017.

Azerbaijan’s Government will Tighten the Screws

Arzu Geybulla is an Associate Scholar in the Eurasia Program at FPRI.

There is little space for positive projections in 2017, as the regime in Baku continues to give preference to its personal gains over much needed reforms.

Azerbaijani politics in 2017 are likely to continue the negative trend of 2016. On September 26, 2016, Azerbaijan adopted 29 constitutional amendments, strengthening the power of the ruling regime. Similar to previous elections, the September referendum took place with various instances of election fraud and violations. Videos, interviews, and independent reporting documenting these violations were treated as business as usual. As a result, the next presidential elections in Azerbaijan will take place in 2020 rather than in 2018 as the presidential term limit was extended from 5 to 7 years.

Ali Hasanov, a presidential aide, described the changes as necessary for the government to work more efficiently. But Baku already had all the powers it needed to run the country, including massive corruption, appalling press freedom, and no respect for human rights. Imprisonment and harassment of journalists is common. On January 24, a court sentenced independent journalist Rovshan Mammadov to 30 days of administrative detention. Earlier, a court sentenced a member of NIDA, a youth organization, to a similar charge, and popular citizen journalist and blogger Mehman Huseynov was fined for allegedly resisting police. At least five other journalists have been arrested or detained by the authorities in recent months, including Afgan Sadygov, Zamin Haji, Ikram Rahimov, Fikret Faramazoglu, and Teymur Kerimov.

In the meantime, the country witnessed currency devaluation and price hikes, which, according to the country’s independent economists, are the result of mismanagement of the country’s economy, the presence of monopolies, and rampant corruption. Sadly, none of these factors are likely to change in 2017.

This article is the first in a new monthly series, Caucasus Cable, aimed at providing accurate and accessible analysis of the Caucasus from experts in the United States, Georgia, Armenia, Azerbaijan, and other countries.

About the author:
*Chris Miller is Research Director of the FPRI Eurasia Program where he serves as the editor of the Baltic Bulletin and our Black Sea Initiative publications. He is also the Associate Director of the Brady-Johnson Program in Grand Strategy at Yale University.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

(EurActiv) — The prime ministers of Spain and Italy, Mariano Rajoy and Paolo Gentiloni, met on Friday (27 January) for the first time in four years, in a bid to bring fresh impetus to high-level cooperation between the two countries. Euractiv Spain reports.

Gentiloni replaced Matteo Renzi at the head of the Italian government last December after the former premier lost a referendum on wide-ranging constitutional reforms. He met his Spanish counterpart at Madrid’s Moncloa Palace on Friday afternoon.

Renzi had been in office since February 2014, but during his tenure he did not hold any bilateral meetings with Rajoy in Spain or Italy.

The last time a head of the Italian government visited Spain was in May 2013, when then-prime minister Enrico Letta met with Rajoy at the Moncloa Palace.

So for the Spanish government, Gentiloni’s visit was an important step towards reviving high-level bilateral relations. Between two countries with such strong historical, cultural, social, economic and investment ties, this is a good sign.

Madrid believes that the two countries’ respective domestic situations held them back from taking full advantage of these ties in recent years. This bulk of Friday’s discussions centred on this issue.

The two heads of government also discussed the Malta summit on 3 February, to be attended by all EU leaders except the UK’s Theresa May, to discuss the bloc’s future after Brexit.

They also exchanged views on the EU summit in Rome this coming March to mark the 60th anniversary of the signing of the treaty establishing the European Economic Community.

For all of those committed to rule of law and democracy, the recent removal of Gambian President Yahya Jammeh from office is a most welcome development.

Jammeh, who lost the December 2016 presidential elections in a surprise landslide to incoming Gambian head of state, Adama Barrow, had first taken power via a military coup in 1997 and had made it clear he wasn’t giving up office – despite an overwhelming democratic mandate against him – without a struggle.

It took a clear threat of removal by force from neighbouring Senegal – something that had the full backing of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) – to finally oust a dictator who’d been prone to not only making the most outrageous claims, including being able to cure AIDS and that he would rule for a billion years, but also committing terrible human rights abuses.

Yet, the most striking facet of the entire Jammeh episode has been the international community’s willingness to defend Gambian democracy – even by force if necessary. These efforts were led, as mentioned above, by Gambia’s regional partners in ECOWAS, a body whose strategic military interventionism was necessitated by West Africa’s recent bloody history. However, ECOWAS’s efforts to make sure Gambian democracy held were further fully supported by the international community and the UN Security Council, lending considerable diplomatic weight to said efforts.

The outcome was unequivocal – the democratic will of the Gambian was fully respected and supported with Jammeh fleeing Gambia in January 2017 and President Barrow taking up his rightful position.

At the other end of the democracy spectrum sits Thailand – a country ruled by the only military government on earth having been abandoned to despotism by both its regional partners in ASEAN and by the international community. However, it didn’t need to be like this.

After a long history of post-WW2 coups, by 2001 Thailand was seen to be moving very firmly and speedily towards finally being a fully-fledged democracy. The 1997 “People’s Constitution” had fully enshrined the rights of ordinary Thais to be represented by an elected parliament and the 2001 general election secured a sizeable mandate for incoming Thai PM Thaksin Shinawatra and his Thai Rak Thai (TRT) party. This was further underlined in 2005 when Thaksin & TRT – who ran on a platform of affordable healthcare and highly successful poverty reducing micro-credit schemes – won another major landslide election victory.

Thailand’s highly corrupt military and other anti-democratic forces were shaken to the core by Thaksin’s success, and in September 2006 after violent street protests and Thaksin calling another election he was sure to win, the tanks rolled and the general’s seized power.

To describe the international community’s reaction as supine to the 2006 Thai coup would be to at least recognise it held some kind of position. In short, it was worse – it was indifferent. The Americans made some suitably banal statement, the British Ambassador was quickly out hobknobbing with wealthy coup supporters and even human rights defenders like Human Rights Watch and Amnesty failed to adequately understand the threat to Thai democracy.

By 2007 a military sponsored constitution was rammed down the throats of Thais and in elections in the latter part of that year the Thai people once again elected a Thaksin-backed party, the People’s Power Party (PPP). It didn’t take long for the anti-democratic forces to remobilise and by late 2008 the PPP govt was ousted in what was widely described as a “judicial coup”, something which established a minority govt led by the deeply unpopular and divisive Abhisit Vejjajiva. Again both ASEAN and the wider international community said and did nothing.

During 2009 and 2010 ordinary Thais finally took to the streets to protest against Abhisit’s regime. Their call was simply for new elections. In March and May 2010 Abhisit responded with Army snipers, tanks and special forces. Almost 100 unarmed Thai civilians died and, once again, ASEAN and the international community sat on their hands and did nothing.

Unsurprisingly the 2011 general election produced yet another overwhelming mandate for a Thaksin-linked party – this time led by his sister, Yingluck Shinawatra. That this was the 6th straight election win for a Thaksin-linked party was entirely irrelevant to the coalition of shadowy billionaires, corrupt aristocracy and ageing generals who made up Thailand’s anti-democracy elements. Once again they began to stage increasingly violent and more extreme protests and by early 2014 a coup was inevitable.

The tanks rolled in May 2014 and the head of the Thai Army, one General Prayuth Chan-ocha, tore up the constitution, dissolved parliament, removed PM Yingluck from office and imposed martial law. And, as per script, apart from a few hackneyed statements to camera, the international community and Thailand’s regional partners in ASEAN did nothing. In fact it wasn’t long before the likes of UK Ambassador Mark Kent were meeting with the General Prayuth with the US Ambassador soon following suit.

Thailand now appears plunged into a dark age, elections have been suspended indefinitely and it’s people live under the fearful yoke of a military dictatorship without even their most basic freedoms protected. The international community has leaked any influence to shape events and ASEAN has completely abandoned democracy as a meaningful principle worth defending.

At every turn the Thai people expressed their democratic will and at every turn both ASEAN and the international community refused to act when that democratic will was usurped. It’s therefore not a stretch to consider both as collusive partners in Thai democracy’s “failure”.

The Gambian model, however, offers hope wherein regional partners backed up force and by the international community can intervene to sustain and promote democracy, rule of law and stability. That the world should now look towards a region that was once one of the most unstable and violent on earth speaks volumes for ECOWAS and its willingness to act.

Despotism thrives when it is unchecked – if the international community wants to protect the democratic will of the peoples not only of Thailand but of the whole of the ASEAN region it must start to show at least the beginnings of a similar willingness to act. The Thai people certainly deserve better than living their lives at the end of a barrel of a gun.

By Jim Garamone

US President Donald J. Trump signed two executive actions and watched as Vice President Mike Pence ceremonially swore in Defense Secretary Jim Mattis at the Pentagon’s Hall of Heroes on Friday.

Mattis once again swore “to support and defend the Constitution of the United States” just as he did as a young Marine reservist in 1969. Mattis retired as a four-star general in 2013.

The defense secretary welcomed the president to the headquarters of the military “where America’s awesome determination to defend itself is always on display. I would just tell you that you have made clear, Mr. President, your commitment to a strong national defense and the Americans honored in this hall remind us of our strength as a nation of patriots.”

The president reemphasized his “total confidence” in Mattis, calling him “a man of honor, a man of devotion and a man of total action.”

The secretary has been in place since he was confirmed by the Senate on Jan. 20. He reported to the Pentagon for work the next day.

Military America’s Backbone

Trump said the men and women in the military are the backbone of the United States. “You are the spirit of this nation in every sense,” he said. “The men and women of the United States military are the greatest force for justice and peace and good that have ever walked the face of this Earth.”

The president pledged to support service members and their families.

While at the Pentagon, Trump signed two executive actions to ensure “the sacrifices of our military are supported by the actions of our government.”

The first action initiates “a great rebuilding” of the armed services. It calls for developing a plan for new planes, new ships, new tools and new resources for the services. “As we prepare our budget request for Congress — and I think Congress is going to be very happy to see it — our military strength will be questioned by no one, but neither will our dedication to peace,” he said.

The second action establishes new vetting measures “to keep radical Islamic terrorists out of the United States of America — we don’t want them here,” the president said. “We want to ensure that we are not admitting into our country the very threats that our soldiers are fighting overseas. We only want to admit into our country those who will support our country and love, deeply, our people.”

Trump promised to service members that his administration will “always have your back, we will always be with you.”

Before the ceremony, Trump and Pence met with defense leaders in the “Tank” — the meeting room of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Mattis Orders Program Reviews

Earlier in the day, Mattis directed reviews of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program and the Presidential Aircraft Recapitalization program. Pentagon spokesman Navy Capt. Jeff Davis said the purpose of the reviews is “to inform programmatic and budgetary decisions, recognizing the critical importance of each of these acquisition programs.”

He called it a prudent step in anticipation of the budget process, which will help inform the secretary’s recommendations to the president regarding critical military capabilities.

“This action is also consistent with the president’s guidance to provide the strongest and most efficient military possible for our nation’s defense,” Davis said, “and it aligns with the secretary’s priority to increase military readiness while gaining full value from every taxpayer dollar spent on defense.”

Having discontinued its production of EUR500 banknotes, it appears Europe is charging towards the utopian dream of a cashless society. Just days after Davos’ elites discussed why the world needs to “get rid of currency,” the European Commission has introduced a proposal enforcing “restrictions on payments in cash.”

With Rogoff, Stiglitz, Summers et al. all calling for the end of cash – because only terrorists and drug-dealers need cash (nothing at all to do with totalitarian control over a nation’s wealth) – we are not surprised that this proposal from the European Commission (sanctuary of statism) would appear…

The Commission published on 2 February 2016 a Communication to the Council and the Parliament on an Action Plan to further step up the fight against the financing of terrorism (COM (2016) 50). The Action Plan builds on existing EU rules to adapt to new threats and aims at updating EU policies in line with international standards. In the context of the Commission’s action to extent the scope of the Regulation on the controls of cash entering or leaving the Community, reference is made to the appropriateness to explore the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments.

The Action Plan states that “Payments in cash are widely used in the financing of terrorist activities… In this context, the relevance of potential upper limits to cash payments could also be explored. Several Member States have in place prohibitions for cash payments above a specific threshold.”

Cash has the important feature of offering anonymity to transactions. Such anonymity may be desired for legitimate reason (e.g. protection of privacy). But, such anonymity can also be misused for money laundering and terrorist financing purposes. The possibility to conduct large cash payments facilitates money laundering and terrorist financing activities because of the difficulty to control cash payment transactions.

…

Potential restrictions to cash payments would be a mean to fight criminal activities entailing large payment transactions in cash by organised criminal networks. Restricting large payments in cash, in addition to cash declarations and other AML obligations, would hamper the operation of terrorist networks, and other criminal activities, i.e. have a preventive effect. It would also facilitate further investigations to track financial transactions in the course of terrorist activities. Effective investigations are hindered as cash payments transactions are anonymous. Thus restrictions on cash payments would facilitate investigations. However, as cash transactions are moved to the financial system, it is essential that financial institutions have adequate controls and procedures in place that enable them to know the person with whom they are dealing. Adequate due diligence on new and existing customers is a key part of these controls in, line with the AMLD.

Terrorists use cash to sustain their illegal activities, not only for illegal transactions (e.g. the acquisition of explosives) but also for payments which are in appearance legal (e.g. transactions for accommodation or transport). While a restriction on payments in cash would certainly be ignored for transactions that are in any case already illegal, the restriction could create a significant hindrance to the conduct of transactions that are ancillary to terrorist activities.

…

Organised crime and terrorism financing rely on cash for payments for carrying out their illegal activities and benefitting from them. By restricting the possibilities to use cash, the proposal would contribute to disrupt the financing of terrorism, as the need to use non anonymous means of payment would either deter the activity or contribute to its easier detection and investigation. Any such proposal would also aim at harmonising restrictions across the Union, thus creating a level playing field for businesses and removing distortions of competition in the internal market. It would additionally foster the fight against money laundering, tax fraud and organised crime.

And then right at the end, they mention “fundamental rights”…

While being allowed to pay in cash does not constitute a fundamental right, the objective of the initiative, which is to prevent the anonymity that cash payments allow, might be viewed as an infringement of the right to privacy enshrined in Article 7 of the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights. However, as complemented by article 52 of the Charter, limitations may be made subject to the principle of proportionality if they are necessary and genuinely meet objectives of general interest recognised by the Union or the need to protect the rights and freedoms of others. The objectives of potential restrictions to cash payments could fit such description. It should also be observed that national restrictions to cash payments were never successfully challenged based on an infringement to fundamental rights.

By Samir Saran and Vivan Sharan

Even as incessant political bickering is polarizing opinion on demonetisation, India is making a significant transition to a digital payments ecosystem. This project endeavours to breach the urban-rural divide, geographical exclusions of the real world, and income criteria that privileged only a few with access to certain private and public services. This new digital payments ecosystem is brutal in its attempt to alter the way India transacts, trades and is taxed.

A wider adoption of digital payments will invariably change the dimensions of risks, crime and security as well. If pickpockets were a common menace some decades ago, cybercriminals may dominate conversations in the days ahead as they eye digital and online transactions. While the “pickpocket” had to select a relatively “fat target” to make the effort and risk worthwhile, the cyber thief will have a low-risk environment (lack of forensic capabilities, human capacities and attribution challenges) and an expansive reach of technology that will make even “petty pickings” attractive. And although cybercrime will affect us all, it will harm the poor disproportionately. It could ravage the small savings of many, deprive them of their meagre means and, most importantly, result in erosion of trust in the financial ecosystem currently being built. It is, therefore, important that the government pay heed to small fraud.

An early warning of this was provided by the frisson of panic that followed the cautionary message from the newly launched Bharat Interface for Money application (BHIM app) on 4 January 2017: “Users please beware: Decline all unknown payment requests you may get! We will work on an update, which will allow you to report spam.” This response is inefficient and leaves the ecosystem vulnerable to malicious intent.

Governments around the world and here in India must respond to this new dimension, where “petty cash is big money” and digital pickpockets pose a range of threats to individuals, institutions and economic stability itself. Most governments have left themselves with little time to create the requisite mitigation capabilities. The velocity of digitization and technology adoption must necessitate a response from policymakers different from what was the norm in the “public sector era”, where Centrally controlled banks and enterprises offered a modicum of stability, privacy, and security (with less efficiency). To achieve this, a comprehensive approach for securing the digital ecosystem must be devised and some actions must be taken immediately.

First, there are a multiplicity of stakeholders operating networks and tools that pose varying degrees of risk. This, in turn, demands differentiated security responses. These include the Reserve Bank of India (RBI)-run National Electronic Funds Transfer (Neft) and Real Time Gross Settlement (RTGS), the National Payment Corporation of India’s (NPCI’s) Immediate Payment Service (IMPS) on which the Unified Payments Interface (UPI) currently operates, traditional card networks, mobile payments solutions, various banking apps. In a report released in December 2016, the Union ministry of finance’s committee on digital payments suggested a hierarchical approach based on the level of “systemic risk” posed by different tools and networks. This must form the design basis going forward.

Second, while industry is consulted by expert committees such as the one referenced above, an inclusive multi-stakeholder consultative process must become the norm for policymaking itself, to avoid arbitrariness. This can be done by instituting multi-stakeholder consultations that are transparent and inclusive. This is the model India has agreed is best suited to govern the Internet internationally, and it’s time to adopt consonant processes at home.

Third, while the “mobile” is being hailed as a replacement for physical wallets as well as a proof of identity through its widespread use in second-factor authentication of digital payments, government and users should be circumspect about the risks involved. For instance, there is evidence to suggest that distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks—in which a multitude of compromised systems attack a single target, causing denial of service for users of the targeted system—are increasingly targeting the applications layer rather than the network layer of the Internet. In layman terms this means a sophisticated mode of cybercrime is being unleashed on unsuspecting users of mobile applications and popular software.

Mature hardware-based solutions, such as tamper-proof Universal Integrated Circuit Cards and Embedded Secure Elements, are being tested against the latest forms of cyberattack. Software-based solutions such as Host Card Emulation are also relatively secure but require upgrades through the cloud, placing large data demands on the user and testing the service capabilities of the issuer.

Globally payment solutions that have been able to integrate hardware- and software-based security exist, but domestic mobile payments providers are relying largely on software-based security solutions. And while the Indian government’s Computer Emergency Response Team, RBI and NPCI are undertaking security audits of payment solutions, it is important that users be given standardized information to make informed choices, particularly when the digital adoption drive is at its height.

Lastly, it may be useful for the government to think of the digital payments ecosystem, now anchored by the NPCI, as analogous to the Internet. And much like the Internet, the National Financial Switch (the infrastructure backbone of all Indian ATMs, operated by the NPCI) must acquire robust redundancies offered by private-sector partnerships in order not to be a vulnerable single point of failure—which can potentially be compromised by self-styled “legions” of hackers. The NPCI should be managed through multi-stakeholder groups that can help with standard-setting, and can ensure that the payments ecosystem serves the common citizen, making even a small transaction online.

This article was first published in Live Mint.

In 2008, the American people overwhelmingly voted for “change” in Washington. They never got it. Hence, Trump. To pretend that there’s not a straight line connecting the failed policies of Barack Obama and the subsequent rise of Donald John Trump, is to ignore the obvious and to shrug off responsibility for the situation the country is in today.

Obama created Trump, the man didn’t simply appear from the ether. Had Obama acted in good faith and kept his promises to shake up the status quo, end the foreign wars, restore civil liberties, hold Wall Street accountable or relieve the economic insecurity that working families across the country now feel, Hillary Clinton would have been a shoe-in on November 8th. As it happens, Obama made no effort to achieve any of these goals, which is why Hillary was defeated in the biggest political upset of the last century.

The point we need to underscore here, is that the Democratic leadership is responsible for Trump, not the working class people in the red states who merely did what they had to do to effect change.  These people can’t be blamed for voting their own best interests. That’s what people do. Had Obama done anything to genuinely improve the economy, things might have turned out differently. But he didn’t, in fact– as popular as Obama was– a full two thirds of the American people thought the country was headed in the wrong direction. In other words, the election was a referendum on Obama’s performance as the primary steward of the US economy. Obama lost that referendum.

Even so, the DNC could have reloaded and taken a different approach to the economy under Hillary. They didn’t. They thought the “recovery” meme was effective enough to put them over the finish line. But it wasn’t effective enough, because too many people saw that the recovery was a fraud, that there was no recovery,  it was all a slick Madison Avenue public relations campaign aimed at concealing the fact that Obama had restructured the US economy in a way that deliberately kept growth at-or-below 2 percent so the Fed could continue pumping cheap money to its constituents on Wall Street while everyone else saw their personal debtload grow, their retirement savings vanish, and their standards of living slip.  Isn’t that what really happened? Obama’s grand restructuring project has resulted in perennial economic stagnation and widespread pessimism about the future. The former president  oversaw the greatest transfer of wealth from working class people to parasitic plutocrats in the history of the nation. It wasn’t an accident. Obama was following a blueprint that was given to him by his handlers at the DNC.

So now the country is to be led by a brash billionaire reality TV celebrity who has no previous political experience and who seems unusually sensitive to any kind of personal criticism. Not surprisingly, there’s no sign that the Democratic leadership feels any responsibility for this extraordinary development.

Why is that? Why hasn’t anyone in the DNC admitted their failure, admitted that they didn’t accurately gage the mood of the country or the hunger for change? Why haven’t they acknowledged that putting the most untrustworthy candidate of all time –a thoroughly dislikable, warmongering harridan– on the ticket was a mistake? Why?

It’s because this vile collection of corporate Dems who run the party are incapable of self reflection, right? It’s because the Podesta throng — who still hold the party in their deathgrip –truly believe that bamboozling their base with Potemkin executives like Barack Obama, is a terrific model for running the government. They think Obama’s tenure as president was a success story, mainly because  his grandiloquent bloviating and larking around on stage with sleeves rolled up like an overpaid athlete– diverted attention from the trillions of dollars  that were being sluiced to the banking whores on Wall Street. Isn’t that why the Dems haven’t changed?

They actually think they’ve stumbled on the secret formula for winning elections and that the election of Trump in 2016 is just a “one off”, a temporary setback.

But it’s not a one off.  The rise of  Trump has been accompanied by the rise of rightwing parties and ideology across the planet. What we are seeing is a fundamental change in the zeitgeist, which is “the defining spirit or mood of a particular period of history as shown by the ideas and beliefs of the time.”  In  this view, Obama represents the culmination of the values and ideas that emerged during the 1960s and persisted until just recently when they collapsed. The utter corruption of the progressive vision (due, in large part, to the cynical and reactionary policies of parties like the Democrats) has paved the way for a new era, the Trump era, in which state repression is bound to increase even while personal liberty and economic security are steadily eviscerated.

And what is the Dems response to this new phenom?

Why, nothing at all. The whole matter seems to be over their heads. They don’t seem to grasp the shifting public mood, the changing epoch  or how it will impact their future plans. Instead, they are doing everything in their power to make themselves more irrelevant. It’s pathetic.

And keep in mind, that ever since the election, the Dems have made no effort at course correction, no effort to reconnect with the millions of working people in the red states who used to vote Democrat but switched because they wanted change. No. Instead, party leaders have embarked on a counterproductive character assassination campaign aimed at discrediting the new president by alleging Russian “hacking” of the election. And while they have produced absolutely zero hard evidence to substantiate their loony claims, the Dems, the media and the thoroughly unreliable Intel agencies have continued this scapegoating onslaught thinking that they are shaping public opinion in a way that undermines  President Trump.

It would all be laughable if it wasn’t so serious. But it is serious. The rise of Trump poses some significant challenges to democratic government, but, regrettably, the opposition party is in the middle of a major nervous breakdown. How are they going to stop this autocratic juggernaut in their present state of collapse?

They won’t be able to. They’re going to get beat to a pulp unless they get it together and stop  running around with their hair on fire yelling, “The Russians are coming” instead of rebuilding the party on a commitment to basic progressive values; civil liberties, non intervention, and economic fairness. The Democratic Party has to be more than a membership register attached to a donor’s list. It needs to reconnect with its base and try to understand why working people are either leaving the party altogether or so disenchanted they won’t even vote.

How about a little self-examination, eh? How about clearing out the deadwood starting with crooked Hillary and her sleazy handler, Podesta?  How about committing to a vision for change that’s more than a public relations scam aimed at hoodwinking your base? How about ending the buck passing bullshit and pushing legislation that offers some relief for rampant economic insecurity, student debt, dwindling retirements, universal health care, and environmental devastation.

The Democratic party doesn’t have to be a place where progressive ideas go to die. But they’d better get it together fast or it’s going to be Game over.

By Sinem Cengiz*

Moscow and Tehran have managed to maintain a strategic alliance and close political and military ties, particularly in Syria. Both are supporting Bashar Assad’s regime at all costs, but the relationship is no bed of roses. Russia and Iran have different motivations in the Syrian war and divergent views on the country’s future. These differences have recently started to come to the surface far more, raising questions as to how long the alliance will last.

Their interests first clashed regarding Aleppo. Their divergent policies have become apparent, especially since the cease-fire brokered by Russia and Turkey was undermined by Iran-backed militias that prevented civilians and opposition fighters from leaving the besieged eastern part of the city in December. This was an important sign that the interests of the two allies have started to conflict.

Tehran’s attempts to sabotage the Russian-Turkish peace initiative raised eyebrows in Moscow, which is increasingly uncomfortable with Iranian policy. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov’s recent statement can be read in this context. He said Syria was “two or three weeks” away from falling to terrorists when Russia intervened in support of Assad, downgrading Tehran’s role in the country. Moscow sent a clear message to Iran regarding future power distribution in Syria. To Russia, Assad is dispensable, but to Iran he is not. For Moscow, a strong Syria as a Middle East ally is a must in order to protect its strategic interests, but for Tehran a weak Syria is desirable so as to easily control the country for its future aims.

Russia’s naval base in Tartus and airbase in Latakia are very important for its long-term Middle East plans, as Syria is a good market for its military exports. Moscow wants to turn its advances on the ground in Syria into diplomatic gains in talks with the West. Therefore, it wants the upper hand in political decision-making, which jeopardizes Iranian interests in Syria and the region.

While Russia approaches the Syrian war from a geostrategic and realist perspective, Iran’s stance is based on sectarian concerns. Syria is the heart of its strategy to create a “Shiite crescent” across the region. Tehran is struggling at all costs to ensure the Syrian regime’s survival, aware that it is a necessary tool to connect with a valuable ally in Lebanon, namely the Shiite group Hezbollah, which is fighting in Syria along with Iran.

The downfall of the Assad regime would be a blow to the Syria-Iran-Hezbollah axis. Tehran would lose a valuable ally in Lebanon, as Hezbollah would face serious problems obtaining vital Iranian military and financial support.

Iran is knowledgeable in playing the games of the Middle East. Because Syria is an important instrument for it to wage its proxy wars in the region, and is a strategic gateway to the Arab world and a crucial link to Hezbollah, Tehran does not hesitate to take steps that could even disturb its ally Russia.

For example, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif said ahead of the Astana talks that Tehran was vehemently opposed to the US joining them. This was the second time Iran went against Russia and Turkey, the other two organizers of the talks, which both said Donald Trump’s new US administration should take part.

While Iran is shooting itself in the foot by confronting Russia and Turkey, the relationship between Moscow and Ankara is gradually improving. Both hope to cooperate more effectively with the Trump administration and turn a new page with the US.

With its recent moves, Tehran is not only revealing its disagreements with Russia and Turkey regarding Syria, but signalling a possible dispute with the Trump administration, which consists of pro-Russia and anti-Iran figures. While taking a harsh stance toward Iran, Trump is calling for close ties with Russia. It might be hard to predict his steps, but it seems his administration will become another issue of controversy between Moscow and Tehran.

Russia’s stance proves that it would reset relations with the US at Iran’s expense. Every step taken toward Syria’s future is bringing Russian and Iranian interests face to face. Time will tell how long their alliance will last.

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

Greece’s refusal to extradite eight soldiers accused of being involved in last year’s coup attempt has angered the Turkish government, which has threaten to cancel a deal on readmitting migrants back to Turkey.

The soldiers – three majors, three captains and two sergeant majors – fled to Greece by helicopter in the aftermath of the failed coup attempt in July of 2016 and asked for political asylum, as they feared for their lives. All eight officers deny being involved in the coup, but Turkey has demanded that they be sent back home to face justice. However, on Thursday, the Greek Supreme Court ruled against the extradition, with presiding judge Giorgos Sakkas saying the men were unlikely to receive a fair trial in Turkey.

Ankara reacted to the decision with dismay, accusing Greece of complicity in terrorism.

“We protest this decision which prevents these individuals who have threatened the life of our president and took an active role in a coup attempt that killed 248 of our civilians and members of our security forces, wounded 2,193 of our citizens, and attempted to take the life of our President, to be brought before the independent Turkish judiciary,” read a statement on the Turkish Foreign Ministry’s website.

“This decision once more displayed that Greece, an ally and a neighboring country, is refraining from fulfilling the minimum requirements of combatting terrorism and crime,” the statement continued, while accusing Greece of turning a blind eye to far-left and Kurdish militants operating in Turkey.

“We demanded that the eight soldiers be tried again. This is a political decision, Greece is protecting and hosting coup plotters,” Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu told state broadcaster TRT Haber on Friday, adding that he was considering scrapping the migrant readmission deal between the two countries, without giving further details.

“We have a readmission agreement between us and Greece, with the European Union. We are going to take necessary steps, including the cancellation of this readmission agreement,” he said.

The agreement signed by Davutoglu and Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in March of last year allows for asylum seekers who crossed into Greece illegally to be sent back to Turkey before being deported to their home countries. The readmission does not apply to asylum seekers who enjoy international protection, such as refugees fleeing warzones.

Another deal signed between Turkey and the EU gave Turkey financial aid and political concessions in return for its help in bringing the ongoing migrant crisis under control. Under that deal, Turkey would crack down on people smugglers taking migrants to Europe, and also take in one Syrian refugee for each one admitted into the EU. The agreement has successfully reduced the flow of asylum seekers into the EU, but many problems such as integration and squalid conditions at migrant camps remain.

Greece and Turkey have had a tumultuous relationship in the past, marred by events such as the Turkish intervention in Cyprus in 1974. Both countries are also NATO members, however, and there have been recent attempts to improve relations. Greek and Turkish diplomats are currently involved in peace talks aimed at ending the stalemate over still-divided Cyprus.

The Turkish government is now carrying out a purge of opposition figures, including teachers, journalists, and civil servants that are deemed sympathetic to Kurdish separatism and self-exiled cleric Fethullah Gulen, who Turkey accuses of masterminding the coup.

Reactions to Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States oscillate between great trepidation and great mockery. Will Donald Trump do something outlandish—something with terrible consequences—or will what he does bring discredit on himself?

Uncertainty dogs the next US president and his administration. The old establishment seems sidelined and the “deep state” appears bewildered.

The Bush Years

George W. Bush had evoked similar feelings of fear and hilarity, although his administration seemed handpicked by the establishment and Bush made no noises about changing the broad parameters of the world order. There was, from Bush, no gesture against the European Union or NATO nor against the major trade agreements or the security arrangements. That Bush would illegally invade Iraq in 2003, preside over the emergence of the BRICS in trade discussions, and stand—a deer in the headlights—as the Western financial system metastasized was not entirely predictable when he took office.

What had become clear during Bush’s eight years was that the United States was no longer the first amongst equals and that US-driven unipolarity was slowly unraveling. Russia, devastated in the first decade after the fall of the USSR, had rebuilt its military strength through high commodity prices and was more confident in its dealing with other powers. China’s economic ascent in the decade of the 1990s gradually provided its leadership with the urgency to change the geopolitical balance of power. India, Brazil and South Africa—disadvantaged by the global economic rules—pushed for their own interests in the multilateral forums.

These powers, i.e. the BRICS, exerted themselves at different tempos against the unipolar set-up. It was Russia and China, with an assertive Latin America, that seemed prepared to challenge the West for the right to set trade rules and to claim territorial sovereignty over parts of the world far from their own boundaries.

The Obama Years

Barack Obama’s decidedly more attractive personality could not, of course, clean up Bush’s messes. He was not able to settle the contradictions opened up by Bush’s wars in West Asia, nor was he able to control the ambitions of Russia and China.

Not that Obama did not try, for Obama’s White House drove a fierce policy to encage both ends of Eurasia—with NATO being pushed closer and closer to Russia’s western border and US ships aggravating the Chinese in the South China Sea. It was under Obama that the US poked its stick into Russia’s bear cave, provoking Russian intervention into the Crimea. Attempts to get the Chinese to revalue their currency to help a spluttering US domestic economy through threats about intellectual property piracy, currency manipulation, and internet hacking came to naught. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton even egged on the Japanese to set aside an elected government so that its bases in Okinawa would remain—these bases being a challenge to the Chinese and Russians. The Chinese would not be swayed. Even the ships in the South China Sea did not scare the Chinese to do as Washington bid.

Europe, which has not recovered evenly from the great recession of 2007/08, was disadvantaged by a set of policies that it had endorsed. Bush’s illegal war against Iraq (2003), famously supported by what Bush called “New Europe” and the United Kingdom, allowed Iran to flex its ambitions across West Asia. The US, then, tried to push Iran back to its borders with the Syria Accountability Act (2003), the Israeli war on Lebanon (2006) and the sanctions regime on Iran (2006).

Sanctions on Iran removed it from the ledger of suppliers of energy for Europe’s market. When NATO destroyed Libya (2011), another major provider of energy slipped off the European map. NATO’s eastward move created the crisis in Eastern Europe, which led to the sanctions on Russia (2014). The Kremlin moved closer to China and began to sell its energy to the Chinese. Iran, Libya, and Russia were three major energy sources for Europe. Now, in the space of a decade, all three went off-line. Pressure on the Obama administration to undo the Iran isolation led to the Iran deal (2015). These European contradictions, rather than the principles of international law, pushed the Obama administration to do the Iran deal.

The Trump Years

How will Trump manage these important shifts in the world order, with the Russians and Chinese—and other parts of the Global South—in ascendance, and with the Europeans turning inwards and in disarray? Would he continue to pressure Russia and China with military force at the two ends of Eurasia?

It is clear that Trump is not as concerned as the “deep state” in the United States is about Russia’s return to the world stage. Whether he will be able to override the mainstream consensus that Russia is a grave threat to the United States remains to be seen. Threats against Russia for the alleged hacking of the Democrats will force Trump to respond in some way, either with sanctions or with some kind of secret intervention. How he will respond to the deep state’s rhetoric on Russia is an open question.

Trump is certainly incoherent in his views. He appears friendly to Russia but has great antipathy towards China, particularly on trade. Russia had tasted humiliation after the fall of the USSR (1991) and after its expulsion from the G7 (2014). Rather than go into the wilderness, Russia formed an enduring bond with the Chinese on military, economic, and diplomatic grounds. This bond is very strong and appears to be strengthening. Trump is hallucinating if he imagines that he can break the link between Russia and China—two powers with some harmony on their views of the world order, more harmony than during the early years of the Cold War before the Sino-Soviet break.

It will be difficult to force China to revalue its currency to the advantage of the United States. No previous administration, with US battle ships close to the Chinese coastline, has been able to force the Chinese into this—for China—suicidal policy. Trump, short of a war against China, will not be able to force them to act to benefit the US heartland. This is more rhetoric from Trump than policy.

The administration assembled by Trump is united by a great hatred of Iran. Will they be able to renege on the Iran nuclear deal and perhaps go to war against Iran?

It is unlikely that Trump will be able to even cast the deal aside. He will find no partners in Europe, where the energy shortfall has constrained policy options. There is no appetite in the European capitals for a return to sanctions. Neither Russia nor China—both of whom rely on Iran for their West Asia policy—will allow United Nations sanctions on Iran. Trump might want to go alone in his crusade against Iran, but he will not find many Arab allies—apart from a handful of Gulf monarchies—who would endorse such a war. Egypt, Algeria, and Iraq would be steadfast against it. Hezbollah, from Lebanon, would threaten Israel, which is not prepared for a return to hostilities on its northern perimeter. Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu enjoyed his belligerent rhetoric, but it is clear that he hid behind Obama. Now he shall have no one to hide behind. Nor will Trump.

Harsh rhetoric against Mexico as an alibi for the weaknesses of the fortunes of ordinary Americans is not going to bear Trump much fruit. He has miscalculated on Mexico, believing perhaps that it is an isolated and poor country. Mexico is well attached to the agenda of the Global South on several major issues, namely Northern subsidy reform, Northern financial system reform, and renegotiation of the intellectual property regime that benefits Northern pharmaceutical and high-tech firms. Corn subsidies in the US and liberalized trade due to the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) spurred the migration of impoverished Mexicans to the United States. Any change of the trade regime would have to take into consideration the advantages to Northern capital of the liberalized trade environment.

Trump’s call to renegotiate treaties is welcome news in many of the capitals of the South, but what they mean by renegotiation is very different. Mexico is a founding member of the G20 group of developing countries within the World Trade Organization (WTO), which held its own at the 2003 Cancun (Mexico) WTO ministerial meeting, where under the leadership of India, Brazil, and South Africa the G20 pushed back against the Northern agenda. Mexico has vacillated in the G20, but Trump’s insults and his policies on immigration and trade might push Mexico into the front ranks of the G20. This would be welcome news to other Latin American states.

Even if the era of US unipolarity is now over, the period of US-driven imperialism is not at an end. The United States still possesses the largest military force, has tentacles across the planet through its bases and aircraft carriers, and is the biggest dealer of weapons. Power will be exercised in various forms by the United States to maintain its declining authority. Trump could very likely have a dangerous trigger finger. But fewer allies and less legitimacy might make it harder for him to pull that trigger. In the end, he might find himself more victim of the world than its assassin.

By Miodrag Vlahovic

As the smallest country in the Western Balkans, Montenegro has always been the plausible subject of various benevolent jokes.

But the country’s small size has also been a constant threat to its peace and stability, especially during the years of Slobodan Milosevic’s regime and before the Montenegrin independence referendum in May 2006.

A country of 620,000 inhabitants, situated between two newest NATO allies, Croatia and Albania, is close now to seeing its membership supported by the legislatures of all 28 NATO member states.

By the time of writing, 22 countries have ratified Montenegro’s Accession Protocol. Portugal and France have just done so and the Greek parliament should also swiftly confirm the proposal of the respective parliamentary committee, where only some far-right and Communist MPs have opposed it.

So, the prospective of alliance membership seems bright, despite the election in the US of Donald Trump as President and his comments calling NATO an “obsolete” organization, which have had an earthquake-like effect, not only in tiny Montenegro.

One consequence of Trump’s statements and tweets has been to create an impression of uncertainty, relating the US Senate’s position on ratifying the NATO Accession Protocol for Montenegro to the change in the White House – despite the clear division of legislative and executive powers in Washington.

A unanimous Senate decision on Montenegro, a resolution without a debate, was expected a month ago. But, like a bolt of lightning in a clear sky, reservations expressed by Republican senators Michael Lee of Utah and Rand Paul of Kentucky have made a voting procedure inevitable.

So, there is Montenegro on the Senate agenda, and we now wait for the “pause” for the process of confirmation of Trump’s administration before we can see whether US senators support Montenegro’s NATO membership with 98-2 majority – as seems to be the case.

Awaiting the news from Capitol Hill has made all supporters of NATO membership in Montenegro anxious, while the opponents [who, no surprise, are very close to the Kremlin] remain hopeful that a blockade of this historic step for the smallest Balkan nation could come from the least expected address, the US itself.

In any case, Montenegro’s bid for NATO membership has reached the point of no return. It is hard to imagine a scenario in which this path to the alliance could be abandoned on the “last few metres of the race”. But, as some worried observers on both sides of Atlantic still caution, “the game is only finished when it is finished”.

Numerous friends of our country, who sit on both sides of the aisle in the US Congress, from both Democratic and Republican administrations in the last 20 years, have decisively helped Montenegro at its most critical moments from 1997 onwards, starting with Montenegro’s break with the Milosevic regime.

It would be a major historic error to waste all that energy and effort and omit to support a friendly nation at such an important moment – both for Montenegro and the Alliance as a whole.

Montenegro deserves that support, if no other reason than as a nation that has managed to regain its independence through a peaceful and democratic process, an almost unique case in the disastrous and tragic history of the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia.

[We may also skip the positive, constructive role that Montenegro has been playing in a still turbulent Western Balkans in the last 20 years, although that is the most important element of its NATO bid.]

The testimonies of likely Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Matisse before Congress, to the great relief and satisfaction of all Western-oriented Montenegrins, have re-established confidence that the White House will not reverse its policy.

The contribution made by the US towards Montenegro’s getting so close to NATO has been crucial. A U-turn at this point would lack any logic.

So, while some suspense is still there, hopefully it should be limited to a mere question about when the Senate vote will occur, not about the result.

The author is a former Foreign Minister of Montenegro and the country’s first ambassador to the US.

By Michael Lelyveld

China is plugging holes in its foreign exchange rules to keep its currency and reserves from sinking below key levels as worries about U.S. policies grow.

Regulators have been cracking down on all forms of capital outflow in an effort to keep the yuan from dropping below the psychological barrier of seven to the U.S. dollar while foreign exchange reserves approach the U.S. $3-trillion (20.6-trillion yuan) mark.

The twin defenses appear to be behind the Jan. 1 notice from the State Administration of Foreign Exchange (SAFE) requiring individuals to justify currency conversions, even within the legal limit of U.S. $50,000 (343,820 yuan) per year.

Under the new rules, banks have been ordered to report all transactions of over 50,000 yuan (U.S. $7,271), compared with earlier limits of 200,000 yuan (U.S. $29,085).

Citizens must sign a pledge that the funds “will not be used for overseas purchases of property, securities, life insurance or any other insurance of an investment nature,” the official English-language China Daily reported.

Applicants must confirm compliance with money-laundering rules and other restrictions under penalties of losing the right to convert currency for three years and the threat of possible investigation, the paper said.

“These are not new rules. They are simply more stringent enforcement of the existing ones,” China Daily asserted.

But the pledges and potential investigations may have a chilling effect on individuals who have been investing abroad to protect their savings against the falling value of the yuan, which depreciated against the U.S. dollar by about 6.5 percent last year.

The shrinking value of the currency has taken its cue from China’s economy. Last week, the National Bureau of Statistics reported that gross domestic product growth fell from 6.9 percent in 2015 to 6.7 percent last year, the slowest pace in 26 years.

Surge in foreign deals

The targeting of individual transactions follows a November announcement by SAFE and three other agencies of plans to “tighten screening of overseas investment projects” following a 53-percent surge in foreign deals in the first 10 months of last year.

Outbound direct investment (ODI) by Chinese companies has dwarfed foreign direct investment (FDI) in China since late 2015, raising government concerns that capital is leaving the country as interest rates rise and the dollar strengthens in the United States.

China’s non-bond ODI soared 46 percent last year to U.S. $170 billion (1.1 trillion yuan), according to an initial estimate by the China Global Investment Tracker, published by the American Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation in Washington.

In the past week, the Ministry of Commerce reported similar results. Non-financial ODI jumped 44.1 percent last year to U.S. $170.11 billion (1.17 trillion yuan), while FDI of 813 billion yuan (U.S. $118.2 billion) rose only 4.1 percent, the ministry said.

The government has sent a series of signals that concern is rising over the net outflows.

In December, a People’s Bank of China (PBOC) official announced an inter-ministerial effort with 22 government agencies to block illegal money transfers under the government’s “One Belt, One Road” (OBOR) initiative for developing trade routes and infrastructure overseas.

PBOC Vice-Governor Guo Qingping said the crackdown was aimed at “combating the financing of terrorism regimes,” but the enforcement coincides with attempts to halt capital flight through ordinary investment activities.

“Real estate and precious metal trading have become new avenues for such crimes, with internet finance and third- party payment channels dealing a further blow,” China Daily quoted Guo as saying.

Government’s vigilance spreads

The government’s vigilance has gradually spread from big investment deals to individual transactions with the growth in capital leaving the country.

“The move aims to fix loopholes in the current management and curb foreign exchange purchase violations and other illegal activities, such as fraud, money laundering and underground banks,” said SAFE, as quoted by the official Xinhua news agency.

Last week, the agency that controls state-owned enterprises (SOEs) also announced new rules aimed at cutting capital outflow.

Under the rules, 102 large SOEs will be barred from investing abroad in sectors including real estate, iron ore, petroleum and non-ferrous metal, the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC) said, according to state media.

The Rhodium Group, a New York-based consulting firm, estimated that net outflows under the non-reserve capital account reached U.S. $379 billion (2.6 trillion yuan) in the first three quarters of last year.

The multi-front buildup of capital controls comes as China’s foreign exchange reserves dropped in December for the sixth month in a row to U.S. $3.01 trillion (20.7 trillion yuan), raising concerns that the PBOC can’t keep the yuan from falling below the seven-to-the-dollar barrier without slipping under the U.S. $3-trillion mark.

State media have stressed that both are only psychological thresholds while insisting that there are no new capital controls.

“Despite continued drops in China’s foreign exchange (forex) reserves, economists believe there is no need to panic as reserves are still abundant for the country to fend off external risks,” a Xinhua news analysis said on Jan. 9.

“Enforcing forex rules not currency control,” said a China Daily headline on Jan. 5.

Last week, a SAFE official argued that China still has “ample” reserves, suggesting that the government may choose to break the U.S. $3-trillion barrier in defense of the yuan.

There is no need to “create excessive hype over a certain number,” SAFE spokesperson Wang Chunying said, according to Xinhua.

Currency concerns

The government’s currency concerns are believed to be the reason behind the abrupt rise and fall of the yuan’s value on the successive trading days of Jan. 6 and Jan. 9.

Currency speculators in Hong Kong were stunned on Jan. 6 when the PBOC’s daily “fixing” of its central parity rate jumped by 639 basis points, or hundredths of a percentage point. The sudden rise against the dollar came after weeks of smaller declines.

The boost was accompanied by a spike in yuan overnight interbank interest rates to over 60 percent, making short trading positions against the currency indefensible.

The move was apparently orchestrated by the PBOC to punish speculators as part of an effort to stop the yuan’s downward spiral. But the depreciation resumed on Jan. 9 when the PBOC’s fixing fell by 594 basis points to 6.9262 to the U.S. dollar.

“Our impression is that the PBOC is very sensitive about the key 7.0 level for the yuan,” said Liu Weiming, chief investment officer at Fu Xi Investment Management, according to The Wall Street Journal. “Once 7 is broken, people will expect 8 and it will get even worse.”

But defending the yuan could become unaffordable if the PBOC treats the U.S. $3-trillion reserve level as equally inviolable. Tighter capital controls may be the only option.

“We’re starting to see more and more of a negative cycle being created,” Benjamin Fuchs, chief investment officer at BFAM Partners in Hong Kong, told Bloomberg News. Attempts to curb outflows are “just making people want to take money out quicker,” he said.

Gary Hufbauer, senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, said that China’s capital outflows began with its anti-corruption campaign before economic troubles became the major motivation.

“That caused a lot of people to become quite frightened and they moved their capital abroad,” Hufbauer said.

Cushioning the yuan’s fall

The PBOC has tried to cushion the currency’s fall by buying yuan until its reserve levels suffered.

China’s foreign exchange reserves hit a high of U.S. $3.99 trillion (27.43 trillion yuan) in mid-2014.

“By now, you have the psychology feeding on itself and people wondering if they can get out at all,” said Hufbauer.

The PBOC has also been pushed into supporting the yuan by U.S. President Donald Trump’s charges that China manipulates the currency’s value to gain an export advantage.

“Then, other forces within the government said they can’t continue to spend their foreign exchange reserves on this attempt to placate Trump,” Hufbauer said.

“So, here you’ve got, I would say, kind of a mess going on,” he said.

China’s tightening of capital controls is unlikely to be what the International Monetary Fund had in mind when it approved the yuan’s inclusion in its Special Drawing Rights (SDR) basket of major freely-traded currencies in 2015.

“I think the IMF decision was essentially political to begin with, so on political grounds, they will probably not say very much. But it’s very troubling what’s happened,” Hufbauer said.

Yahya Jammeh has violated the constitution and subverted the electoral laws of The Gambia by refusing to hand over power to the winner of the December elections. His decision constitutes treason. It triggers the right and duty of the citizenry to rise up against him in defence of the constitution. Military intervention by ECOWAS is also justified.

By Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua*

Africa has recorded another first in the area of bad governance: a sitting head of state who has lost elections and has conceded defeat, turns round a few days later to say that he misspoke and that he was not sure he meant what he said by saying he had lost the elections. This is the story unfolding in The Gambia which has been plunged into a state of uncertainty, panic and chaos.

Background

Lt Yahya Jammeh came to power in The Gambia on 22 July 1994, after leading a group of soldiers to oust the longest serving democratic government in Africa led by Sir Dawda Jawara. The raison d’être for the military putsch was to clean up the mess of corruption created by the Jawara administration and return the country to constitutional democracy in four years, to wit, 1998.

At that time, the then OAU’s position on recognition of governments was murky at best as the organisation did not make provision for such practice in its Charter.

Recognition of governments is a unilateral act acknowledging the existence of a government – which came to power through unconstitutional means – by another government or international organization. Recognition by a government is a political act, which does not necessarily take into account the legal context in which a state or government comes to power being. However, with respect to international organisations, recognition follows certain laid down principles and norms agreed to by the organisation and embodied either in its constitutive treaty or another document – be it a declaration, decision or resolution. Thus non-recognition means that the government that purports to be in existence is, legally speaking, not in existence; and therefore it cannot enter into relations with that the entity that has refused to grant it recognition.

Return to constitutional rule

Two years after assuming the reins of leadership in The Gambia, Jammeh organized a constitutional referendum on 8 August which resulted in the promulgation of a new constitution which ultimately returned the country to constitutional rule. In the ensuing elections, Jammeh contested and won with 55.8% of the vote. The elections were, however, criticised as being not free and fair due to government crackdown on journalists and opposition leaders at the time.

Regime legitimacy/Pseudo-democracy

However, the process was enough to cloth Jammeh’s regime with legitimacy, having met the minimalist democratic requirements established by the US and other Western States after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Having thus legitimised his rule, Jammeh went ahead to contest and win three more elections in 2001, 2006 and 2011. In all of these, the opposition alleged massive rigging of the polls and boycotted some of the parliamentary elections, which are held separately from the presidential.

From then on, nothing could stop Jammeh who began to acquire and amass titles, ending up as H.E. President Sheikh Professor Alhaji Dr. Yahya A.J.J. Jammeh. With each passing period, he sought to tighten his grip on power, leading to further and more egregious violations of human rights as reported by Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, the UN Human Rights Council, the EU, etc.

Retraction of concession of defeat

Then came December 1, 2016 when Jammeh lost the elections to Adama Barrow. Yet, after conceding defeat and congratulating the winner, in a bizarre twist of events, Mr Jammeh made a volte-face by refusing to recognize the election results. This decision, however, was clearly in violation of the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance Supplementary to the Protocol relating to the Mechanism for Conflict Prevention, Management, Resolution, Peacekeeping and Security (adopted in December 2001 and entered into force in 2005); and the African Charter on Democracy, Elections and Governance of which The Gambia is a signatory.

Article 1(c) of the Supplementary Protocol provides for ‘Zero tolerance for power obtained or maintained by unconstitutional means.’ Article 9 of the same instrument provides that ‘the party and/or candidate who loses the elections shall concede defeat to the political party and/or candidate finally declared the winner, following the guidelines and within the deadline stipulated by the law.’ All the election observers, including Jammeh himself, had declared the elections to be free and fair. Therefore, it did not lie in his mouth to contradict his earlier statement. The Protocol provision finds expression in the 1997 Gambian Constitution (as amended in 2001) which stipulates that … ‘The people shall express their will and consent as to who shall govern them and how they shall be governed, through regular, free and fair elections of their representatives.’

A few days after his volte-face, Jammeh sent the army to take control of offices of the independent electoral commission, and in the process barred the Electoral Commissioner and his staff from the premises. This action by the military is a betrayal of the loyalty pledge the Chief of Defence Staff had given the President-elect a few days earlier.

The army’s action is also in violation of the ECOWAS Supplementary Protocol demands that the armed forces be “apolitical,” “non-partisan” and should remain loyal to the nation as well as to “defend the independence and the territorial integrity of the State and its democratic institutions.” This is position is also affirmed in section 187(2) of the Gambian Constitution.

In reaction, the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights, in a statement issued on December 14, 2016, expressed deep concern “about the change of the position of the outgoing president on the legitimacy of the outcome of the elections.” It argued that this situation “has created tension and an atmosphere of uncertainty threatening the democratic process and the peace and stability of the country.”

Lessons from Jammeh’s antics

While the real underlying factors which caused Jammeh to switch course are not disclosed, one could connect it to the possibility of fighting for an amnesty deal against possible prosecution for the various human rights violations he is alleged to have committed which is likely to cause his indictment for crimes against humanity. Perhaps, the spectre of Chad’s Hissène Habré and the arrest warrant issued against Sudan’s Al Bashir started to haunt him. This may account for his decision in October 2016 to withdraw from the International Criminal Court (ICC). This view is confirmed by his statement of January 11, 2017 in which he is quoted as having appointed a national mediator to meet “all parties to resolve any mistrust and issues” and draft an amnesty bill to ensure there was “no witch-hunt so that we can restore a climate of confidence and security.”

Therefore, the issue of election rigging by Jammeh is mere red herring. He has more experience in election rigging than the coalition as he has done it since 1996. Secondly, if truly the rigging allegation was good, he would simply have followed the constitutional requirements to have that issue resolved before the Supreme Court but not to retract a concession speech, decide to decompose and recompose an independent electoral commission and occupy its premises.

All these actions are in violation of international law and the Gambian Constitution. This strategy was adopted in order to create a reaction from the Barrow camp which Jammeh would have exploited to declare a state of emergency and use that as a basis to perpetuate himself in power.  The Gambian populace should be commended for not falling into this heinous trap. In the end, he did declare a state of emergency but without any basis through a servile National Assembly which he controls.

From my analysis, the OAU and later the AU, is responsible for raising the monster in Jammeh. From scratch, the OAU ought to have supported the African Commission on Human and Peoples’ Rights in standing up to Jammeh and ensuring that the resolutions it passed on The Gambia were implemented. It took the OAU up to 1999 to take a decision in Algiers, Algeria, on unconstitutional changes in government and another extra year and for the Lomé Declaration of July 2000 on the Framework for an OAU Response to Unconstitutional Changes of Government (Lomé Declaration) to be adopted.

The Lomé document, among others, identified four forms of unconstitutional changes of government. That is, through coups d’état, mercenarism, armed dissident action to overthrow a regime and refusing to leave office after losing an election. The declaration also, albeit indirectly, outlined steps to recognizing a new regime, from no to de facto and ultimately de jure recognition. However, a major weakness of this declaration is that it did not give space for granting simultaneous de jure recognition to a deposed regime. Therefore, what it meant is that if a constitutionally-elected regime lost power through unconstitutional means, it had no chance of being restored to power.

The AU came to build on the Lomé Declaration, first, through its Constitutive Act, which sought to radically depart from the OAU position of non-interference to that of non-indifference by allowing for the right of intervention pursuant to  a  decision  of  the Assembly  in  respect  of  grave  circumstances, namely: war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity, even without the authorization of the UN Security Council.

This evolution created the expectation that the AU would develop clear-cut policies on recognition of governments and on how to deal with unconstitutional regimes. Unfortunately, however, up till now, the AU has adopted inconsistent practices on how to deal with unconstitutional changes in government.

The ECOWAS stance of standing up to Jammeh is the second time it has sought to flex its muscles to axe a leader who wants to remain in power unconstitutionally. The first was in the case of Tejan Kabbah when it intervened militarily to restore the democratically-elected government to power after its overthrow by rebel forces. This action by ECOWAS was hailed as representing a watershed moment in the adoption of a pragmatic position on collective recognition which is in line with general international law position of granting.

Although the AU position on unconstitutional changes in government is clear, it has sought to play second fiddle to ECOWAS in this matter. This is an unfortunate development. For example, it is not known if The Gambia has been suspended from the activities of the Union, as required by Article 30 of the AU Constitutive Act.

It is important to note that AU has set a precedent in Comoros by sending troops there in 2007 to overthrow a unconstitutional government led by Bacar who had refused to leave office after the expiration of his term. However, that precedent has not been followed. This is an experience that can definitely be shared with ECOWAS. AU’s laid-back approach to the Gambia crisis, therefore, is unacceptable.

Popular sovereignty versus state sovereignty

It is crucial for Africa to recognize that the time for popular sovereignty is now. The constitutions of all African States stipulate that sovereignty resides in the people. Section 1(2) of The Gambian Constitution affirms this. Yet, this notion of sovereignty has been overshadowed by the absolutist approach to the exercise of state sovereignty. The latter has been used by governments to trample over the will of the people, hiding behind the nebulous concept of non-interference in the internal affairs of states.

S6(2) of the Constitution empowers all citizens of The Gambia “to defend this Constitution and, in particular, to resist, to the extent reasonably justifiable in the circumstances, any person or group of persons seeking or attempting by any violent or unlawful means to suspend, overthrow or abrogate this Constitution or any part of it.”

This is popular sovereignty, the citizenship power, which the Constitution accords the people and which they are to use to resist oppression.

Jammeh is also subverting the electoral laws of The Gambia by claiming that he would remain in power until May when the Supreme Court would be able to hear his petition. That decision constitutes treason by seeking to overthrow and or prevent a constitutionally appointed regime from taking office, which is frowned upon by the Gambian Constitution.  Section 49 of the constitution grants each political party or individual the right to petition the Supreme Court within 10 days of the announcement of the elections of which he/she is aggrieved about. That process, however, does not stop the investiture of the new President-elect, according to section 63(2) of The Gambian constitution: “The person elected President shall assume office sixty days following the day of his or her election.” This is because governance must continue. There cannot be a hiatus.

The law says that when the decision is rendered by the court and the winner is different from the one declared by the Electoral Commissioner the latter will vacate his post and give way for the former to take over. So on what basis is Jammeh demanding to remain in power: his incumbency, his belief that he has a better chance of winning the case or the mere fact that he is the petitioner? Gambia’s laws on resolving presidential electoral disputes are similar to Ghana’s, not Kenya’s.

His behavior therefore triggers the right and duty of the citizenry to rise up against him in defence of the constitution. And where they are unable to do so due to the overwhelming physical force used against them, to solicit the support of the international community to do so.

For that matter, if Jammeh does not cede power and contest the petition as a private citizen, ECOWAS’ planned intervention will be justified under the concept of the Responsibility to Protect (RtoP). RtoP is based on the underlying premise that sovereignty entails a responsibility to protect all persons from mass atrocity crimes and human rights violations. Therefore, where a state proves unable or unwilling to respect this principle it triggers the responsibility of the international community to respond to avert the commission of international crimes. Thus, the only way to avoid the intervention is to give up power peacefully. The situation in the Burundi where the AU did not exercise the political will to intervene which has created a continuing state of instability where atrocities are being committed, should be our guide.

* Dr Kwadwo Appiagyei-Atua is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Law, University of Ghana, Legon. He lectures in Public International Law and International Human Rights Law. He can be reached on kappiagyeiatua@ug.edu.gh

Israeli detectives have interviewed Benjamin Netanyahu for a third time as part of a series of investigations into his conduct in office, The Guardian reports.

Amid reports in the Israeli media that police are close to deciding whether to indict the prime minister, in a post on Facebook he accused his perceived enemies in the media and politics “of an attempted coup by undemocratic means”.

Israeli media showed images of officers from the Lahav 433 anti-corruption unit arriving at Netanyahu’s official residence just before 10am on Friday, January 27.

His remarks on social media came a day after he used an appearance before the country’s parliament to defend himself against the accusations. The sometimes overlapping investigations into Netanyahu and his circle – including his wife, Sara, and son Yair – have centred largely on two cases.

The first, known as Case 1000, is investigating gifts from businessmen. They include expensive cigars and pink champagne given over the years by Arnon Milchan, the wealthy producer behind the films Fight Club and Pretty Woman who also owns shares in the Israeli television company Channel 10

A second investigation, known as Case 2000, is focused on whether the Israeli prime minister behaved properly in negotiating changes to the country’s media market, including offering to lower the circulation of a strongly pro-Netanyahu title in exchange for improved coverage in the daily Yedioth Ahronoth in conversations caught on tape.

Israeli media suggested the interview on Friday related to the second case, as part of which the publisher of Yedioth Ahronoth has been interviewed five times.

Netanyahu’s troubles have fuelled increasingly intense speculation in political circles that his coalition may be coming to an end.

Speaking before a scheduled hour-long question and answer session in the Knesset, Netanyahu denied wrongdoing. “It is legal to receive gifts from friends. They’re investigating me? They’re accusing me? This is a bad joke,” he said.

“Anyone with eyes in their head can see there is an unprecedented, hypocritical witch-hunt going on, asserting its pressure to change the government through media pressure on the attorney general, so that he will submit an indictment at any cost.”

By Aisha Fareed

The Spanish brand Tous Jewelry has since 1920 distinguished itself with accessories boasting unique patterns that warm the hearts of fashion followers.

“Bonjour Señorita” — as Tous’s new spring-summer 2017 collection is known — offers up powerful and irresistible pieces that evoke the vibrant colors of the streets of Havana, enhanced with a classic Parisian touch.

It suggests a colorful summer ahead, with an abundance of gems and pearls.

Although jewelry is still the company’s core business, Tous also produces a broad range of accessories, such as bags, watches, fragrances, eyeglasses, textiles and small leather goods.

Handbags are strongly present in Tous’s new collection, with a broad range of summer colors and designs present in every piece.

One cannot talk about Tous without mentioning the teddy bear — the brand’s symbol — which appears in different shapes and forms, sometimes in gold, silver, pearl and sometimes in bright colors.

“On one of my trips, I saw a teddy bear in a shop window that brought back fond memories of my childhood. Why not make one in gold?,” said Rosa Oriol, the Catalan jeweler, business executive and the creative director of Tous, in a statement on the brand’s website.

“The bear marked the start of our expansion and it’s always present in our designs. It is very special to me and I am aware that we have gotten where we are thanks to the bear. The tenderness it transmits is universal.”

Esra Emad, a TV and YouTube actress who was among the attendees of the launch of Tous’s new collection, said she liked the new range.

“It suits all ages, not only teenagers as we all thought in the past. The pieces are very elegant and sophisticated and can be worn in many different ways with many styles,” she said.

A fictional designer’s journey

Camille, a fictional character who plays the role of the designer behind the Tous collection, is a former classic ballerina who tells us a story about self-realization. Her story takes place in France and Cuba, where she rediscovers herself.

Camille’s journey begins in the refined and elegant Paris, where she lives and works as a ballerina, and finishes in tropical Havana, where she travels to relax and unwind and discovers a totally different and exciting new world.

The Jolie collection draws on the shape of the classic bow used in pointed ballet shoes. The beginning of Camille’s story inspires the Jolie collection, when she is still living in Paris and feels tied to a job she dislikes, and to a life that does not leave her satisfied.

The Jolie collection has natural but very contemporary pieces that are perfect for creating sweet and modern looks. It features earrings, bangles, chokers and rings.
Tytan — an elegant and sophisticated ring collection — is inspired by the fictional Camille’s innermost feelings. Tytan is available in two styles: an 18-karat yellow gold ring with garnet and freshwater cultured pearl, and an 18-karat white gold ring with titanium, topaz and freshwater cultured pearl.

Havana calling

The Bera collection is inspired by the fictional Camille’s arrival in Havana, where she finds a new world that lifts her spirit and makes her feel truly alive. She comes to realize that even the smallest things have the power to move her. She feels content and believes deep down that everything will turn out for the best. The pieces of the Bera collection are made with gold and diamonds, as well as sterling silver with pearls.

The Miranda collection features Tous’ iconic bear in mother of pearl and sterling silver and steel with enamel. It is an indispensable touch of color for the perfect summer look.

The Ivette collection was inspired by the vibrant lights of Havana, where Camille delights in the energy of her new city and is always discovering breathtaking places; the city seduces her with its colors, its contrasts, its sounds, the people, the lifestyle and the sea.

Ivette is a colorful and lively collection that features bangles, earrings and rings made of 18-karat yellow gold and multicolor gems and worn together to create a perfect mix and match that flawlessly completes any look.

The Eloise collection represents the peace that Camille finds through her life-changing experiences. She rediscovers herself in the special moments she shares in Cuba; each gem represents a memory, an experience.

The Eloise collection features necklaces, earrings, bracelets and rings made with vermeil sterling silver, pearls and multicolor gems.

Tous’s star collection this summer takes its name from the fictional Camille herself. The medallions express deep feelings, emotions, faith, hope and memories of loved ones.

This collection is the culmination of her experience, the ultimate affirmation that she has really found herself, and while she feels a little nostalgia for her old life in Paris, she is truly fulfilled. Each one of these medallions holds inside it the memory of a meaningful experience, person or moment.

Global warming is expected to increase runoff and input of organic matter to aquatic ecosystems in large regions of the Northern hemisphere including the Baltic Sea.

Research performed at Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences is now indicating a sevenfold increase in poisonous methylmercury in zooplankton as a consequence. This increase is due to an altered structure of the aquatic food web. The study has been published in the journal Science Advances.

“The study has revealed a phenomenon that has not been described before. The results are critical in the prediction of how global climate changes can affect the exposure of methylmercury to ecosystems, and humans,” said Erik Björn, associate professor at Umeå University and leader of the research project.

Mercury is regarded as one of the top ten chemicals of public health concern according to the World Health Organization, WHO. The problems with mercury are mostly caused by methylmercury, an organometallic mercury compound that acts as a strong neurotoxin and that can be accumulated in the food webs of seas and lakes. The content of methylmercury in fish and other living organisms is controlled both by the total content of mercury in the ecosystems and by complex chemical and ecological processes in the environment.

Climate changes and land use are expected to affect these processes in several ways, for instance by input of organic matter, humic substances, from land through watercourses out to lakes and seas

Humic substances affect the aquatic environment in several ways – for instance by reducing the reach of sunlight into the water. That can lead to reductions in the production of phytoplankton via photosynthesis and instead favor growth of bacteria which can make use of humic substances for their growth. In turn, this can cause a trophic shift in the food web where it goes from being dominated by phytoplankton production (autotrophic) to being dominated by bacterial production (heterotrophic).

A heterotrophic food web generally has more levels of different organisms than an autotrophic food web, and the researchers’ hypothesis was that this phenomenon would lead to an increased number of potential steps where methylmercury can be concentrated before reaching predators such as zooplankton and fish.

“Our study confirms this hypothesis and shows that an increase of 15–20 per cent of the content of organic matter in our waters can cause a shift from an autotrophic based to a heterotrophic based food web and lead to the content of methylmercury increasing two to sevenfold in zooplankton,” said Erik Björn.

An increase in the content of organic matter by 15–20 per cent caused by increased precipitation and runoff is in accordance with climate change scenarios for large regions of the northern hemisphere, including the Baltic Sea region. The experiment also shows that the measured increase in methylmercury (two to sevenfold) is on a par with the estimated total increase (two to fivefold) of mercury in the ecosystems caused by human emissions during the entire industrial era from 1850 up until present time.

“The results emphasise the critical importance of including effects of changes to the food web in lakes and seas into models and risk assessments of mercury in a changing climate,” said Erik Björn.

The study, which is a collaboration between researchers at Umeå University and the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, could be carried out thanks to access to the technologically advanced mesocosm facility at Umeå Marine Sciences Centre in northern Sweden. The mesocosms consist of water-filled tubes with temperature and light control, which enable large-scale experiments under well-controlled conditions.

Umeå University – located in the north of Sweden – is characterized by strong research where many of our researchers belong to the global elite in for instance global health, epidemiology, molecular biology, ecology, plant physiology, marine biology and Arctic research. Umeå University is one of Sweden’s largest teaching universities that offers a wide-spanning and attractive selection of courses and programs, and stimulating environments for working and studying for the over 4,300 employees and 31,000 students. For instance, it was from Umeå University that the work in discovering the gene-editing tool CRISPR-Cas9 was led.