By Abhijnan Rej

At the heart of India’s China problem is an Indian inability to size up the Middle Kingdom and the meaning of its spectacular rise and to devise realistic responses to meet the attendant challenges. To be fair, this is not an affliction of New Delhi alone. Successive American administrations have also remained equally puzzled about China’s long-term strategic intent. There are three views on China that dominate much of Indian public discourse: of China as a (historically) unique power; of China as an economic partner; and of China as fellow ‘norm-entrepreneur’.

China as a sui-generis power

Many in India have implicitly assumed China to be a sui generis power – grounded in a supposedly-Asian ethos – whose behaviour is to be understood outside the matrix that is usually employed to study traditional (Western) powers. When Xi Jinping calls for a new kind of great-power relationship, he has many takers here.

This group of China aficionados believes that Beijing’s mandarins privilege the impetus of a deep-historical identity over raison d’etat – the assumption being that China is a civilizational state that would eschew the use of force and coercion in its rise to great-power status. Such idealists are comforted whenever Chinese dignitaries visiting India invoke the ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’ – a set of quasi-philosophical principles that were in vogue up and until Mao saw to it that India was abjectly defeated in a short and sharp confrontation in 1962.

China as an economic partner

The second view of India-China relationship can be termed econo-centric. China, in this view, emerges as a key partner in India’s economic transformation, especially when it comes to becoming a large market for Indian goods and services as well as an important source of foreign direct investment. ‘Chindia’ – a Chimerica-like portmanteau coined by a minister of the previous government – will be predicated, in equal parts, by the logic of economic interdependence and the history of civilizational ties, so goes the argument.

But idealism is not always a necessary condition in the econo-centric view. One prevalent pragmatic opinion in India is that of leveraging China for India’s infrastructure growth and connectivity needs to reduce the gap in material strength between the two countries. Once that gap is sufficiently bridged India will be in a position to deter Chinese designs, proponents of this view hold.

It is not uncommon to see this view being expressed pithily both on- and offline as “an 8 per cent GDP growth rate for the next two decades is India’s China policy.” For India to sustain this growth rate, Chinese surplus capital, directed at infrastructure development, can come handy. India’s connectivity aspirations can also be met by aligning them with Chinese mega-plans like the Belt-and-Road-Initiative.

There is indeed historical precedence to buttress this line of thinking. After all, China’s spectacular growth was supported through free-riding the economic and security architectures that the US put in place, not to mention through leveraging Western investment. Why can’t India out-China China in a similar way?

There are two problems with this argument. First, there is no common enemy that India can invoke to seek concessions, economic or otherwise, from China. The US-China rapprochement was in the shadow of the Soviet Union and is a classic example of how the two countries leveraged a strategic triangle to their own benefits.

With China-Russia animosity now buried (at least publicly) and India-Russia relationship increasingly under strain, triangular geopolitics is unlikely to work in New Delhi’s favour. Second, even assuming that Chinese economic growth slows down in the near future, the gap in material strength between the two countries is unlikely to be closed anytime soon.

China as fellow norm-entrepreneur

The third view of China in India is as a potential partner in promoting global governance norms that will promote the unique needs of emerging economies led by the two countries. The coterie that hold this view have argued that existing multilateral institutions, whether it is the International Monetary Fund or the World Bank, have been insufficiently effective in meeting the needs of emerging economies.

They also hold the view that these economies are under-represented in multilateral institutions (as measured by voting shares, for example). Seen from the prism of multilateral bargaining it makes sense for India and China to deploy their collective heft to seek reforms of these institutions – when possible – and to create new institutions that compliments the existing ones.

BRICS was the product of this line of thinking. Pragmatic Indian scholars and policy-makers, even when suspicious of China’s strategic intent towards India, have argued that BRICS is a valuable platform in that it allows the two countries to cooperate on “low-politics” issues (the über-realist John Mearsheimer’s terminology) – trade, sustainable development, and finance, for example – without hard-security irritants that would normally stalemate bilateral discussions being in the picture. This was also the line of thinking that led India to seek membership as the second-largest shareholder in the China-led multilateral Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

An unstated hope was that as both countries find convergence on low-politics issues, the road towards greater understanding on hard-security concerns and sensitivities would be paved. That has not come to a pass. While India has enthusiastically supported the BRICS agenda – last year’s summit in New Delhi had a record number of events around it – China has shown no discernible softening around India’s core security concerns regarding Pakistan or India’s membership in the NSG.

The view that the 21st century will be that of Asia’s has become commonplace to the point of being trite. The fructification of this long bet will be predicated in large measures by whether India and China can simultaneously and peacefully rise to great-power status. This will be invariably determined by whether India reads China – and absorbs the consequences of China’s rise into its strategic calculus – correctly and realistically.

This article originally appeared in Swarajya.

The US unemployment rate inched up in January to 4.8 percent, as the economy reportedly added 227,000 jobs. The modest change in the unemployment rate was also associated with a rise in the employment-to-population ratio (EPOP) to 59.9 percent. This is equal to the previous high for the recovery in March of last year. The jobs growth figure was somewhat higher than had generally been expected, but is somewhat offset by the fact that the prior months’ numbers were revised down by 39,000.

While the rise in the EPOP is good news, it is still well below pre-recession levels. The drop remains even when looking at prime-age workers (ages 25-54), with the EPOP for prime-age men 2.7 percentage points below pre-recession peaks and the EPOP for women is down 1.5 percentage points. The overall EPOP for African Americans hit a new high for the recovery, at 57.5 percent. While these data are erratic, the January figure is more than a full percentage point above the year-round average for 2016.

Other data in the household survey were mixed, notably there was a substantial decline in the share of unemployment due to voluntary quits. The January percentage was 11.4 percent, 1.1 percentage point below its November peak. This measure of workers’ confidence in their labor market prospects is almost a full percentage point below the pre-recession peak of 12.3 percent, and almost four percentage points below the 15.2 percent peak in April of 2000.

The payroll job increases were driven by a jump of 45,900 in retail and 36,000 in construction. There was also an unusually large increase of 19,800 jobs in finance and insurance, following a rise of 20,200 in December. This compares to an average gain of just 8,600 jobs a month in the period from November of 2015 to November of 2016.

Professional and technical services added 22,700 jobs in January, roughly in line with its growth over the last year. Health care added just 18,300 jobs in January, well below its average of 31,200 over the last year. Restaurants added 29,900 jobs for the month, somewhat above the monthly average gain of 23,800 jobs over the last year.

Manufacturing added 5,000 jobs for the month. Employment in the sector is down by 46,000 from its year-ago level and by 220,000 from when President Obama took office eight years ago. (It had fallen by 4,543,000 during President Bush’s two terms in office.) Last month, there were 49,900 people employed in coal mining, compared to 86,400 in January of 2009.

Wage growth appears to have moderated slightly in the most recent data. The average hourly wage in January was 2.5 percent above its year-ago level. Comparing the average for the last three months with the prior three months, wages grew at just a 2.2 percent annual rate. It is worth remembering that there is some shift from non-wage benefits such as health care to wages, so that wage growth exceeds to some extent the rate of growth of compensation. The Employment Cost Index rose by just 2.2 percent over the last year.

Real wage growth for production and non-supervisory workers has been positive for the last three years of the Obama administration. The sharp decline in energy prices in 2014 and 2015 produced healthy gains for those years of more than 2.0 percent. The pace of real wage growth has slowed as energy prices stabilized in the last year, but real wages are still going up even if not very fast.

The January job gains were likely in part attributable to weather, as there were few serious snowstorms in the northeast and Midwest in the period preceding the reference week, which is unusual for January. This could suggest somewhat weaker growth going forward. It is also worth noting the continued weakness in hours. Although the number of jobs has increased by 1.6 percent over the last year, the aggregate weekly hours index has risen by just 1.1 percent.

On the whole the report shows a labor force that is growing at a respectable, but not overly rapid rate. There is no evidence of overheating in the form of accelerating wage growth or longer workweeks. However by any measure the last jobs report of the Obama years is hugely better than the first one.

Except for certain constants in physics, chemistry and some other sciences there really are alternative facts for myriad answers to questions. The recent brouhaha over the use of the term alternative facts by a Trump White House staffer reveals more than media bias. It reveals utter stupidity.

As someone with a doctorate in science and engineering, a former full professor of engineering at a major university, the author of five nonfiction books and hundreds of articles, as well as a former senior official at the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the National Governors Association, I have seen countless cases of legitimate alternative facts. All kinds of professionals exercise considerable discretion at best and major bias and subjectivity at worse when selecting pieces of data for an analysis or to support a conclusion. Nor do they necessarily describe the limits and uncertainties of the data used.

Here is a relevant contemporary example. President Trump just issued an executive order to greatly limit new federal hires. In an article in The Washington Post the following appeared: “Depending on how the exemptions are interpreted, according to New YorkUniversity public service professor Paul Light, the freeze might affect fewer than 800,000 employees, or more than one-fifth of the overall federal workforce.”

That one fifth would correspond to 4 million federal employees. Is that figure too high or too low? Is it universally used?

Apparently not. Days later another article in The Washington Post cited 2.8 million current federal employees. This civilian workforce in the Executive Branch was shown to have been stable for some years. Yet it is fairly common to see the 4 million figure in various places.

I did an Internet search for the number of federal employees. I was not surprised to find a number of alternative facts about a parameter that one might think is not open to much interpretation. If your eyes are glazing over, it gets worse.

An official federal government website offered the following data for 2014. The total number is 4,185, 000. But this is comprised of 2,776,000 for the Executive Branch, 1,602,000 for the military, and 64,000 for the legislative and judicial areas.

One website says there are “1.8 million civilian employees, excluding postal service, according to the Department. of Labor.” Another site says: “There are currently 1.9 million people employed by the federal government (without counting postal workers or military members).”

The Postal Service website says there are 625,000 employees. Subtract this from the 2.8 million figure and you get 2.18 million civilian workers, more than the 1.8 million or 1.9 million figures.

Nevertheless, these figures indicate that the above number of either 2.776 million or 2.8 million for the Executive Branch includes postal workers. But is it realistic to consider this number relevant to discussions of a hiring freeze, imposed by President Trump, which is what is done in the recent Washington Post article? Not likely.

They also suggest that the 800,000 figure in the WaPost article represents a much larger fraction of civilian federal workers, excluding postal workers, than the 20 percent given in the article referring to some 4 million workers.

An article entitled “Counting federal employees is no simple task” made the point that data may not always include Postal Service employees and that various factors can be used to justify certain numbers, such as what year the data were obtained for.

With this one example reasonable people can see that various numbers could be cited for the size of the federal workforce, such as 1.8 million, 2.8 million, or even 4 million. They are, it seems, alternative facts not carrying the burden of being intentionally false and deceptive.

In recent days there are more examples of how “facts” can vary and support the view that there really are alternative facts. The New York Times said there were 1.36 million civilian federal employees; Politico said it was 2 million; the Baltimore Sun said it was 2.7 million.

“Blacks have traditionally had to operate in a situation where whites have set themselves up as the custodians of the black experience.” — August Wilson

For me, the question of inequality between Blacks and Whites in America boils down to one simple question: how many black parents tell their kids that they can achieve the American dream, one where anybody can start from humble beginnings and with honest hard work and perseverance rise to the greatest heights?

If the American Dream is achievable for blacks, then tell me where are the black scientists, artists, nuclear physicists, painters and playwrights? Where are the black Nobel Laureates? Where are the black Walter Cronkites, Charlie Roses and Tom Brokaws? Where are the black Michael Phelps and Arnold Palmers? How many famous black historians, economists and army generals can you quote? Where are the black Indiana Jones and Luke Skywalkers? Can you name one black super hero? Where is the black David Ogilvy? For that matter in the liberal bastion of Hollywood can you find me a black studio head?

In Silicon Valley there are numerous Indian and Asian entrepreneurs, tech moguls and billionaire venture capitalists. Currently, Microsoft, Google and Adobe all have Indian born CEO’s at their helm. Yet, I struggle to name one black startup founder, tech mogul, hedge fund billionaire or even Wall Street tycoon.

It is hard to argue a case for blanket racism in America because many non-white immigrants tend to do extremely well, across many different industries and fields, from medicine to science and technology. In fact, Asian-Americans continue to have the highest household incomes in America (Source: Pew Research article). I want to know why the American dream continues to seem largely unattainable for black people outside of music and a few sports.

Across every major statistic used to measure social mobility and economic progress, there is huge disparity between whites and blacks in education, unemployment and income. In fact, after the financial crisis things got worse for blacks; the income inequality between black and whites is now the worst it has been in America’s history. The median wealth of white households is 20 times that of black households….” “These lopsided wealth ratios are the largest since the government began publishing such data a quarter century ago and roughly twice the size of the ratios that had prevailed between these groups for the two decades prior to the Great Recession that ended in 2009.” (Source: Pew Research Center). Hispanics fare badly too but are still considerably better off than blacks.

All this data has been debated and discussed to death but nobody has really provided sufficient answers as to why this should be the case. Why does the plight of black people in 2017 still seem dire, one hundred and fifty years after slavery was abolished?

The first place to start is to think about the images that have consistently been portrayed through Hollywood movies, mainstream television and media; black people have long been stereotyped as thuggish hoodlums in hoodies and portrayed as drug dealers and petty criminals. Even Eddie Murphy’s character in Beverly Hills Cop had a disdain for rules and broke the law while the white cops were disciplined and anal about upholding and following the law.

To this day we are bombarded with mugshots of black criminals and rapists on national and local news every night. Until very recently politicians routinely talked about the black community’s desire to live off the welfare state as a truism. They made it seem like all blacks were lazy and that black youth were a lost cause, choosing to live off handouts, sell drugs or join gangs versus getting an education and lifting themselves out of poverty. For too long we have been told that the reason for the black community’s lack of social mobility is that they are inherently lazy, lacking determination and self-motivation.

Before we default to this lazy argument, we should look at a few things in America’s history that can explain the inter-generational disenfranchisement and lack of mobility among the black community.

For years, corporate and mainstream America buried its head with tokenism. I remember when ad agencies were told by clients to put one black person in the ad to check the box for diversity. In the same way that clients added a token black person in an ad, to prevent being sued for lack of diversity, the same false reality gave rise to the Cosby Show, Eddie Murphy and the Arsenio Hall Show. It was tokenism that allowed white Americans to feel better about the opportunities being provided to black people; it was never real social or racial integration.

Consider that, “approximately 12–13% of the American population is African-American, but they make up 37% of prison inmates” (Source: US Department of Justice, 2014). “African-American males are six times more likely to be incarcerated than white males…. “If  current trends continue, one of every three black American males born today can expect to go to prison in his lifetime—compared to one of every seventeen white males”(Source: Report of The Sentencing Project to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, 2013).

These two statistics alone are alarming and led to my investigating why it was that the US prison system is overwhelmingly filled with black males, in spite of the fact that black people are no more criminally prone than Indian, Chinese, white or any other ethnic group in the world.

To fully understand this anomaly, we need to go back to the abolition of slavery because there is a common misconception that it ended with Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation of 1863; this assumption masks a reality that slavery silently got institutionalized into other forms of legally sanctioned barriers against blacks that exist even today.

I recommend watching Ava Duvernay documentary, ’13th’. It chronicles the institutionalisation of slavery from 1863 to after the civil war, through the war on drugs started by Nixon, broadened by Reagan and codified by Bill Clinton into the industrial prison complex we see today. It explains the insane rates of incarceration we see among black youth today.

As a non-white immigrant, I felt there was something dramatically wrong in America because I realised very early on that I had a much greater chance of achieving the American Dream, in virtually any profession, than a black person born here.

It is worth noting that the majority of successful non-white immigrants from India, Middle East and Asia who came here in the 1950’s were typically middle class, well-educated and came of their own free will and volition; for this reason I believe they have never been viewed through the same lens as blacks, who were all brought here in servitude and never considered equals by their white masters. Every black person in American can trace their ancestral roots back to a slave. I believe this stigma still prevails among white Americans, albeit unconsciously for the vast majority.

You might ask how it is possible after so many generations that these imprints might remain in people. Interestingly, there is science that suggests that our DNA also contains within it the traumas and experiences of our ancestors.

“According to the new insights of behavioral epigenetics, traumatic experiences in our past, or in our recent ancestors’ past, leave molecular scars adhering to our DNA. Jews whose great-grandparents were chased from their Russian shtetls; Chinese whose grandparents lived through the ravages of the Cultural Revolution; young immigrants from Africa whose parents survived massacres; adults of every ethnicity who grew up with alcoholic or abusive parents — all carry with them more than just memories.” (Source: Discover Magazine). Coupled with the images we have been repeatedly fed of the stereotyped black person through Hollywood and the media’s lens, both exclusively controlled by white people, this can help to explain our perceptions and biases today.

For our purposes here I want to share a few historical facts to illustrate why I am convinced that the black experience in America is not only unique but explains the lack of social and upward mobility and among blacks.

When Southern Democrats took power after Reconstruction they passed a series of local and state laws and social rules to oppress blacks and disenfranchise them. These became known as the Jim Crow laws and etiquette and were in effect from around 1877 until the 1960’s. They legalized segregation in transport, education, restaurants and bathrooms. Below are just a few examples of the types of things that Jim Crow etiquette mandated:

1. “A black male could not offer his hand (to shake hands) with a white male because it implied being socially equal.
2. Obviously, a black male could not offer his hand or any other part of his body to a white woman, because he risked being accused of rape.
3. Under no circumstance was a black male to offer to light the cigarette of a white female — that gesture implied intimacy.
4. Blacks were not allowed to show public affection toward one another in public, especially kissing, because it offended whites.” (Source: Ferris State University site).

The effect was to relegate blacks to inferior status and make them second class citizens in their own country. The laws also ensured voting restrictions such as poll taxes, literacy tests, and residency requirements that prevented the majority of blacks (and the poorest whites) from voting, leaving southern blacks politically crippled and economically disadvantaged.

While the laws in the southern states were overtly segregationist, discriminatory practices were prevalent even nationally and began to get institutionalised. One of the most heinous was a policy known as redlining, which was designed to prevent black neighbourhoods from receiving housing loans.

It, “was introduced by the creation of the Federal Housing Administration in 1934, and lasted until 1968.” “Otherwise celebrated for making homeownership accessible to white people by guaranteeing their loans, the FHA explicitly refused to back loans to black people or even other people who lived near black people.” Redlining destroyed the possibility of investment wherever black people lived.”(Source: The Atlantic). We know that to thrive and grow every community requires investment in jobs, housing, infrastructure, etc.; such investments were discouraged in majority black communities across America.

With the passage of the Civil Rights act of 1964 and the Voting Rights act of 1965, people believed, like with the Emancipation Proclamation, that they would magically bring equality for all Black Americans. In 1963, “a Gallup poll found that 78% of white people would leave their neighborhood if many black families moved in. “When it comes to MLK’s march on Washington, 60% had an unfavorable view of the march, stating that they felt it would cause violence and would not accomplish anything.” (Source: Roper Center, Cornell).

These laws were necessary to end segregation, ban employment discrimination and give blacks the right to vote, but once again what American society failed to realise was that to change deeply-ingrained beliefs and multi-generational prejudice would require much more than the passage of a law; especially when there were still white people in power determined to maintain the status quo and the inequality between Blacks and Whites.

If you find this hard to believe, consider that, “as recently as 2006, a city government report found that affluent, non-white Milwaukeeans were 2.7 times likelier to be denied home loans than white people with similar incomes.” A study by the National Institute of Health from 2009 concluded that “that white people prefer to live in communities where there are fewer black people, regardless of their income.” (Source: NIH Study “Does Race Matter in Neighbourhood Preferences).

A field study conducted by CNN in 2008 found that, “Among those with no criminal record, white applicants were more than twice as likely to receive a call back relative to equally qualified black applicants. Even more troubling, whites with a felony conviction fared just as well, if not better, than a black applicant with a clean background.” (Source: CNN article). The US Department of Justice settled a lawsuit with J.P. Morgan Chase in January 2017, for charging “African-American and Hispanic borrowers higher rates than white borrowers from 2006 to 2009, in violation of the Fair Housing Act.” (WSJ article).

Based on this historical evidence it becomes clear that numerous policies purposefully put in place to institutionalize racism; these policies were designed to silently prevent black people from gaining mobility and integrating with white America. The impact can be felt to this day.

Upward social mobility requires each generation to move one step up the social ladder, which then allows the following generation to gain access to better housing and higher quality education which leads to better jobs, better pay and a higher standard of living – more than any other non-white group, black people have been denied the ability to gain social mobility.

Think back to the fact that currently 1 in 3 Black American men face jail in their lifetime and then consider that a criminal record pretty much disqualifies you from participating in US society; even for low-level, non-violent offenses, for which the majority of black people are jailed. “Even your lower-paying fast-food jobs are now doing background checks,” he said. “How can I pay child support if I can’t get a job?” (Source: NYTimes article).

Without question we have come a very long way, but the fact is that many of these biases are still prevalent today and we must be aware of them in order to move forward. I believe that to heal these long simmering racial divisions (that have come to light more starkly under the first black President) and mend this broken narrative, Americans need to start by acknowledging and owning the sins of slavery (much like Germany does about the Holocaust) and gain a deeper understanding of how the subsequent years of institutionalised racism have ravaged the black community.

This is not about retribution or pity; it is about understanding the starkly different reality a black and white people in America face.

Until Americans fully appreciate this reality, we cannot begin to do the necessary work to ensure that the American Dream becomes real for future generations of black children.

By N Sathiya Moorthy*

At a New Year news conference in Male, Chinese Ambassador Wang Fukang reportedly expressed ‘surprise’ over “concerns raised by Indian journalists over the leasing of the Maldivian island of Feydhoo Finolhu (an uninhabited island close to the capital Male) to a Chinese company to develop a resort”.

The SunOnline reported on January 4, 2017 that: “Some Indian media outlets have reportedly raised concern that giving an island close to the main airport of the country was a danger to the strategic interests of India. In response, the Chinese Ambassador said that the Indian attention on a Maldivian tourism lease with a Chinese company is very surprising.“

“The Ambassador said that he believes the Maldives is a popular tourist destination and so is always looking for foreign investors and is an opportunity open to the whole world”. He has a point. The web version of another local daily Miadhu quoted Ambassador Wang as recalling how “100 million Chinese travelled as tourists last year…(to Maldives), hence the number of visitors to Maldives can be increased”.

Ambassador Wang further pointed out that 700,000 Chinese tourists travelled to Bali, in Indonesia, alone. Around “500,000 Chinese tourists visited Japan last year, and 960,000 visited South Korea. So, it will not be difficult to get 1.5 million tourists to Maldives from China alone”, the Chinese envoy said.

He noted that “Maldives is much better than Bali in so many ways. Bali is just one island. So, the number of people who want to visit Maldives can be increased. Maybe the problem lies in marketing and pricing and advertising”, the web journal quoted him as saying.

In this context, Miadhu quoted Ambassador Wang as saying: “Maldives is the most popular destination in China, but the problem is that Maldives is pricey.” He further pointed out that there are direct flights between Maldives and China by Mega Maldives and China Airlines. However, since China Airlines does not have regular scheduled flights, there are some challenges.

The Miadhu also quoted Ambassador Wang as saying that China supported the Maldivian government’s policies “in protecting the sovereignty” of the Indian Ocean archipelago nation. “Maldives is an important partner in the Maritime Silk Route project of China. He also noted that China is assisting in development of the economy of Maldives and also in developing infrastructure there.”

Ambassador Wang recalled that “Maldives supports the ‘One-China’ policy and Chinese policies regarding the South China Sea. China wishes to work with other countries to attain economic development. We want both parties to benefit,” he said. In this context, the envoy “noted that the economy can develop only when a country is peaceful and stable”.

Meanwhile, visiting Maldivian Foreign Minister Mohamed Asim met Liu Liange, President of the Chinese Export-Import (Exim) Bank, in Beijing to take forward discussions on the loan-agreement for developing Male’s international airport. The Chinese bank had granted a $373-million loan for developing Male airport in 2015.

In Beijing, Minister Asim met his counterpart Wang Yi, when China promised to “always support the developmental projects by the Maldivian government”. The two leaders also discussed foreign relations and regional issues at the meeting, SunOnline reported.

There is no denying the increasing Chinese involvement in Maldives and other developing nations, across the region and across the world. The quid pro quo arrangement helps the beneficiary nation, yes. In the case of some African partners of China, it also helps the latter to plan future farm produce, petroleum products and the like for re-export to meet its own increasing domestic demand back home.

It is the kind of arrangement that the US-led West, on the one hand, and the erstwhile Soviet Union, on the other, had worked out to mutual benefit with partner-nations through the Cold War era. Even today, the US has been doing so, but with tightened purse strings. It seems to be focussing on larger regional partners, like India, that too focussing mostly on defence and security partnerships, mostly focussing on global terrorism and at times ‘Chinese expansionism’, both with independent but deep seated multiple consequences for regions and the world at large.

Maldives has been facing second and further stages of developmental aspirations of the people after the long and successful course through the Maumoon Abdul Gayoom-driven tourism-centred socio-economic progress of the individual. China has been a great source of funding, especially in recent years. The airport-bridge, which carries a political message in favour of incumbent President Abdulla Yameen ahead of the 2018 presidential polls, is only one of them.

The details of China’s new Maritime Silk Route benefits for Maldives, about which Ambassador Wang spoke, are yet unclear. However, at least the Yameen leadership seems to be counting on it for the future, both in terms of the nation’s economic development and its own political popularity, in these days of an increasing consolidation of ‘anti-democracy’ opposition to him on the domestic front.

Be that as it may, ‘Indian (journalistic) concerns’, unlike those cited by Ambassador Wang, are not about Chinese developmental investments in Maldives, Sri Lanka or any other nation in the neighbourhood.

Having been forced by post-Cold War circumstances to ‘balance’ between Washington and Moscow (especially after the latter’s going back on the committed cryogenic engine, the Kudremukh iron project and the like), India, with its own agenda for economic reforms, understands neighbourhood developmental aspirations, independent of its own regional and geo-strategic security concerns vis-a-vis China.

In the case of Maldives just now, such ‘Indian concerns’ are also not about China per se. They are instead about Maldives as a government, and President Yameen as a political leader with adequate politico-administrative experience in the past, having changed tacks with it.

As a frontline leader of the ‘December 23 Movement’ against the then Mohamed Nasheed presidency, Yameen was among those who had linked their opposition to the Male airport contract, granted to Indian infra major, GMR group, with issues of sovereignty.

The ‘December 23 Movement’, named after the day of the all-party anti-Nasheed rally organised by Islamic NGOs in Male in end-2011, had objected to the GMR contract, arguing that Male was the only international airport of the nation, and that their ‘sovereignty and national security’ could be compromised if it was handed over to a ‘foreign entity’, India or not.

Sure enough, Feydhoo Finolhu, the island that has now been leased to a Chinese firm, reportedly for developing a tourist resort, is not where the airport is located. But it is uninhabited and is close to Male and, by extension, the international airport. It is not rocket science to conclude that any ‘foreign power’ wanting to keep a tab on Maldives does not require an airport of its own, or under the control of their national entity.

It is another matter that already other Chinese entities are running resorts in Maldivian islands. So is India’s Taj Group of Hotels. But for the Yameen leadership opposing the GMR contract on ‘sovereignty and security’ issues when not in power, and yet, when in power, going the China way when such issues would have to be considered as well in the case of Feydhoo Finolhu, should come as a ‘surprise’ indeed.

The Indian concerns, if any, are thus addressed not to China, but to Maldives, and in the context of the GMR-linked sovereignty and security issues that were flagged in the past but not considered just now — China or not. It is another matter that as Yameen very correctly pointed out after his maiden overseas visit as President in January 2014, “GMR did not do their political ‘due diligence’ before taking up the Male airport contract”.

But the ‘sovereignty and security’ issues on the occasion were/are very different from the ‘due diligence’ part. It is also much different even from issues of legality and morality of the Nasheed government rushing it all through the public sector airport company, or Parliament, or while clearing it, using a constitutional loophole, not meant for such occasions. If anything, the ‘sovereignty and security’ issues came to be flagged only when the ‘December 23 Movement’ got into the act.

*N Sathiya Moorthy is Director, Chennai Chapter, of the Observer Research Foundation, New Delhi. Comments and suggestions on this article can be sent to editor@spsindia.in

By N. Sathiya Moorthy

Despite US President Donald Trump’s early call to Prime Minister Narendra Modi and describing India as a ‘true friend’ of America, it’s no more the ‘dear Barack’ days. If it happens, it would take time, and on American terms, – unless the world around the two nations decides otherwise.

India and Indians need to understand that Trump is an inward-looking President, as was the case with those that followed the ‘Vietnam era’ days. It’s not necessary that he has a limited world vision. It may be that he has a limited vision for the US, and riles predecessors who had spread American ware thin — across Europe, especially in the Cold War era, and extending and expanding it to cover non-traditional sections of Asia, with China as an emerging  counter-poise for the erstwhile Soviet Union.

More importantly, Trump does not seem wanting to let religious terrorism replace State-actors of the Soviet Union/China kind as a counter-poise to the US in the post-Cold War. America has been tasting defeat after defeat, on the military front, as was the case in Vietnam. The mighty US military machinery and its NATO allies need not have expended all those energies and trillions of dollars to eliminate a Saddam Hussein here and Osama bin-Laden there. In the process, America has made enemies of more nations and more people(s) than during the Cold War.

America’s experience and experimentation with ‘pro-democracy’ elements too has failed, if there was any. It was time the US understood that regime-change by itself does not change national priorities or psyche, and tune them on to American wishes all the time, be it in Libya or Tunisia, or wherever. Like the Soviet Union, these were/are State actors with predictable patterns to their behaviour. It’s unlike individual leaders of the Osama kind, whom the US keeps eliminating and crows over the same – only to find a new person in his place, whom it had not psycho-analysed, among others.

At cross-roads

Trump’s America is at cross-roads and is going, and he seems ready to acknowledge it, whatever be his corrective tools and their success-rate. Also, for much of the post-War, America’s policies have benefited from the inevitable churning process that other nations keep doing all the time, if only to re-tune to the US all the time.

But a time comes – and it has come now, again – when America cannot leave it to others to make the adjustments, and ends up seeing and feeling that after a point, it was doing a part-adjustment. It’s also because it could not afford to go back or re-work the priorities, and not certainly the situation in which it’s only one of the stake-holders, however important.

Trump came on the scene, out of nowhere. In the nineties, it was Ross Perot, but he remained an ‘outsider’. Trump had the Republican Party’s ideological cover and organisational machinery that the other man did not have. That way, before Trump, Franklin Roosevelt’s ‘New Deal’ and Ronald Reagan’s hard-line economic policies had flagged changes in their time, reflecting the mood and methods of the average and ignored American of their times.

It’s comparable to the leadership changes in India of our times, be it Indira Gandhi in the Seventies or Narendra Modi now. The components and priorities may change with each leader, but they are all based on and derived from their compulsions and circumstances at a given point. In the US, you put a George Bush or Obama in their place, and the alternating attempts at switching from domestic to foreign policy as the liet motif of a leadership’s existence becomes clearer.

‘Controllable’ situation

Like Reagan in his time, Trump is now looking at domestic issues and has created a domestic constituency, whose electoral aspirations he cannot but address. Having lost the popular vote to losing contestant, Hillary Clinton, he cannot now afford to see further erosion to his ranks. In between, he may seek to tame the ideologues and realists on the larger plane, or get tamed and at times distorted by them, on the reverse.

In doing so, Trump also seems to be toying with the idea of a ‘controlled’ and ‘controllable’ international situation, without continuing with the fishing expedition that his Republican and Democratic predecessors had launched, without being sure of what the post-Cold War era had in store for America and the rest of the world. It’s not without justification either, though the neo-con language that the Trump camp uses may be more tuned to the lower-end of the domestic-right constituency than even that of the two Bush administrations, where the neo-cons were more focussed on international issues, given the timing and the image of Bush, Sr.

Post-Cold War, Europe, for instance, had all the opportunities to grow on into the second pole from where they had helped the US de-throne the Soviet Union, without any of the problems attaching to its re-emergence at the end of the two World Wars. But nostalgia of the immediate past seemed to have pulled them down on the geo-strategic front. On the economic front, euro included, Europe is now in a greater mess than when Cold war ended.

So, co-opting Russia, if only to turn America’s back on it later on, but only after shifting the global gears back to Europe, makes good geo-strategic sense for the US, whose global reach, in terms of economic dole-outs, military interventions and socio-political knowledge, have been pegged unrealistically high, by all concerned. Alternatively, even if the US were to continue with the ongoing post-Cold War geo-strategic policies, then again, Trump seems convinced that he cannot China run away with Russia.

A China-Russia alliance would be a formidable combination for the ‘free world’ to take on, given the European mess, and the unpreparedness and unwillingness of America’s post-Cold War Asian allies, including India, to fight an American war, if it remained so, despite their collective preparedness, otherwise. Add to that, Iran and Pakistan within Eurasia, then the geo-strategic initiative of the world as a whole, and the region in particular, would rest elsewhere and not with the US-led West.

Confusing, confrontationist

The Obama foreign policy was prepared to acknowledge the Asian part of it, thus seeking to befriend Iran, too, and not antagonise Pakistan – to the extent the Indian neighbour of the latter would want. But it was unwilling to ‘expose’ the European allies to a possible return of the Cold War, and back to Europe, where Moscow may begin to set the agenda, all over again.

Trump wants it otherwise, or is putting back the US in the middle, and let situations and other stake-holders to re-position themselves, if at all, before deciding on America’s real major thrust in the 21^st century – going beyond Obama’s ‘Indo-Pacific’ initiative, which was as much confusing as it was confrontationist. Whether desired and designed by Trump or not, it’s where the US and the rest of the world might find itself if America continues to ride on the course that Trump is taking it just now.

India needs to understand the evolving American policy towards the region and the rest of the world more than what Trump critics nearer home in the US are ready to credit him with. In doing so, or ahead of attempting it deeper, Trump would want to consolidate his domestic position, more especially outside of Congress, where he has party majority but not loyalty in both Houses.

So, if he has to frame tough rules on H1B visas, ill-luck to those Indians that get caught in the web. Maybe, Trump will reconsider his policy down the line, or even trade it off with stake-holders nearer home or outside, in the shape of ‘true friends’ like India. But in the interim, ‘Trump for Trump’ has to be his slogan – and will be so, too. India either needs to readjust and wait, or would have to look elsewhere, internally in terms of jobs and family incomes, and non-American ‘old friends’ or ‘new allies’ – all of it in a tentative and transient space and phase.

A large number of Chinese students who converted to Christianity while studying abroad are leaving their faith after returning to China because of the difficulty in adjusting to their home country’s religious environment.

The number of Chinese students who have studied in English-speaking countries has been increasing since 2010, and tens of thousands have embraced the Christian faith while living abroad, the Christian Daily website reported Feb. 2.

However, missionary staff who have worked with them in the United States say around 80 percent of these converts gradually stop attending church services after going back to China.

Wu Yutong experienced some difficulties finding a church in Shanghai similar to the one she attended back in London, where she converted to Christianity. She kept on moving from church to church because she found Christian teachings in China incongruent with her own faith.

Like Wu, many other Christian converts find that there is something amiss in churches in China. Because the state monitors religious groups closely, local believers have learned to act cautious and defensive toward outsiders.

China Aid recently released a summary of religious persecutions in China last year. According to the report, 2016 ushered in major changes in the country’s religious environment after President Xi Jinping ordered religions to comply with the government’s agenda.

To prepare for the implementation of China’s Revised Regulations on Religious Affairs, house churches have been targeted, forcing them to register under the state-run Three-Self Patriotic Movement, one of the official Christian organizations run by the Communist Party. Authorities have also enacted measures against these unregistered churches just to push them into compliance.

(Civil.Ge) — De facto Abkhaz and South Ossetian Foreign Ministries commented on February 2 and February 3, respectively, on the statements of Georgian leaders that residents of the two breakaway regions would also benefit from the visa free regime.

Commenting on the statements, the de facto Abkhaz Foreign Ministry said that the European Parliament’s decision “can only apply” to citizens of Georgia and labeled Tbilisi’s offer as “futile political manipulation.”

“We regard the statement of Mikheil Janelidze as yet another crude attempt of Tbilisi authorities to “entice” citizens of the Republic of Abkhazia in the political and legal sphere of Georgia. It is clear that following the complete failure of the so-called “neutral passports”, the Georgian authorities have decided to use another trap for citizens of Abkhazia in the form of the visa liberalization with the EU countries. There is no doubt that the new attempt of Tbilisi to drag in our citizens into Georgia, like all previous ones, are doomed to fail,” the de facto Abkhaz Foreign Ministry stated.

“If Georgian leaders are sincerely concerned about the freedom of movement of Abkhazia’s citizens, then they should abandon the policy of international isolation of our citizens, who, owing to Tbilisi, are denied entry to the EU countries,” the de facto MFA said.

“We call on the European institutions again to refuse supporting the populist steps of Georgia, and emphasize on the need of taking real measures aimed at deisolation of citizens of Abkhazia,” the statement added.

Similar to the Abkhaz MFA, the de facto South Ossetian Foreign Ministry denounced Tbilisi’s statements as “illogical” and said that the EU-Georgia relations “concern to citizens of Georgia only and does not apply to citizens of the Republic of South Ossetia.”

“The population of South Ossetia has made its choice in favor of independence 25 years ago and does not want to have anything in common with the Georgian state. Unable to realize its plans for the annihilation of the South Ossetian people through aggression, Georgia has employed all sorts of promises and propaganda tricks. However, the incumbent Georgian authorities, like their predecessors … hamper the international communication of South Ossetia in every way possible,” the de facto South Ossetian Foreign Ministry stated.

The statement said that South Ossetian citizens “hold Russian citizenship as well, which enables them to travel the world,” but added that “it is the very Georgian authorities and their western sponsors, who create obstacles on entry to the EU countries.”

Prime Minister Giorgi Kvirikashvili said on February 2, after the European Parliament’s vote that “drawing closer to Europe is something that belongs to all of Georgia.” “We are especially happy that our Abkhaz and Ossetian compatriots will join us in enjoying the benefits offered by close relations with Europe, be it the visa-free travel to European countries, the EU market for businesspersons, participation in European educational programs, or many other [opportunities].”

President Giorgi Margvelashvili also stressed that the visa free regime would be available to residents of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. “I would like to underline that, our Ossetian and Abkhaz compatriots will witness and be able to benefit from the results,” Margvelashvili stated.

Foreign Minister Mikheil Janelidze wrote in his twitter post that “the visa free travel will also be important to Georgian citizens living in the occupied regions, giving them a chance to benefit from visa liberalization and close ties with the European Union.”

Iran’s defense minister said it was natural for the US, Britain and France to decide to hold a joint naval war game in the Persian Gulf in the current situation, noting that such moves will go nowhere.

The international atmosphere after Donald Trump’s rise to power in the US has caused concern about the future in the littoral states on the southern side of the Persian Gulf and prompted the Europeans to ensure their presence in the region and provide assurance to their allies, Brigadier General Hossein Dehqan said, Tasnim News Agency reported.

Highlighting the futility of such military moves, the Iranian minister underlined the governments that seek to appease others instead of pursuing their own national interests will achieve no success.

The comments came after naval forces from the US, Britain, France and Australia started a joint naval exercise, called Unified Trident, in the Persian Gulf off the coast of Bahrain on Tuesday.

Dehqan dismissed any slowdown in cooperation between Iran and Russia in the fight against terrorism in Syria, saying the close coordination has resulted in success in the battlefield, which in turn paved the way for political talks and holding of Syrian-Syrian negotiations in Astana.

Iran and Russia have formed a strong alliance in recent years, with both supporting the Syrian government against foreign-backed terrorists.

Syria has been gripped by conflict since March 2011 with various terrorist groups, including Daesh, controlling parts of it.

By Abraham Joseph*

On January 27th, 2017 which ironically happens to be Holocaust Remembrance Day, US President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order entitled ‘Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States’. The effect of the Executive order, inter alia, was to prevent the entry into the United States, irrespective of visa status, citizens of seven Muslim majority nations.

These nations were Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Sudan, Somalia and Yemen. While subsequent developments exempted legal permanent residents (Green Card holders) from the ambit of the Order and a Federal Court ordering a stay on its operation, the broad essence of its import remains intact. While the Executive Order with its purported implications have met with indignation and moral outrage the world over, not limited to the citizens of the affected nations amidst chaos pertaining to its implementation within the United States, it is important to analyse the legal nature of Executive Orders and the possible routes through which the controversial order could be rightly overturned.

Presidential Executive Orders and their overturn

While there is no express mention of Executive Order’s in Article II of the US Constitution, the relevant Constitutional provision which deals with the executive branch of the government, the power has been an integral feature of the American political landscape. The rationale for the exercise of the power is furthering the legislative mandate of the Congress by issue of specific directions to subordinate executive authorities. However, despite the same there has practically been no limit on either the number of Executive Orders a President may issue or the substantive issues which such orders may address. The only limit on executive orders is the requirement of being harmonious with the Constitution and consistency with the relevant legislative intent which in this case is the Immigration and Naturalization Act, 1965.

There are 3 methods by which an Executive Order may be overturned. Firstly, Presidential overrule- this implies the sitting President revokes a previous order issued by him or revokes an order issued by a previous President. Secondly, Congress enacts a law overruling the Order and thirdly, the Courts striking down the Order. Given Trump’s consistent posturing against Muslims and anti-immigration rhetoric being an integral part of his political platform, it’s unlikely that the President would voluntarily backtrack on the order. The Congress could step in to frustrate the order by enacting a law that repeals the order, defeats its purpose or blocks funding for the mandate but it could be vetoed by the President. Such a veto can only be neutralized by a two-thirds majority in both houses. This implies the support of 67 out of 100 Senators in the Upper Chamber and 290 out of 435 Representatives in the Lower Chamber. Given the current Democratic Party strength of 48 and 193 respectively, it would be a herculean diplomatic effort to galvanize those numbers. However, the given the bipartisan independence that legislators can afford to adopt; such a successful effort on that front cannot be ruled out.This leaves the Judiciary as the final destination which can meaningfully thwart the executive order in light of broader humanitarian and constitutional considerations. If the same happens it would be only third instance in US history where the judiciary strikes down an executive order.

Youngstown Sheet and Tube Co. v. Sawyer (Steel Seizure Case-1952)

Popularly known as the Steel Seizure Case, the litigation was the first and only case in which a Presidential executive order was struck down by the Supreme Court. The case pertained to forceful acquisition of private property during the Korean War by the President on the logic that such a move was necessary to prevent labour- management disputes which could adversely impact steel production necessary to augment war efforts. The Court struck down the Presidential acquisition of Steel production facilities as an illegal infringement of private property claims which were beyond the pale of legislative authorization. Since the judgment in effect ended up protecting private property claims at the expense of organized labour it was viewed in liberal legal circles as regressive despite the landmark precedent that Presidential authority could not trample upon Congress’ domain of law making. Justice Jackson’s reasoning which is regarded as the most influential opinion of the case laid down a ‘three prong’ test which could be employed to assess Presidential executive orders. According to the test, the first category of Orders are those where the President has ‘maximum powers to act’ which is pursuant to an express or implied authorization by Congress. Executive orders falling in this zone should witness least judicial interference as they reflect a legitimate executive effort in giving effect to the legislative will. The second category of Orders also referred as to as the ‘Twilight Zone’ pertain to those executive orders which operate in a field where Congress is silent. In these cases, there should be a judicial determination whether the exercise of Presidential power operates in a zone which Congress implicitly sanctions executive discretion to deal with exigencies. The judiciary is supposed to exercise a middle of the road approach in these category of cases. The third category of Orders also referred to as the “Lowest Ebb Zone” refers to those orders which are made contrary the express or implied will of the Congress. In this zone, the Courts have the broadest leeway to strike down suspect executive order as the effect of the same is to defeat the purposes of a legislative enactment unless the exercise of such power is derived directly from the Constitution.

President Trump’s controversial Executive order while claiming to further the mandate of the Immigration and Naturalization Act, 1965 in effect ends up defeating the purpose of the very enactment and is a flagrant violation of the same. While the act prohibited racial quotas and barred discrimination on the basis of national origin of immigrants, Trump’s order precisely performs the mischief which Congress intended to prevent. This puts the Order in Justice Jackson’s “Lowest Ebb Zone” which ought to alert the judiciary of an imminent need to examine the nature of the Order vis-a vis the parent statute which while granting flexibility to the President to deal with immigration matters clearly lays downs the broad policy contours giving effect to Constitutional principles pertaining to due process, fairness and free exercise of religion while legislating the field of immigration. Thus the Order is a colourable exercise of power which while claiming to achieve a desired purpose, far from harmoniously realizing the stated goal ends up frustrating the original mandate itself.

Despite the immediate impact of the Steel Seizure case, the precedential impact of the case, in particular Justice Jackson’s opinion which is widely considered be the most significant ruling in the case should be the judicial basis to assess the credibility of President Trump’s controversial executive order. Given the principles laid down, there is every reason to believe the suspect nature of the order and its ability to achieve in letter and spirit any guiding Constitutional principle. The Judiciary, chiefly the US Supreme Court is at a pivotal point in history where the “least dangerous” branch of the government has the most “significant responsibility” to ensure the preservation of Constitutional values.

About the author:
*Abraham Joseph is a PhD candidate in International Criminal Law from NLSIU, Bangalore and an Assistant Professor in Ansal School of Law, Ansal University, Gurugram.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

By Frank G. Hoffman*

(FPRI) — The recent visit by British Prime Minister Theresa May to the White House included a photo opportunity of her and President Donald Trump beside the famous bust of Winston Churchill, now returned to a prominent spot in the Oval Office. This image brings to mind the visit of her distinguished predecessor to America long ago in Fulton, Missouri. In 1946, Winston Churchill came to America to advise a novice President Truman about America’s obligations to the world. In his talk, titled “The Sinews of Peace,” the pugnaciously eloquent Churchill urged the United States to lead the English-speaking world to support peace and avoid a third world war. That speech is well remembered for its reference to the “iron curtain” drawn over Europe, and Churchill sought to ensure that America would not become complacent nor turn inward. “For with primacy in power is also joined an awe inspiring accountability to the future,” he intoned, adding. “If you look around you, you must feel not only the sense of duty done but also you must feel anxiety lest you fall below the level of achievement.”

Prime Minister May’s visit should encourage Americans to reflect on our invaluable relationship with the United Kingdom and the need to work with like-minded nations to advance our common interests. It should also remind U.S. policymakers of the lessons that history has taught us about geopolitical competition, ideological movements, and the costs of complacent thinking. The new Trump administration does not measure itself against the levels of achievement set in the last 70 years; it seeks a revised approach. But it, nonetheless, will find that it must reinvest in the Sinews of Peace if it wants to reestablish the United States’ prominence.

This is surely no time for complacency or turning inward or going it alone.

The Strategic Turning Point

The President’s brief but dark Inaugural Address laid out Mr. Trump’s worldview and emphasis on rebuilding America’s core strengths. The speech did little to assuage concerns from our longstanding allies and partners overseas. His speech came off as unilateralist if not isolationist, promising to focus on “America First” without mentioning our international standing or commitments to friends and allies. The stark emphasis on economic nationalism seems to overturn 70 years of U.S. foreign policy and has led to claims that Mr. Trump is deliberating unravelling the world order. The orthodoxy of our foreign policy establishment will soon be challenged on each major assumption laid down since 1947.

Our strategy has been relatively consistent for decades.[1] That strategy has had inflection points, particularly during the Reagan era.[2] But overall, we have shaped the environment and promoted an international order conducive to our interests and safely protected our key allies. We have dampened the forces that have produced competitors seeking advantage through military means.  “It has been the great accomplishment of the U.S.-led world order in the 70 years since the end of the Second World War,” notes Brookings Robert Kagan, “that this kind of competition has been held in check and great power conflicts have been avoided.”

The 2016 electoral debates suggested that a robust international role may not be politically sustainable. Poll findings depict an American populace weary and wary of foreign entanglements. The costs for U.S. leadership and engagement abroad compete with domestic priorities, and demand for a period of domestic renewal may be growing. Some argue that such renewal is strategically necessary or useful.[3]

President Trump has signaled a disinclination to preserve America’s existing leadership role in sustaining the global order. His campaign was framed by a platform suggesting a much narrower definition of American interests, with our global leadership unshackled by existing treaties and trade agreements. His strategy calls for prioritizing our American interests through a contracted lens that supports U.S. national economic interests and those of our individual citizens. This policy is not a strategic view that will continue  to underwrite the rules of an international order and lead an alliance system, all while preserving the independence of democratic states and denying regional hegemony to autocratic states.

Mr. Trump’s unique combination of unilateralism and transactionalism suggests an approach that radically alters U.S. leadership of the post-Cold War international system and creates the conditions for a destabilizing period of uncertainty in many regions of the world. His remarks have suggested that preserving the liberal international order is not a priority, or even a vital interest. He has created a strong impression that no longer would the United States unilaterally assume the role as the global policeman or the guarantor of last resort of the current world order. His inaugural speech called for remaining a shining beacon, but more of a Promised Land than a Crusader State.[4]

His policy would result in less extensive U.S. engagement in each of the world’s regions, and it suggests an American military posture that is less engaged and not stationed forward.

Some scholars, defenders of the Establishment grand strategy, find fault with the implications of Mr. Trump’s orientation. Robert Kagan at Brookings warns:

Coming as it does at a time of growing great power competition, this new approach in American foreign policy is likely to hasten a return to the instability and clashes of previous eras. These external challenges to the liberal world order and the continuing weakness and fracturing of the liberal world from within are likely to feed on each other. The weakness of the liberal core and the abdication by the United States of its global responsibilities will encourage more aggressive revisionism by the dissatisfied powers.

His concerns are echoed by Professor Hal Brands of Johns Hopkins University, who accused Mr. Trump of displaying “fierce hostility to the alliances that protected U.S. interests and international security throughout the postwar era, building on the disparaging comments he had made toward key U.S. allies such as Germany.”

Trump’s Grand Strategy

President Trump’s comments notwithstanding, the new administration has not had sufficient time to define and articulate a comprehensive grand strategy. Such a strategy will take some time to develop, and work on it has only just begun.

Whatever grand strategy emerges from the numerous threads that have begun to take form inside the Trump administration need to be founded in a realistic appraisal of the security context we must operate within. The problem is that, as we found during the Obama administration, vacuums are not always filled with benign actors.[5] According to our intelligence community, any perception of U.S. disengagement is likely to produce an increased chance of interstate conflict.[6] Outlier states that do not accept the extant international order will almost surely perceive opportunities to force a change to that order.

Traditional or establishment strategists will seek to reestablish America as the singular military power. That would be an expensive and possibly counterproductive move. The unique “unipolar moment” of the early 90s was just that, a fleeting window or passing stage of history. Seeking to recapture it, some want to execute a Reagan style defense buildup, adding tens of billions of dollars for new aircraft carriers, armored divisions, advanced jets, and submarines. What is now needed, however, is a truly different strategy that helps us navigate more efficiently in “the more diversified, pluralistic system that is now materializing.”

Several authors have offered thoughtful strategic options: Discriminate Power and Prudent Realism. All of these have merit, and all seek to guide U.S. foreign policy with humility and prudence.  I have argued for greater flexibility, partnerships, and more strategic discipline in the application of U.S. military power and contend that sustained global presence and reaffirmed commitments to our Allies and formal partners will do more to deter aggression and maintain peace than withdrawing into disengaged unilateralism.[7]

Alliance Architecture

The Sinews of Peace in the 21^st century will have to extend beyond Churchill’s Anglo-Saxon based concept. But the new team at the White House does not share its predecessors’ sustained appreciation for the contribution made by our alliance system. Mr. Trump’s statements have cast even more uncertainty in European ministries by suggesting that U.S. obligations under Article V of the NATO Treaty were less than ironclad, and somewhat transactional. His description of NATO as “obsolete” surely brought glee to Moscow and its designs. In Europe, these comments “caused astonishment.” In Asia, our apparent lack of commitment to our allies in general, our withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and critiques of climate change and nonproliferation agreements have created vacuums. Cabinet members have sought to reassure our current allies that we will remain committed to them and that we will even forge new alliances. But the seeds of doubt and division are now planted.

Overall, we appear to be sending mixed messages. NATO is both important and “obsolete.” America wants to negotiate new and better trade agreements, but does not live up to the agreements it has signed to date. We have signed security agreements that we may or not live up to. At the same time, we are suggesting, if not a more isolated America, certainly one that is less interested in maintaining the burden of leadership. Rather than isolationist, it comes off more unilateralist, as if “America First” and “American Alone” were synonymous.

There are numerous reasons to retain a viable and cohesive alliance system, as long as the burdens and benefits are shared. Over 15 years ago, many U.S. allies stepped forward after 9/11 and contributed in both Afghanistan and Iraq. Over a thousand soldiers and aid workers from our allies have been killed in these campaigns. We should recognize these contributions, not belittle them. There is no doubt that these alliances can be and should be revitalized. At present, we have left our closest allies with the conclusion that “At best the road ahead for NATO will be rocky, at worst we may be seeing the destruction of the most significant military alliance in history.”

Not everyone in the Trump administration overlooks the value of collective security. During a speech last fall, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, General Joseph Dunford, argued America’s ability to project power and “the credibility of our alliances” represent the “centers of gravity” from which the U.S. military draws strength. Mr. Mattis, in his initial message to the military just as he took office, stated that “Recognizing that no nation is secure without friends, we will work with the State Department to strengthen our alliances.” There is a lot of wisdom packed into that terse statement.

If “America First” becomes “America Alone,” we will live in a world that is more hostile to American values and its most vital interests. This policy will require us to build up our forces, not to restore collective defense, but to make up for the allies and future partners we have shunned. There can be little doubt that this debate alone has actually undercut our own security and sowed much doubt around the globe.

Peace through Strength

The administration has made it clear that it will seek to reestablish American power. While the United States retains enormous strategic advantages and sizable military forces, its relative military superiority is declining. The overall size of the U.S. military has been declining along with its qualitative edge for some time now. Explicit in the search for technological breakthroughs, the so-called Offset Strategy, is an admission of fading military superiority.[8]

Mr. Trump’s plans to rebuild the U.S. military seek to offset this reduced stature, along with the credibility and leadership of the United States. Notwithstanding his focus on the domestic economy, he has established “peace through strength” as a major principle for the rebuilding of American power. The administration recognizes that “Our military needs every asset at its disposal to defend America. We cannot allow other nations to surpass our military capability.” In fact, disabling sequestration and funding the military’s dried up readiness and modernization accounts is now long overdue. Within a few months of assuming office, we can expect the President to submit a new budget to Congress outlining a plan to rebuild our military, in order to “provide our military leaders with the means to plan for our future defense needs.”

As with the Reagan administration, having a big stick can promote deterrence and change an opponent’s behavior. There are strong arguments that regaining a margin of preponderance across a broadening set of threats is sorely needed.[9] A significant peacetime buildup improved Reagan’s negotiating position and was part of a larger strategic approach to reducing tensions.

Reestablishing our force is needed, but the resources for such a buildup will need to be identified soon along with a smart plan that will posture the Armed Forces for the 21^st century. A rapid buildup that merely reconstructs the 1990s military will not be sufficient. Some short-term growth in the deficit may result, but that seems a reasonable risk to our economic solvency given the alternative. A more competitive America needs both a stronger economy and a more robust military. “Peace through strength” is not simply a mantra, but a guiding principle that if properly operationalized will produce a stronger and more sustainable economy and a military that is not simply larger but also modernized to defeat tomorrow’s threats, not yesterday’s.

“Peace through strength” should also be expanded to consider the valuable inputs of allies to our security, something we can promote constructively.[10] While the Pentagon’s extensive efforts to exploit the vaunted “Third Offset Strategy” should be continued, we should acknowledge that the first offset was the Grand Alliance of World War II. The second offset strategy was the rolling development of NATO and the implementation of the Marshall Plan, supplemented by our efforts to develop West Germany’s armed forces. These coalition efforts successfully offset the imbalance in military power with diplomatic and economic dimensions. Given the challenges we face today with strategic solvency, a more comprehensive approach will again be needed.

Moreover, the envisioned growth in both the capacity of our military and the technological capabilities it develops must be driven by a national security strategy that does not yet exist. The Trump administration needs to establish the vector as well as the size for the military, along with other instruments of power. Additionally, it needs to establish specific priorities and assess what risks will then have to be accepted. In short, “MAGA” is not sufficient for strategic guidance.

Conclusion

There is an ongoing debate about America’s role in the world and about how our alliances play a role in securing our desired end state. If we seek to “Make America Great Again,” it will be in the face of concerted efforts by several autocratic powers to undermine the existing international order and our global interests. This goal will not be countered simply by signing a set of Executive Orders. Renewing the “sinews of peace” and sustaining a coherent alliance system will be needed. This is not for the intellectually incurious, or the impatient. Here again, Churchill offers insight, “Our difficulties and dangers will not be removed by closing our eyes to them. They will not be removed by mere waiting to see what happens; nor will they be removed by a policy of appeasement.”

We can argue about Alternative Facts, but it is clear we need an Alternative Strategy. But we cannot make America great again by hiding from the burdens of protecting our interests and friends, by failing to enlist the support of such friends, or by not pushing back on malign forces in the world. If Churchill’s bust in the Oval Office serves only to remind us of that, compared to the debacle of Neville Chamberlain’s tragic tenure, all the better.

About the author:
*Frank G. Hoffman serves on FPRI’s Board of Advisors and currently is serving at the National Defense University as a Distinguished Research Fellow with the Institute for National Strategic Studies

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] Richard. D. Hooker, Jr., “The Grand Strategy of the United States,” Washington, DC: Institute for National Strategic Studies, October 2014.

[2] Hal Brands, Making the Unipolar Moment (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), pp. 274–335.

[3] For a response see Colin Dueck, “The Strategy of Retrenchment and Its Consequences,” FPRI E-Note, April 13, 2015.

[4] Walter McDougall, Promised Land, Crusader State, The American Encounter with the World Since 1776 (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1997).

[5] Colin Dueck, The Obama Doctrine, American Grand Strategy Today (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015)

[6] National Intelligence Council, Global Trends 2030: Alternative Worlds (Washington, DC: National Intelligence Council, 2012), p. viii.

[7] Frank Hoffman, “Forward Partnership, A Sustainable American Strategy,” Orbis, Vol. 57, No. 1, Winter 2013), 20–40.

[8] Ashton Carter, Remarks On Opening DIUx East and Announcing the Defense Innovation Board, As Delivered, Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 26, 2016; Robert Work, speech, as delivered, Reagan Defense Forum: “The Third Offset Strategy,” Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA, Nov. 7, 2015; Robert Work, “The Third U.S. Offset Strategy and Its Implications for Partners and Allies,” speech at the Willard Hotel, Washington, DC, January 28, 2015.

[9] Eliot A. Cohen, Big Stick, The Limits of Soft Power and the Necessity of Military Force, New York: Basic Books, 2016.

[10] For specific recommendations see John R. Deni, “Still the One? The Role of Europe in American Defense Strategy,” Orbis, Vol. 60, No. 1 (Winter 2016), 36–51.

US authorities on Saturday suspended President Donald Trump’s controversial ban on travelers from seven Muslim countries, following a court ruling that blocked its enforcement.

Explaining the development, a US State Department spokesman told Arab News: “The Department of Justice informed us of the Washington State court ruling barring the US government from enforcing certain provisions of executive order 13769, including those related to visas and travel.”

He added: “We have reversed the provisional revocation of visas under executive order 13769. Those individuals with visas that were not physically canceled may now travel if the visa is otherwise valid. We are working closely with the Department of Homeland Security and our legal teams. We will provide further updates as soon as information is available.”

The Department of Homeland Security, in a separate statement on Saturday, wrote: “In accordance with the judge’s ruling, DHS has suspended any and all actions implementing the affected sections of the executive order.”

It added: “DHS personnel will resume inspection of travelers in accordance with standard policy and procedure,” but said that Department of Justice officials would launch an appeal “at the earliest possible time” to reinstate the ban, which the Trump administration believes “is lawful and appropriate.”

Trump, meanwhile, lashed out at the court ruling suspending his controversial ban affecting travelers from seven Muslim countries dismissing it as “ridiculous” and vowing to get it overturned.

The order, issued late Friday by Seattle US District Judge James Robart, is valid across the US, pending a full review of a complaint filed by Washington state’s attorney general.

The travel restrictions, which went into effect a week ago, have wreaked havoc at airports across America, sparked numerous protests and left countless people hoping to reach the US in limbo.

“The opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country, is ridiculous and will be overturned!” Trump wrote in a flurry of early morning tweets.

“Interesting that certain Middle-Eastern countries agree with the ban. They know if certain people are allowed in it’s death & destruction!” Trump tweeted. “When a country is no longer able to say who can, and who cannot, come in & out, especially for reasons of safety & security — big trouble!”

The ruling gave hope to many travelers and sent some scrambling for tickets, worried that the newly opened window might not last long.

Some travelers interviewed in Middle Eastern capitals were cautious about the news.
Ibrahim Ghaith, a Syrian barber who fled Damascus in 2013, told Reuters in Jordan:

“Today we heard that the measures may have been abolished but we are not sure if this is just talk. If they go back on the decision, people will be overjoyed.”

Iraqi refugee Nizar Al-Qassab told Reuters in Lebanon: “If it really has been frozen, I thank God, because my wife and children should have been in America by now.”

The 52-year-old said his family had been due to travel to the US for resettlement on Jan. 31. The trip was canceled two days before that, and he was now waiting for a phone call from UN officials overseeing their case. “It’s in God’s hands,” he said.

Two Sudanese travelers told Reuters they were trying to travel as soon as possible, fearing the ban might be reinstated. They declined to be named, for fear of possible consequences.

“I’m in a race against time,” said a 31-year-old female academic who said international airlines were still refusing to sell her a ticket. “Now I am going from one airline company to another to convince them about the court’s decision.”

By Ana Maria Touma

Sorin Grindeanu, Romania’s Prime Minister, announced on Saturday that the cabinet would hold an emergency meeting on Sunday to annul a decree decriminalizing some graft offences.

After a day of negotiations between the ruling Social Democrat Party, PSD, leadership and its junior ally, the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats, Grindeanu said that PSD would rescind the decree but propose the same changes in a bill which will be send to parliament for debate.

Despite the announcement, protester have gathered for a fifth night in a row outside the government building.

Currently, around 170,000 people in Bucharest and 320,000 across the country are protesting demanding the government resign.

Adopted on January 31, the decree which is seen as the biggest step backward since the country joined the European Union in 2007, would decriminalize abuse-of-office offences involving sums below 200,000 lei (45,000 euro).

The move has triggered the country’s largest protests since the fall of communism.

Grindeanu announcement came just hours after Liviu Dragnea, PSD chief, hinted that he might ask the Prime Minister to repeal the decree in order to avoid a political crisis and clashes between PSD supporters, who have threatened counter protests.

The decree has also sparked turmoil within the PSD, with several state officials – including the minister of business environment, a state secretary and a member of European Parliament resigning. A vice-president of the party also said the decree should be withdrawn.

Dragnea chose Grideanu to head the cabinet because he couldn’t become PM himself due to a two-year suspended jail sentence for rigging a referendum in 2012.

The PSD chief is also under prosecution in a graft case for using his political influence to secure state salaries for two people working at his party headquarters between 2006 and 2013.

If the decree is enforced next week, the anti-graft prosecutors will be forced to drop charges against Dragnea.

Human empathy can even extend to dogs: empathetic people interpret dogs’ facial expressions more intensely.

A study by the University of Helsinki and Aalto University explored how empathy and other psychological factors affect people’s assessments of the facial images of dogs and humans.

The results show for the first time that human empathy, or the ability to share someone else’s feelings or experiences, also affects perceptions of the facial expressions of pet dogs.

“Empathy affected assessments of dogs’ facial expressions even more than previous experience of dogs, probably because the face is a biologically important stimulus for humans. Our earlier studies have showed, however, that when considering the entire body language of dogs, previous experience of dogs increases in importance,” explained postdoctoral researcher Miiamaaria Kujala.

Based on previous results, the researchers knew that people with higher emotional empathy evaluated other people’s expressions more quickly, accurately and often also more intensely.

However, Kujala noted that it is possible that they over-interpret the expressions of dogs.

“Empathy speeds up and intensifies the assessment of dogs’ facial expressions, but defining the accuracy of such assessments is currently unreliable.”

A threat is easier to perceive than happiness

Communication based on facial expressions has been studied in social mammals for decades. Darwin was already able to perceive similarities in mammals’ expressions, but it has taken until the present day for researchers to begin to understand similarities between the emotional expressions of different species.

The Animal Mind research group has previously demonstrated that dogs clearly recognise the threatening expressions of both humans and other dogs.

“They gazed intensively at threatening dogs, but quickly looked away from threatening humans. Also human subjects were good at recognising the threatening expressions of dogs and considered them much more intense than similar human expressions,” Kujala described.

In contrast, people assessed happy faces more intensely in the case of humans than dogs. The researchers suggest that this may be due to the tendency to consider the faces of one’s own species generally more pleasant.

On the other hand, people may find it difficult to recognise happiness in dogs based on their facial expressions. This is indicated by the fact that people experienced in dog training estimated the happy expressions of dogs as happier than others did.

The Griffith University study, conducted in collaboration with national and international experts in reef and chemical ecology, showed that if the world continues with ‘business as usual’ CO2 emissions important reef building corals will suffer significantly by 2050 and die off by 2100.

Associate Professor Guillermo Diaz-Pulido, of Griffith’s School of Environment, said that is because algae will compete for space with corals in the reef, much like a weed, and eventually take over.

Researchers knew increased CO2 had an effect on seaweed behavior but have now been able to demonstrate just how this happens. They discovered this is due to an increase in the potency of chemical compounds that poison corals.

“This is a major step forward in understanding how seaweeds can harm corals and has important implications for comprehending the consequences of increased carbon dioxide emissions on the health of the Great Barrier Reef,” said Associate Professor Diaz-Pulido.

“For the algae to grow they need light and CO2, just like any other plant, and because algae in the future would be exposed to much more CO2 in seawater we wanted to know to what extent the CO2 would affect some of the things algae do, the physiology and the interaction with animals.”

Professor Mark Hay, from the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the study, added: “What we’ve discovered is that some algae produce more potent chemicals that suppress or kill corals more rapidly. This can occur rapidly, in a matter of only weeks.

“If the algae overtake the coral we have a problem which contributes to reef degradation, on top of what we already know with coral bleaching, crown of thorn starfish outbreaks, cyclones or any other disturbance.”

The research was undertaken at Heron Island, a coral cay on the southern end of the reef using underwater reef experiments and outdoor lab studies.

Associate Professor Diaz-Pulido said the study has global impacts because one of the seaweeds studied that causes the most damage is a common brown alga species found in reefs worldwide.

“That’s a problem because if these algae take advantage of elevated CO2 in seawater that’s even more a matter of concern,” he said.

“The scale of the problem is so big removing a bunch of seaweed from the reef isn’t going to do much because it just regrows and regenerates, so I think the way to address this really is to reduce the levels of CO2 in the atmosphere.”

A Catholic bishop in the Philippines has expressed support for the country’s environment minister who initiated the closure of several mining operations in recent months.

The congressional Commission on Appointments has refused to confirm the appointment of Regina Lopez, a staunch anti-mining activist who was named environment minister by President Rodrigo Duterte.

“We respectfully beg the president to keep Lopez who is always with us in our battle to protect the environment and all of creations,” said Archbishop Ramon Arguelles of Lipa.

The prelate led a “prayer march” for Lopez outside the main office of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources in Quezon City on Feb. 2.

In a letter to the president on Jan. 30, Archbishop Arguelles said Lopez’s efforts to protect the environment has given people “hope.”

After meeting with religious leaders on Feb. 2, Lopez announced the closure of 21 more mining operations in several areas in the country.

“Why is mining more important than people’s lives?” said the minister in a media briefing.

She said mining operations that she ordered closed were in functional watersheds.

Since Lopez assumed office, she has already suspended at least 25 mining companies and has been auditing dozens.

Archbishop Arguelles said the church is “fully behind and strongly supports” Lopez initiatives.

He called on President Duterte “to influence” the Commission on Appointments to confirm Lopez and demonstrate the “sincere pro-poor, pro-environment, and pro-country stand” of the government.

One death sentence in Texas has prompted some legislators to rethink the state’s broad qualifications for the death penalty.

Jeff Wood, 43, was convicted for the 1996 murder of Kriss Keeran. Wood was sitting in a truck outside a convenience store in Kerrville, Texas when his friend Daniel Reneau entered the store to steal the safe. Reneau shot and killed Keeran, who was working there as a clerk.

Wood was convicted of murder under Texas’ “law of parties” statute that says those who are responsible for a crime that results in death are equally responsible as the killer even if they did not directly commit the murder, the Texas Tribune reports.

The convict was scheduled to be executed in August 2016, but the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals stayed his execution just six days before the event.

At the time, the Texas Catholic Conference said the stay “prevents a gross miscarriage of justice.”

“The public outcry against this execution illustrates broad agreement on the injustice and basic unfairness of the Texas law of parties,” the conference said Aug. 19.

A trial court is reviewing Wood’s case. State Rep. Terry Canales, a Democrat, is sponsoring House Bill 316 to end death sentences for those convicted of capital murder under the law of parties.

“We’ve got to start somewhere when it comes to reforming the death penalty, and there’s no better place to start than the law of parties,” Rep. Canales said, according to the Texas Tribune.

Republican State Rep. Jeff Leach plans, a death penalty proponent, opposes using the law of parties to secure a death sentence. He was involved in Wood’s case.

“He may have suspected, he may have anticipated, but he didn’t know,” Rep. Leach said. “You can’t be executing people like that, you just can’t. We can keep them in prison for life, but to execute them is an entirely different conversation.”

For his part, Rep. Leach is backing Canales’ proposal and is considering his own bill.

Another legislator, State Rep. Harold Dutton, advocates the abolition of the death penalty. However, he is also backing a more limited bill to modify the law of parties rule. His proposal, House Bill 147, would still allow death penalty sentences for those who help a killer commit murder, but not necessarily in other cases.

Changes to state law would not be retroactive and would affect Wood’s case.

Five people have been executed under Texas’ “law of parties” statute. Five other states with similar laws have executed one person.

In Texas’ Walker County, a man named John Falk is accused of capital murder under the law of parties. In a 2007 prison escape in Huntsville, another inmate killed a guard during the escape. The trial is in the jury selection stage.

Texas is a leader in executions among U.S. states. Last year it executed seven people, behind only Georgia, the Death Penalty Information Center reports.

Germany’s influential weekly news magazine Der Spiegel has come under fire for a cover image showing U.S. President Donald Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty, BBC News reports.

Some German newspapers criticised the cartoon, while the German vice-president of the European Parliament called it “tasteless”.

The cartoonist, Edel Rodriguez, said the image represented “the beheading of democracy”.

U.S.-German relations have deteriorated under President Trump, who has criticised the policies of German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

He said last month that her policy of welcoming masses of migrants who arrived in Germany had been a “catastrophic mistake”. His trade adviser also recently attacked Germany for gaining unfair trade advantages from a “grossly undervalued” euro.

The front cover image is similar to one that appeared on the front page of the New York Daily News in December 2015, also showing Trump beheading the Statue of Liberty but in a less gory fashion.

Rodriguez, who arrived in the U.S. as a political refugee from Cuba in 1980 told the Washington Post that he wanted to make a comparison between the Islamic State and Donald Trump, saying “both sides are extremists”.

Der Spiegel editor Klaus Brinkbaumer wrote in an editorial that Trump was “attempting a coup from the top” and wanted to “establish an illiberal democracy”.

The White House has accused liberal media groups of false and irresponsible reporting designed to smear President Trump and the new administration.

Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, a member of the Germany’s Free Democrats and vice-president of the European Parliament, said the cover said more about Der Spiegel journalists than Trump.

“The cover plays on the lives of terror victims in a very nasty way,” he told Bild.

Several other magazines are using the front covers of their next editions to comment on the U.S. president and his policies.

The rising tide of emigration from the Russian Federation as a whole has attracted significant attention in Moscow and the West, but this flow has generally been presented, with a few notable political exceptions, as a search by citizens of that country for greater economic opportunity.

That makes this “fourth Putin wave” in many ways very different from the so-called “third wave” in the last decades of USSR when most of those who left, Jews and Germans, did so for reasons related to the ways in which their communities were treated by the Soviet authorities.

But there are exceptions to that explanation, involving those suffering because of who and what they are. As Yevgeniya Baltatarova and Mariya Khankhunova pointa out in Buryatia’s “Respublika,” “national minorities, gays, journalists and activists are [now] a major part of the political emigration of the Putin wave” (respnews.ru/news/specreportazh/bezhency-21-veka).

They do not provide statistics, but they do suggest that while gays, journalists and activists who leave have attracted a great deal of notice, members of non-Russian nationalities generally have not, something they say should be corrected because ever more of the latter are moving abroad and willing to talk about the repression that drove them there.

In a 2,000-word article, the two journalists provide examples from the growing Buryat diaspora not only in the United States but elsewhere and provide information on which countries offer the easiest path to asylum, information that may lead even more Buryats to consider leaving as well.

The kinds of repression that the Buryat emigres describe to them will be familiar to anyone who tracks developments among them and other non-Russians: attacks and loss of jobs and income because of views and actions that the Russian authorities consider unacceptable such as insisting that their nations were absorbed by Russia in anything but a voluntary way.

But one aspect of this situation that Baltatarova and Khankhunova do not mention may be especially important: The Russian government may be especially pleased to see such activists go because it lowers the temperature in and the organizational potential of nationalist movements in the non-Russian republics.

That in turn should lead analysts in the West to view the non-Russian emigres as an important source of information about what is going on outside Moscow’s ring road. The testimony of such people already suggests that at least in some places, nationalism is again growing, and that Moscow, however much it denies the fact, is frightened by it.

In accordance with a Federal judge’s ruling, the Department of Homeland Security said Saturday it has suspended any and all actions implementing the affected sections of the Executive Order entitled, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States.”

This includes actions to suspend passenger system rules that flag travelers for operational action subject to the Executive Order, the DHS said, adding that DHS personnel will resume inspection of travelers in accordance with standard policy and procedure.

The DHS said that the earliest possible time, the Department of Justice intends to file an emergency stay of this order and defend the president’s Executive Order, which is lawful and appropriate.

The order is intended to protect the homeland and the American people, and the president has no higher duty and responsibility than to do so, the DHS said.