Why is the Trump administration threatening Iran?

On February 1, National Security Adviser Michael Flynn announced that the administration was “putting Iran on notice” after it tested a ballistic missile which the US sees as a violation of Iran’s treaty obligations. Flynn’s frigid tone made it clear that the administration is considering the use of military force. But why?

Under current UN resolutions (Resolution 2231), Iran is forbidden “to undertake any activity related to ballistic missiles designed to be capable of delivering nuclear weapons.” Read that over again. Iran is not forbidden from testing ‘all ballistic missiles’ just missiles that are ‘capable of delivering nuclear weapons.’ The resolution could not be clearer. There’s no gray area here, none at all. Flynn is just fudging the resolution’s meaning, so he can rattle a saber. But, why?  And why are other members of the administration, including the president himself,  making equally belligerent remarks? In a tweet last week, Trump  said, “I won’t be as ‘kind’ to Iran as Obama” which was followed by a speech by US Defense Secretary James Mattis who called Iran “the single biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world.”

What’s going on? Why the full court press against Iran?   And how are these threats consistent with Trump’s campaign promise to avoid pointless confrontations abroad? Here’s an excerpt from a speech Trump delivered in Cincinnati on December 1:

“We will pursue a new foreign policy that finally learns from the mistakes of the past…We will stop looking to topple regimes and overthrow governments…. Our goal is stability not chaos …In our dealings with other countries, we will seek shared interests wherever possible and pursue a new era of peace, understanding, and good will.”

Where is the “peace, understanding, and good will” towards Iran? There doesn’t seem to be any. This is the same incendiary rhetoric we’re heard from every US administration dating  back to the Iranian Revolution in 1979. But, why?

Isn’t the problem the same as it was with Iraq, Libya, Syria and every other country the US has either toppled or tried to topple in the last 65 years?

Of course it is. Washington abhors any country that conducts its own independent foreign policy or resists US attempts to install its own puppet government. With Iran, the problems run even deeper since Iran sits on a vast ocean of oil and natural gas to which the western oil giants feel they are entitled. They think the oil is theirs and they expect Washington to help them expropriate it.

Washington wants to return Iran to the glory days of the Shah, an era in which the USG had a trusted ally in Tehran who would follow its directives, crush the domestic opposition, and preserve the privatization-model of oil production. It’s worth noting that the Shah was installed in a CIA coup that triggered a nearly 40-year reign of terror for which the US is entirely responsible.  Here’s a short except from The Harvard Crimson that will help readers to understand the horror Washington unleashed on the Iranian people to achieve its foreign policy objectives:

“The Shah systematically dismantled the judicial system of Iran and the country’s guarantees of personal and social liberties. …. Nearly every source of creative, artistic and intellectual endeavor in our culture was suppressed.

The SAVAK conducted most of the torture, under the friendly guidance of the CIA which set up SAVAK in 1957 and taught them how to interrogate suspects. Amnesty International reports methods of torture that included “whipping and beating, electric shocks, extraction of teeth and nails, boiling water pumped into the rectum, heavy weights hung on the testicles, tying the prisoner to a metal table heated to a white heat, inserting a broken bottle into the anus, and rape.”…

The Shah greatly expanded the military and turned it against his own people. With newfound oil wealth the Shah bought $2C million of U.S. arms. The U.S. military trained Iranian officers. Despite claims that a strong army was needed to prevent external aggression, its real purpose became clear when the army murdered more than 50,000 Iranians fighting the Shah.” …. The number of students tortured, lost or murdered is unknown.” (“Life Under the Shah“, The Harvard Crimson)

This is America’s legacy in Iran:  “Whipping, beating, electric shocks, extraction of teeth, boiling water pumped into the rectum, and rape.” This is how the exceptional nation exported democracy to Iran.

The US has never tried to make amends for the suffering or death it inflicted on the Iranian people, nor have its crimes ever been prosecuted at an international tribunal, nor has there ever been any talk of monetary reparations.  Instead, the US has done everything in its power to further isolate and punish Iran for resisting Washington’s savage intrusion into their affairs. For many years, Washington has justified its cruelty by claiming that Tehran was developing nuclear weapons that would endanger the region and the world. As it happens, there’s no evidence that Iran ever had nuclear weapons program, it’s all a hoax concocted by the political class and their allies in the media. Here’s a quote that sums up the “Iran nukes” fable in one short paragraph:

“It is essential to recognize that Iran does not currently have a nuclear weapons program, nor does it possess a nuclear weapon. On February 26, James Clapper, the director of national intelligence, told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Ayatollah Khomenei, the supreme leader of Iran, ended his country’s nuclear weapons program in 2003 and “as far as we know, he’s not made the decision to go for a nuclear weapon.” This repeats the “high-confidence” judgement of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) that was first made in November 2007.”

(Micah Zenko, “Putting Iran’s Nuclear Program in Context”, Council on Foreign Relations)

There it is in one, short clip: No nukes, no nuclear weapons program, no diversion of nuclear fuel, and no sinister nuclear project aimed at blowing up Israel and establishing a region-wide Islamic Republic.  It’s all 100 percent bunkum conjured up by the same group of journalists who produced the mobile weapons labs, the yellowcake uranium, the aluminum tubes, curveball and the myriad other lies that preceded the invasion of Iraq.

But if Iran is not building nukes and is actually complying with the terms of the Joint Comprehensive Plan Of Action (aka– The Iran Nuclear Agreement) then why all the fiery rhetoric and saber rattling?  Is Trump seriously considering an attack on a country that poses no recognizable threat to the United States or its allies in the region?

Many people seem to think so, but I am not at all convinced.

Keep in mind, that a war with Iran would not be a cakewalk, it will be a bloody and protracted affair that would require significant military resources and tens of thousands of  American troops on the ground. US warplanes would not be able to selectively bomb designated targets without provoking asymmetrical retaliatory attacks on US military bases, oil platforms and strategic allies in the region.

Iranian special forces would be deployed to locations beyond their borders where they would wreak havoc while plunging the Middle East into a broader regional war. The transport of oil through the Straits of Hormuz would be blocked indefinitely which would send gas prices skyrocketing while global equities went off a cliff.

More important, Washington would have no allies in the conflict excluding a few of the corrupt Gulf monarchies whose military value is negligible at best. The traditional European allies would abandon the US in order to maintain their ever-dwindling political base which is fed up with American adventurism.  The war in Iraq, followed by the Wall Street-generated global financial crash, followed by the flood of refugees fleeing US conflicts in Syria, Libya and beyond, have made it impossible for EU leaders to support another bloody US-led fiasco in the Middle East. Washington would have to go it alone which would, in turn, strengthen the position of  rising rightwing politicians in the EU that want to sever relations with the US and develop an more Euro-centric foreign policy.

The end of the Atlantic Alliance would mark the end of imperial America and the collapse of the current global order. If Washington were to lose its ability to persuade or coerce the vassal states to follow its edicts, it would be cut off from its greatest source of geopolitical power. An attack on Iran would precipitate a speedy unraveling of the global system the US has painstakingly stitched together over a seventy year period.  US dominance would progressively erode while foreign governments would ditch the dollar leaving Washington to face a future of pariah-like isolation and grinding poverty.

In my opinion, an attack on Iran would trigger a series of events that would greatly accelerate US economic decline while exacerbating tensions between allies that would lead to the inevitable breakup of the Atlantic Alliance and the end of the dollar’s dominant role as the world’s reserve currency. Is Trump really willing to risk all that in order to punish Iran or is something else going on below the radar?

In order to understand what Trump is doing, we need to clarify a few details regarding the Iranian nuclear deal or JCPOA. In very broad terms, the Iranian leadership accepted the strictest nuclear inspections regime in history (overseen by the IAEA) in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions. (which, by the way, were imposed without any hard evidence that Iran was developing nuclear weapons) Donald Trump believes that this is the worst deal in history when, in fact, Iran was being unfairly punished for crimes it never committed.

The question is: Why would Trump oppose an agreement that clearly eliminates any chance for Iran to cheat and secretly build a nuclear weapon?

The obvious answer is that the hawks in his administration want to (eventually) topple Iran’s government which requires that they weaken the regime as much as possible through economic sanctions. This is how Washington typically conducts its regime change operations; economic strangulation usually precedes the coup d’ etat followed by the installing of a US puppet. Wash, rinse, and repeat.

But here’s the rub: The administration cannot unilaterally terminate the JCPOA because it’s a multi-lateral agreement endorsed by the UN Security Council. As one analyst said, If Trump rejects the deal “the international sanctions regime that incentivized Iran to negotiate would unravel…. Russia and China, for instance, won’t continue sanctions on Iran because the GOP says they should. If this were to happen, Iran would receive sanctions relief without having any constraints on its nuclear program.” Besides, If Trump walks away from the JCPOA, then “the next round of negotiations will be the US sitting at a table for one.”

So even though Trump doesn’t like the deal, he’s stuck with it, because if he bails out, the allies are not going to support him. Here’s a little more background that helps to explain things:

“Some opponents of the deal advocate for threatening the international community: You can either do business with Iran or business with the United States. But this threat lacks credibility. As Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew explained in a New York Times Op-ed, 40% of American exports go to the European Union, China, Japan, India, and Korea. By threatening to exclude these countries from our banking system, the U.S. would be placing a significant portion of its own economy at risk. Moreover, the major importers of Iranian oil (China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Turkey) also account for one-fifth of U.S. exported goods and own 47% of foreign-held American treasuries. Even threatening to terminate this economic connectivity could have negative ramifications for both the US economy and the economies of our allies.

Our negotiating partners will not maintain sanctions that hurt their economies simply because the U.S. Congress insists they do so. Threatening our allies with economic warfare is a ludicrous approach, especially when compared to the practical and widely supported alternative of implementing the agreement….”(“Iran Nuclear Deal: Debunking the Myths“, The Center for Arms Control and Non Proliferation)

What does it all mean?

It means that coercion and arm-twisting aren’t going to work this time. The agreement is written in a way that make it nearly impossible for the administration to achieve its objectives, which is to return to a bygone era when the US could inflict excruciating economic punishment on Iran without anyone uttering a word of protest. Those days are gone.

But if that’s the case, then why have Trump and his lieutenants stepped up the hectoring, the demonization and the saber rattling? What’s that all about?

That’s where it gets interesting. The Trump team has settled on a strategy of cat and mouse, which means they’re trying to beat Iran by tricking them into making a mistake that will give the US the advantage. In other words, Trump does not want a shooting war with Iran,  he simply wants Iran’s leaders to overreact to Washington’s bullying by abandoning JCPOA. That’s the goal. The fact that the administration can’t unilaterally reject the nukes deal, doesn’t mean that Iran can’t be duped into doing it for them. And, if Iran takes the bait and withdraws from the agreement, then Trump will have the allies on his side for another painful round of economic sanctions. That’s what Trump wants.

So the best thing Iran can do is nothing. They need to continue to stay the course, shrug off the provocations, and keep up their end of the deal. That’s it; just hang tight and stay cool.

Unfortunately, that’s easier said than done.

One month ago we reported that Russia had deployed S-400 air defense missile systems in proximity to Moscow, which were then put on combat duty. “The SAM combat squads of the Moscow Region aerospace forces have put the new S-400 Triumph air defense missile system into service, and have gone on combat duty for the air defense of Moscow and the central industrial region of Russia,” the Defense Ministry’s Department of Information and Mass Communication told Interfax in early January.

While the ministry did not explicitly state why the rollout was taking place, it added that “the main task of the anti-aircraft missile troops of the Russian Aerospace Forces is air defense and protecting vital state, military, industry and energy facilities, as well as the Armed Forces troops and transport communications, from aerospace attacks.”

Fast forward one month, when overnight the missile systems in proximity to Moscow got their first real test, when air defense systems around Moscow were put on high alert Wednesday as part of a surprise nationwide combat readiness drill for the Russian Air Force which was meant to “test how prepared Russia is to repel a possible attack.“

“Units of the air defense force responsible for defending Moscow and the central industrial region have been put on highest combat alert,” the Russian Defense Ministry said in a statement. “The air defense mission involves fully-manned combat crews.”

A part of the test, the ministry added, involved the redeployment of batteries of S-300, S-400 and Pantsir-S air defense systems to backup positions in a simulation of area contamination. The guards of the batteries also conducted anti-saboteur maneuvers and trained to operate in hard terrain.

Russia Deputy Defense Minister Aleksandr Fomin said that the drill is part of the surprise Russian Air Force training ordered by President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday. It involves 45,000 troops and 1,700 pieces of military equipment, including 150 aircraft and 200 surface-to-air missile launchers. Fomin met foreign military attaches on Wednesday to brief them on the situation.

“This is a surprise exercise and thus not subject to control under the Vienna document or the OSCE documents. No formal notification was required, but we do inform you as a gesture of goodwill,” he said. The snap exercise will last until Thursday, Fomin added. The Russian official said it is meant to test how prepared Russia is to repel a possible attack.“

“During the test we pay special attention to the deployment of air defense and the readiness of aviation groups to respond to an aggression,” he said, before detailing how exactly Russia was moving its troops during the exercise.

As RT adds, the briefing came amid alarmed reports in some Western media outlets which claimed that the exercise was meant to telegraph Russian preparations for war. NATO, led by the US and Germany has continued to mass soldiers, tanks and fighter jets near Russian borders.

The decision by Russia to decriminalize some forms of domestic violence has drawn sharp criticism from the European Union.

“No country is immune from domestic violence, which claims so many victims worldwide each year. The Russian Federation’s new legislation is, in this regard, a clear step backwards in the country’s commitment to tackling violence against women and children,” said in a statement the spokesperson for the European Union’s External Action office.

The EU spokesperson noted that while most countries in Europe are taking measures to stop domestic violence and violence against women, and to raise awareness of this serious violation of human rights, the signing into law of a bill decriminalizing some forms of domestic violence in the Russian Federation on February 7 goes in the opposite direction.

“This law fails to recognise the very serious and specific nature of violence against women. Legislation that tolerates violence against women and children within the family risks severe consequences both for the victims and for society as a whole,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson added that European Union will continue to promote the eradication of domestic violence, to protect those who are vulnerable, and to support the victims, both inside and outside of Europe.

By Elise Harris

On Wednesday Pope Francis made an urgent appeal for prayer on behalf for all suffering due to slavery and exploitation, pointing specifically to the minority Rohingya population of Myanmar, who have undergone violent persecution for years.

“I would like pray with you today in a special way for our brother and sister Rohingya. They were driven out of Myanmar, they go from one place to another and no one wants them,” the Pope said Feb. 8.

“They are good people, peaceful people, they aren’t Christians, but they are good. They are our brothers and sisters. And they have suffered for years,” he said, noting that often times members of the ethnic minority have been “tortured and killed” simply for carrying forward their traditions and Muslim faith.

He spoke to pilgrims gathered for his general audience in the Vatican’s Paul VI Hall, leading them in praying an “Our Father” for the Rohingya people, and asking St. Josephine Bakhita, herself a former salve, to intercede.

Rohingya people are an Indo-Aryan ethnic group largely from the Rakhine state of Burma, in west Myanmar. Since clashes began in 2012 between the state’s Buddhist community and the long-oppressed Rohingya Muslim minority, some 125,000 Rohingya have been displaced, while more than 100,000 have fled Myanmar by sea.

In order to escape forced segregation from the rest of the population inside rural ghettos, many of the Rohingya – who are not recognized by the government as a legitimate ethnic group or as citizens of Myanmar – have made the perilous journey at sea in hopes of evading persecution.

In 2015 a number of Rohingya people – estimated to be in the thousands – were stranded at sea in boats with dwindling supplies while Southeastern nations such as Thailand, Indonesia and Malaysia refuse to take them in.

However, in recent months tens of thousands have fled to Bangladesh amid a military crackdown on insurgents in Myanmar’s western Rakhine state. The horrifying stories recounted by the Rohingya include harrowing tales of rapes, killings and the burning of their houses.

According to BBC News, despite claims of a genocide, a special government-appointed committee in Myanmar formed in January has investigated the situation, but found no evidence to support the allegations.

In Bangladesh, however, the Rohingya have had little relief, since they are not recognized as refugees in the country. Since October, many who fled to Bangladesh have been detained and forced to return to the neighboring Rakhine state.

In his audience appeal, Pope Francis also pointed out that Feb. 8 marks both the feast of St. Josephine Bakhita, as well as the third International day of prayer and reflection against human trafficking. This year the day focuses on the plight of children, with the theme: “We are children! Not slaves!”

Kidnapped and sold into slavery at the age of 7, St. Josephine is the event’s patron. After being bought and sold several times during her adolescence, often undergoing immense suffering, she eventually discovered the faith in her early 20s. She was then baptized, and after being freed entered the Canossian Sisters in Italy.

Pope Francis noted that like modern trafficking victims, St. Josephine was “enslaved in Africa, exploited, humiliated,” but she never lost hope.

“She carried hope forward, and ended up as a migrant in Europe,” he said, noting that it was there that she felt God’s call and became a religious sister.

“Let us pray to St. Josephine Bakhita for all, for all migrants, refugees and exploited, who suffer so much,” he said, and led pilgrims in a round of applause in honor of the Saint.

In his audience speech, Francis continued his ongoing catechesis on the virtue of hope, focusing particularly on its communitarian and ecclesial dimension.

He noted how in St. Paul’s First Letter to the Thessalonians, the apostle’s gaze was “widened” to all the different realities that formed part of the Christian community at the time. In seeing them, Paul asked them “to pray for one another and to support one another.”

This doesn’t just mean helping people in the practical things of everyday life, he said, but also means “helping each other in hope, sustaining each other in hope.”

“It’s not a coincidence that he begins by referencing those who have been entrusted with pastoral responsibility and guidance,” because they are “the first to be called to nourish hope,” the Pope said, noting that this isn’t because they better than others, but because of the divine ministry entrusted to them which “goes well beyond their own strength.”

Francis then pointed to those risk losing hope and falling into desperation, noting that the news always seems to be full of the bad things people do when they become desperate.

“Desperation leads to many bad things,” he said, explaining that when it comes to those who are discouraged, weak and feel downcast due to life’s heaviness, the Church in these cases must make her “closeness and warmth” even closer and more loving, showing even greater compassion.

Compassion, he cautioned, doesn’t mean “to have pity” on someone, but rather to “to suffer with the other, to draw near to the one who suffers. A word, a caress, but which comes from the heart. This is compassion.”

This witness, the Pope said, doesn’t stay closed in the confines of the Christian community, but rather “resounds in all its vigor” even to social and civil context outside as an appeal “not to create walls, but bridges, to not exchange evil with evil, (but) to overcome evil with good, offense with forgiveness.”

A Christian, Francis said, can never tell someone “’you will pay!’ Never. This is not a Christian act.”

Instead, offenses must be overcome with forgiveness so as to live in peace with everyone, he said, adding that “this is the Church! And this is operates Christian hope, when it takes the strong features but at the same time the tenderness of love.”

In learning to have this kind of hope, “it’s not possible” to do it alone, he said, adding that in ourder to be nourished, hope “needs a body in when the various members sustain and revitalize each other.

“This means that, if we hope, it’s because many of our brothers and sisters have taught us to hope and have kept our hope alive,” he said, noting that among these people are “the small, the poor, the simple and the marginalized.”

This is the case, he said, because “those who close in their own wellbeing, in their own contentment, who always feel in place, don’t know hope.

The United Nations Committee on the Rights of the Child should press the North Korean government to end the exploitation of children through forced labor and discrimination, Human Rights Watch and three Korean nongovernmental organizations said today. During the week of February 6, 2017, Human Rights Watch, the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea (ICNK), the New Korea Women’s Union, and the Caleb Mission will brief the pre-sessional working group of the committee in Geneva about the situation of children’s rights in North Korea.

Although the North Korean government claims to have abolished child labor 70 years ago, the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea and other government agencies still require students and other children to take part in forced labor on behalf of the state. Other human rights violations include government discrimination regarding access to education, abuses against children with mothers in third countries, corporal punishment at schools, and children compelled to work extended hours without pay in paramilitary forced labor brigades (known in Korean as dolgyeokdae).

“Forcing children to work is an egregious human rights abuse condemned worldwide, but for many North Korean students, it’s a part of their everyday life,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “The UN Committee on the Rights of the Child should demand that Pyongyang tell the truth about these abusive practices and immediately bring them to a halt.”

The Committee on the Rights of the Child will hear the experiences of two North Korean teenagers who escaped the country. Jeon Hyo-Vin, 16, experienced forced labor in school almost daily, until she had to leave secondary school because of her family’s inability to pay the required cash payments. Kim Eun-Sol, 18, endured forced labor in school while she was a teenager. By age 13, she became an unpaid worker in a private home in order to survive since her grandmother could not support her. Her mother, who had left to earn a living in China, could not maintain contact with her daughter.

The committee reviews the compliance of each state party with its obligations under the Child Rights Convention, which North Korea has ratified. This pre-sessional meeting, which is closed to the public, allows civil society organizations and children, in a separate meeting, to confidentially brief the committee members about their concerns regarding North Korea’s child rights record. A list of topics, to which North Korea can then respond, is issued following the pre-sessional meeting. Nongovernmental organizations can make further submissions ahead of the full, public review in September 2017, during which the committee will question government officials on the topics raised.

Research conducted by the groups found that both the Workers’ Party of Korea and the Ministry of Education compelled labor from children in collaboration with schools and universities. They also made use of party wings such as the Korean Children’s Union (which students between the ages of 7 and 13 are required to join), and the Kimilsungist-Kimjongilist Youth League (which is comprised of students between the ages of 14 and 30). Schools, party wings, school administrators, and teachers required students to farm, to help construct buildings, statues, roads or railroads, and collect materials (for example, scrap metal, broken rocks, pebbles, rabbit skin, old paper) that could be used or sold by the school. If a student cannot meet the required quota for products collected, which happens in many cases, then the student is required to pay a cash penalty.

The North Korean government has also compelled numerous children after they finish mandatory school at age 16 or 17 to join paramilitary forced labor brigades, which are controlled and operated by the ruling party. These brigades have a military-like structure, and work primarily on construction projects for buildings and other public infrastructure. Children with low songbun (a socio-political classification system the government uses to discriminate among North Korean citizens based on their perceived political loyalty to the ruling party) or those from poor families are often forced to do hard labor in these brigades without pay for up to 10 years.

“Children who end up in North Korean forced labor brigades live under terrible conditions, and are not free to leave,” said Kwon Eun-Kyoung, secretary general at the ICNK. “This type of enslavement must immediately be abolished and those responsible for directing these brigades punished.”

A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry on the situation of human rights in North Korea found a gravity, scale, and nature of violations that revealed a state “without parallel in the contemporary world.” Abuses faced by children included, detention of children in political prison camps, trafficking and sexual exploitation of North Korean girls by Chinese men as wives or in the sex industry, and lack of civil and political rights and freedoms starting from childhood. The Human Rights Council and the UN General Assembly have condemned the human rights situation in North Korea. The UN Security Council has recognized the gravity of the situation by addressing North Korea’s bleak human rights record as a threat to international peace and security as a formal agenda item three years in a row.

“The North Korean government’s practice of child exploitation not only neglects its obligations to protect children,” said Lee So-Youn, director of New Korea. “But it also exploits and discriminates against the most vulnerable children from families with low songbun and those who are the poorest.”

Rabbi Aryeh Edelkopf, an Israeli citizen who has served as the chief rabbi of Sochi for 16 years, says on his Facebook account that Russian officials, without offering any further explanation, want to deport him and his family as “threats to the security of the Russian Federation and its citizens” (facebook.com/ari.edelkopf/posts/1495696367108505).

Borukh Gorin of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia said there was no basis for such charges because in his 16 years in Sochi, Edelkopf had pursued only one goal – giving Sochi Jews the opportunity to “’life a full Jewish life’” (ixtc.org/2017/02/vlasti-obyavili-ravvina-goroda-sochi-ugrozoy-bezopasnosti-rf/).

Gorin added that such decisions by the Russian authorities “disorient the Jewish community and generate serious fears about the future of the Jewish community in the country.”

Unfortunately, as the New Chronicle of Current Events pointed out, this effort to deport a rabbi from Russia is far from the first in recent years. In 2003, Rabbi Elyashiv Kaplun and Rabbi Haim Friedman were deported from Rostov; in 2009, Rabbi Israel Zilberstein was deported from his post in Primorsky kray and Zvi Hershkvits, the rabbi of Stavropol kray, was deported as well.

In 2013, the human rights portal continues, Rabbi Aleksandr Feigen, rector of the Moscow-based International Jewish Institute of Economics, Finance and Law was deported. And in 2014, Russian officials deported Zeev Wagner from Tula and tried by failed to deport Rabbi Osher Krichevsky from Omsk.

This drumbeat of expulsions undercuts Moscow’s claims to have overcome the long and ugly tradition of official anti-Semitism, but it is possible because as a result of Soviet anti-Semitic policies, Russian Jewish congregations have been forced to recruit rabbis from abroad who retain their foreign citizenship and thus are always at risk of expulsion.

Rabbi Edelkopf, the current target, was born in Jerusalem in 1978. He studied in Israel and the United States and serves as Lubavicher rabbi in Brazil, South Africa, Peru and Hong Kong. He first visited Sochi in 1996, and in 2001, he was named chief rabbi of that city’s Jewish congregation. He also served Jewish groups in neighboring areas who lack rabbis of their own.

It’s amazing to watch how shallow and self-censoring our corporate media can be. Take the remarkable interchange between President Donald Trump and Fox right-wing talkshow host Bill O’Reilly.  In an interview that aired before the Super Bowl, Trump had responded to O’Reilly’s question about how he could respect Russian President Putin, whom O’Reilly called “a killer,” by saying, “There are a lot of killers. We’ve got a lot of killers. What do you think — our country’s so innocent? You think our country’s so innocent?”

Most news organizations reporting on this included the response of Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) to Trump’s comment, in which the Senate Majority Leader said, “Putin’s a former KGB agent. He’s a thug. “

Left unsaid was the fact that this country also once had a former intelligence agency “thug” as its president: George H.W. Bush. Bush was named CIA director in 1976 by then President Gerald Ford, and during one-year tenure as head of the Agency, he reportedly worked assiduously to protect it from post-Watergate investigations and reforms of its past dirty behavior by shipping agency operatives abroad and out of reach of investigators.  Furthermore, as investigative reporter Russ Baker, author of a book on Bush called Family of Secrets, reports, Bush’s connection to the CIA, kept secret for years, stretches way back to the days of its precursor agency, the OSS, and lasts at least through 1963 and the Kennedy assassination.

It was during Bush’s tenure as CIA director that agents of Chile’s intelligence service, the DINA, planted a bomb in the car of former Chilean foreign minister Orlando Letelier, then living and working in exile in Washington, DC. The bomb killed Letelier and an American assistant, Ronnie Moffet.  DINA was very closely coordinated with the CIA, which had orchestrated the 1973 military coup that overthrew the elected Socialist government and murdered Chilean President Salvador Allende, for whom Letelier had worked, later becoming a chief critic of the subsequent military dictatorship. At a minimum, Bush’s CIA appears to have known about the plot to kill Letelier, and he subsequently worked to cover up any links to either DINA or the CIA. Bush’s CIA also helped coordinate a continent-side Murder Inc. project against leftists in Latin America called Operation Condor.

In any event one could even more properly refer to President Obama as a thug, courtesy not of any nefarious background as a former CIA operative, but in his role as murderer-in-chief with his Tuesday morning “kill list” sessions, where he would decide whom to target next for a drone attack. According to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, during his eight years in office, President Obama ordered 563 strikes at specific alleged terrorist targets. While it is unclear how many of those actual targets were successfully killed (many are known to have escaped), the BIJ claims that by its count between 384 and 807 civilians, including children, were also killed in the attacks. Other sources say the number of those “collateral damage” killings is actually considerably higher.

The charge is often made that several dozen Russian journalists critical of Putin and the Kremlin have died under mysterious circumstances, some by outright execution-style murders, which Putin critics then assert could not have happened without Putin’s authorization. But there have been no clear links in any of these to Putin.

Meanwhile, there have also been a number of curious deaths of American journalists critical of the government and its leaders over the years. Take for example journalist George Polk, killed while covering the Greek civil war in 1948, in a case that many suspect was the work of the CIA, which suspiciously “lost” and “destroyed” its records relating to Polk.

More recently, of course, there is the bizarre death of Michael Hastings, a reporter for BuzzFeed andRolling Stone who was killed in a high-speed crash of his new Mercedes C250 coup, which had reportedly been observed driving an estimated 100 mph done a local Los Angeles street in the middle of the night in 2013 before veering off into a palm tree and exploding into flame. Hastings had reportedly been working on an article on the Democratic party, the NSA and the CIA at the time of his death, and had told associates he needed to “get off the radar for a bit” because federal agents were interviewing his associates. His death followed his publication in 2010 in Rolling Stone of a lengthy article on the top commander in Afghanistan, Gen. William McCrystal, whose on-the-record criticisms to him of President Obama led to the general’s resignation. McCrystal had earlier led the US military’s assassination program in Iraq, which like the CIA’s notorious Phoenix Program of assassinations of Viet Cong leaders had attempted to kill off the leaders of Iraq’s Sunni counterintersurgency.  Around the time of Hasting’s death it became known that such new cars as his Mercedes were vulnerable to hacking which would allow someone with a computer to wrest full control of all functions of a car — the accelerator, the steering and the breaks — from the driver and to cause crashes like the one that killed Hastings. The secretive manner in which Hastings’ body was handled by the county coroner, and the way his car was removed by police under a white shrink wrap, has only deepened suspicions about the real cause of his death.

Consider too the strange murder of Seth Rich, the 27-year-old Democratic National Committee computer worker who Wikileaks has suggested was the source of leaked DNC emails late in last year’s election campaign — leaks which many believe contributed to Hillary Clinton’s defeat on Nov. 8 by Donald Trump. Rich was shot twice in the back while walking home at night in Washington, DC on July 10, 2016 in what local police quickly termed a “botched robbery,” though his killer reportedly made no attempt to take a watch, phone or wallet. Wikileaks, which released the emails, has offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of Rich’s killer.

While, as in the case of Russian killings of journalists, links to leaders are purely speculative in cases of journalist killings in the US, the same kinds of inferences often made about Putin’s possible role are all too easy to make about leaders roles when it comes to the murder of journalists and their sources here in the US, too.

The US mainstream media just don’t make those inferences, except when it involves killings in Russia.

Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei has responded to recent comments by US President Donald Trump, saying, “The new US president says Iran should thank Obama! Why?! Should we thank him for creating ISIS, the ongoing wars in Iraq and Syria, or the blatant support for the 2009 sedition in Iran? He was the president who imposed paralyzing sanctions on the Iranian nation; of course, he did not achieve what he desired. No enemy can ever paralyze the Iranian nation.”

Khamenei made the comments on Tuesday at a meeting celebrating the anniversary of the commanders of the Army Air Force’s  allegiance with Imam Khomeini (Homafaran Allegiance), formed February 8, 1979.

Ayatollah Khamenei further expanded on Trump’s recent comment which involved ‘putting Iran on notice’.

“Trump says fear me! No. The Iranian nation will respond to your comments with a demonstration on the 10th of February: they will show others what kind of stance the nation of Iran takes when threatened,” Khamenei said.

“We actually thank this new president [Trump]! We thank him, because he made it easier for us to reveal the real face of the United States,” Khamenei said, adding, “What we have been saying, for over thirty years, about political, economic, moral, and social corruption within the US ruling establishment, he came out and exposed during the election campaigns and after the elections. Now, with everything he is doing—handcuffing a child as young as five at an airport—he is showing the reality of American human rights.”

Ayatollah Khamenei reminded the audience that, “The incident of the February 8, 1979 was unexpected for the regime and a blessing from God we were not counting upon. An unexpected provision should be hoped for in anything that the believing front does: it is true that logical and material calculations are necessary, but sometimes we should open up to counting on the supernatural too.”

He further added, “Such a blessing is achieved through endeavor and wisdom, accompanied by hope and trust in God; however, if we use wisdom and prudence along with trusting the Satan, the result will be a mirage. In any matter, including diplomacy and the country’s problems it is true that trusting demons and the materialistic power, which oppose your essence, leads to a mirage.”

By Sandip Kumar Mishra*

Among others, at present, the East Asian theatre could be characterised by two key distinctions. First, with Donald Trump as the US president, regional politics is led by a squad of ‘aggressive’ leaders. The leadership in each East Asian country – namely, China, Japan, South Korea, and North Korea – was already in the hands of aggressive leaders, and the US has joined this phenomenon with the Trump’s victory. Second, the ‘rising power’, China, and existing superpower, the US, both take this region as their non-negotiable influence zone and have been at loggerheads with each other.

In the above context, it could be said that East Asia is going to be the most significant theatre of international politics in 2017. It is interesting to note that in the region, neither the countries that want to maintain ‘status quo’ nor those who want to ‘revise’ it have sufficient capacity to do so. However, all of them appear to be adamant to retain their aggressive orientation; and the implications for the region will be dire.

China

Scholars like David Shambough have raised questions about China’s future by conducting a survey of China’s economics, politics, society, and foreign policy. However, China’s President Xi Jinping has been more aggressive in projecting himself as the ‘core leader’ in domestic politics and has been asking for a ‘great power relationship’ with the US. China has been overtly assertive in the South and East China seas, albeit its ‘soft power’ in the region is on a decline. Beijing is talking about its One Belt One Road (OBOR) project and has established the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) but appears to spend more attention on strangulating the US’ regional allies and friendly countries. China’s recently published White Paper on Asia-Pacific Security outlines strategies to deal with these issues but appears to be tilted towards a non-compromising attitude.

US

The US under the President Donald Trump’s administration also appears to be determined to challenge Chinese aggressiveness. The US’ priority regarding East Asia in general and China in particular could be gauged from the fact that in the first foreign visit by the new administration’s representative, US Defense Secretary James Mattis went to South Korea and Japan and assured its allies. President Trump has indicated that on trade issues, South China Sea, cyber security and North Korea, China has to listen to Washington, or else Taiwan or other issues that are considered as settled may be brought on board again. Having a phone conversation with the Taiwanese President immediately after his election might be a glimpse of this policy. It seems that although President Trump had initially demanded more burden-sharing of the alliances from Japan and South Korea – which may have created a drift in the relations – the administration has realised that these allies are extremely important to Washington’s counter-strategy against Beijing, and have therefore decided to postpone burden-sharing issue.

Unfortunately, by announcing the end of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), by announcing ‘America First’ by trade protectionism, and by restricting immigration, Trump is going to necessarily hurt these allies. Overall, it seems that the US has neither the domestic means nor a detailed external strategy in place to check China but yet, it’s eager to do so.

Japan

Japan’s search for its ‘pride place’ is going to be another important variable in the East Asian regional politics in 2017. Japan’s Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, is determined to retrieve Japan’s economic viability and military strength, under his leadership. Prime Minister Abe has been gradually working to make required changes in the Japanese constitution and other legal documents. Furthermore, he seeks to challenge China, maintain good relations with the US and reach out to the Southeast Asian countries. Tokyo wants to challenge Beijing not only in the East China Sea where the two countries have a dispute over the Senkaku/Diaoyu islands and Chinese Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ), but also in the South China Sea. In doing so, Tokyo needs to forge better relations with the Southeast Asian countries. However, it may be noted that Japan’s aggressiveness is equally alarming for the Southeast Asian countries and South Korea. Furthermore, Prime Minister Abe’s military posture must be supported by Japan’s economic recovery; and despite all the hype of ‘Abenomics’, that is still not taking place.

South Korea

For South Korea, 2017 began with political crisis in which President Park Geun-hye’s impeachment by the National Assembly is being vetted by the constitutional court. There is strong possibility that she would finally be impeached, and the next president – who would be elected in mid-2017 or in the latter half of the year – would not be from the conservative party. Perhaps this is why South Korea’s Acting President, Hwang Kyo-an, has been trying to push the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) in South Korea and military intelligence sharing agreement with Japan to an irreversible stage. It would be a tumultuous year for South Korea both in the domestic politics as well as its foreign policy, which has to position itself in the great powers’ contest in the region along with ongoing aggressive posturing of North Korea at its doorsteps.

North Korea

Although, Pyongyang is determined to continue its provocative and aggressive behaviour, an active US involvement would make it difficult for North Korea to do so. President Trump has announced to change former US President Barack Obama’s policy of ‘strategic patience’ vis-a-vis North Korea. Even though he does not get enough support from China in resolving the North Korean issue, he would take bilateral actions or steps with its regional allies, Seoul and Tokyo, to cap Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs. China would utilise President Trump’s desperation on North Korea as a bargaining chip with the US. In all probability, North Korean foreign policy as well as domestic politics would witness significant change in 2017. If the US and China are unable to deal with the North Korean issue, there would be stronger demands by South Korea and Japan to go nuclear along with continuous increase in their defence expenditure.

Overall, 2017 will be a determining year in geopolitical relations in East Asia as well as globally; and unfortunately, it appears that there will be more overt contestations and face-offs between the regional countries. It will be a big test for the quest for a liberal order in the region and regarding the arrival on a modus vivendi of coexisting with differences.

*Sandip Kumar Mishra Associate Professor, Centre for East Asian Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi; and Visiting Fellow & Columnist, IPCS

By Daniel Rosehill

Israel’s contentious Regulation Bill, which passed the Knesset 60-52 in a vote held earlier this week, sets a dangerous legal precedent for not only the annexation of Israeli-controlled areas of the West Bank, but for the mass expulsion of its Palestinian residents.

The law, which the UN has described as “crossing a very thick red line,” for the first time retroactively legalizes the expropriation of private Palestinian land upon which several existing settlements have been built, pending the “diplomatic resolution of the status of the territories” which has evaded the region for over forty years.

Those Palestinians disenfranchised of their land by the settlements subject to the law are to be offered land elsewhere or monetary compensation for it, but are expressly disallowed to claim their former land back or repossess it.

The measure – with the notable exception of the US, which has simply said that it needs time to “consult with all parties on the way forward” – has drawn mounting worldwide condemnation including from many of Israel’s important diplomatic allies, including the UK, France, Germany, Jordan, the Arab League, and Jewish interest groups.

In giving state approval to both the seizing of land for settlement construction and the enactment of retroactive legislation over a population that does not enjoy electoral franchise in the territories administered by it, Israel has severely undermined its reputation as a democracy governed by the rule of law – or at least as one that adheres to its basic norms.

The passage of the legislation also represents a marked, far-right break from Israel’s longstanding policy of limiting its de-facto authority over the Palestinians living in the West Bank to coordinating security and civilian issues through the agency of the IDF and COGAT (Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories – the branch of the IDF responsible for coordinating Palestinian civilian and humanitarian affairs with Israel).

Now, for the first time, Israel’s national legislative branch, and not a martial court, has passed a law allowing West Bank Palestinians to be dispossessed of privately-held land.

The measure, which was sponsored by hardline parliamentarians from the Jewish Home and Likud factions, was initially opposed by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who warned that its passage could trigger a cascade of national and international lawsuits against the country, including a potential legal battle at the International Criminal Court (ICC).

Israel’s attorney-general, Avichai Mandelbilt, has called the measure legally indefensible and warned that, if it is constitutionally challenged, as is expected, he is not prepared to defend it on behalf of the government.

The most dangerous consequence of the bill, however, is the legal precedent it could set for the total annexation of the West Bank, including the areas administered by the Palestinian Authority, and the possibility of carrying out of a large-scale Kahanist style “deal” to forcibly expel the Palestinians in exchange for compensation.

Doing so would necessarily involve Israel breaking further international agreements – namely the Oslo Accords temporarily governing its actions in the stagnant and faltering peace process with the Palestinians – but with a legislator prepared to retrospectively sanitize illegality to count on, those on the far right have rapidly diminishing tactical reasons to fear such a course of action.

The lack of restraint since Trump’s presidency began has already been palpable. Israel, seemingly with the tacit backing of an unprecedentedly quiet US administration, is currently engaged in the largest up-tick in settlement construction in recent memory – including the planning of the first new settlement in over 25 years and three waves of construction announcements in the last two weeks alone.

After the White House’s surprise, but watery statement last week in which the new press secretary opined that the building of such settlements ‘may not be helpful for the two-state process’, the administration’s decision not to explicitly condemn the passage of the Regulation Bill will be interpreted as passing a key litmus test of support by members of the right.

Last week’s murmuring of a bark has not drawn the diplomatic bite some may have expected of it. For the moment, at least, the administration appears unconditionally supportive of Israel’s unprecedented actions.

A staunchly right-wing Knesset has shown itself capable of passing legislation that is clearly both illegal and politically-motivated in nature, while prime minister Netanyahu proved himself ready to easily capitulate to competing, hard line, voices within his cabinet.

The last remaining roadblock for Israel’s right to achieve its most far-reaching ambitions is now the country’s judicial branch, which may be asked to strike the bill down for contravening the country’s constitution, consisting of a set of Basic Laws, as well as international law.

Failing that, the current geopolitical climate – characterized by internal and American opposition to the government’s actions in the West Bank at a historical low ebb – has created a perfect storm for those on the right to decide the ultimate fate of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Given the recent pace of events, further developments can be expected in the not too distant future.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com, where this article was published.

New research part-supported by the EU-funded IQIT project has produced the first-ever industrial blueprint for a large-scale quantum computer that could lead to an entirely new and exciting technological revolution.

Until now, quantum computing has had just a fraction of the processing power that it is theoretically capable of producing and this has hindered the advancement of a possible ‘quantum revolution’. Now though, an international team of researchers, led from the Ion Quantum Technology Group at Sussex University, in the UK, believe they have finally found the way to overcome the technical problems that have thus far prevented the development of more powerful machines.

The team, which has published its findings in the journal ‘Science Advances’, are now building a prototype and estimate that a full-scale, fully-functional quantum computer could be ready to go in about a decade. The device would be many millions of times faster than the best currently available computer and would work by utilizing the ability to manipulate effects in customized systems and materials – in effect, harnessing the properties of the ‘very small’ at the atomic level.

“It is the Holy Grail of science, really, to build a quantum computer,” commented Prof Winfried Hensinger, who has been leading the research. “We are now publishing the actual nuts-and-bolts construction plan for a large-scale quantum computer.”

Quantum computing would unleash a level of processing power that could transform life in the twenty-first century, allowing for the development of new medicines, the construction of communication devices with superior performance capabilities, and providing new tools to help humanity solve the many still-unexplained mysteries of the universe.

“Life will change completely,” said Prof Hensinger. “… this is really, really exciting… it’s probably one of the most exciting times to be in this field.”

The main technical restraint holding quantum computing back is the fact that existing quantum computers require lasers focused on individual atoms, and the larger the computer, the more lasers are required, which then increases the chance of something going wrong. Prof Hensinger and his team used a different technique to monitor the atoms, which involved a microwave field and electricity in an ‘ion-trap’ device.

“Within two years we think we will have completed a prototype that incorporates all of the technology we state in this blueprint [published in ‘Science Advances’],” explained Hensinger. “At the same time we are looking for an industry partner so we can really build a large-scale device that basically fills a building.”

The team estimates that the final cost of constructing and testing the prototype could be up to EUR 116 million.

The IQIT consortium, that included the University of Sussex but was coordinated at the University of Siegen in Germany, was a four-year project that aimed to develop novel methods for up-scaling quantum physical devices. Although the project ended in March 2015, it acted as an important pillar of support for the design of the ground-breaking quantum blueprint reached by Prof Hensinger and his team.

Advancing the quantum computing revolution continues to be a major EU ambition, with policymakers understanding that quantum breakthroughs have the capacity to ensure Europe’s continued place as a global scientific leader. Overall, the field has received up to EUR 550 million in EU research funding and as this latest development highlights, it could indeed amount to money very, very well spent.

Source: CORDIS

Life-size versions of Roald Dahl’s most iconic creations have been hand-crafted from paper and cardboard as part of an exhibition celebrating 100 years since the writer’s birth.

Students on Birmingham City University’s Design for Theatre, Performance and Events course have created the unique structures which features a cast of Dahl’s most well-known characters from Matilda and George to Augustus Gloop and Fantastic Mr Fox.

The installation, which is made up of a set and characters constructed entirely from brown paper and cardboard, will be on display at Birmingham City University’s Parkside building until February 20.

The exhibition imagines a 100th birthday party for Roald Dahl attended by characters from the writer’s books.

Among the creations are 12 characters, paper trees and furniture including a replica of the original writing chair Dahl used to pen his classics, reconstructed to the exact dimensions of the piece which now sits in the Roald Dahl Museum and Story Centre in Buckinghamshire.

The show is made up of 1km of corrugated cardboard and 2km of brown paper, with the first-year students working day and night over 18 days to pull together their creations.

The installation concept was designed completely by the students and is lit with specialised set lighting and includes a backdrop replicating the look and sound of giants from the BFG walking through the woods.

Hollie Wright, Module Leader for the project, said: “This year’s installation captures some beautiful details. It really is over to the students to devise methods to complete them to such a high standard of finish with such basic materials.

“Having only been at university for a few months, the challenge of collaborating on such a scale must be daunting, one which the students embarked on positively.

“Such lessons in tenacity cannot be taught in a lecture theatre and must be experienced. The sense of elation after many late nights and gruelling days, seeing their hard work come together is tangible.“

Books referenced in the exhibition include Matilda, Charlie and Chocolate Factory, George’s Marvellous Medicine, Fantastic Mr Fox and The Twits.

Dahl was born on the 13 September 1916 and passed away in 1990 having written dozens of books and short stories which have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide.

Away from the written word he was also an ace fighter pilot, a chocolate historian, a medical inventor and a spy.

Roald Dahl Museum Director Steve Gardam spoke to the students about the writer’s life and work on their research trip and visited the installation for a special view.

He said: “What fantastic, creative collaboration. It was a privilege to see the work of these talented young people, inspired by their visit to the Museum and ‘Dahl Country’.

“I loved the leafy woodland setting for the one hundredth birthday party for Roald Dahl, with his empty chair waiting for the guest of honour.

“So many of his books grew out of the beautiful landscape of the Chilterns, where our Museum is based today, and it seems apt that a great artist – whose main tools were pencil and paper – has been celebrated in an explosion of paper and imagination.”

Student Laura Watson said: “It was an interesting challenge because we are not using the famous Quentin Blake drawings and had to go back to the original source to come up the look and design of the characters.”

Student Shirley Gilbertson added: “We had to make it realise so that when people come in they can recognise the characters, because you are really putting people’s childhoods out there.

“When we started this projected we didn’t really understand how big an impact Roald Dahl had had in his life outside of the writing, so it was really interesting to learn more about him.”

By Lukas Milevski*

(FPRI) — Throughout his campaign, transition, and brief tenure in the White House, President Donald Trump has made no secret of his desire to repair ties with Vladimir Putin and Russia. One potential requirement for a “reset” may involve recognition of Russia’s annexation of Crimea. Such an act is often described in a condemning tone. Yet, what is the value of maintaining a policy of non-recognition?

What are the real effects of the policy? Non-recognition is a soft form of diplomatic pressure. In terms of pure power, it changes very little. It cannot reverse the annexation of Crimea, nor can it prohibit Russia from fortifying the peninsula. Nothing short of the voluntary withdrawal or forceful eviction of Russia’s military will return Crimea to Ukrainian control. Why, then, should the West pursue a policy grounded in explicit disregard of reality? When considering this question, an analogy may help Westerners understand the problem because the West has a long previous experience of implementing a policy similarly based on non-reality.

An appropriate analogy would be the non-recognition of the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states. This hard-fought policy barely survived the pressures of the Second World War when the Western Allies required Soviet involvement to defeat Germany. The Baltic states did not forcefully resist the Soviet invasion in 1939-40 in order to avoid futile bloodshed, which thereafter, in diplomatic terms, counted against them. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, in particular, was concerned lest the Baltic question derail his plans for the establishment of the United Nations, an historical variable with no apparent counterpart today. The Soviet Union also actively sought to sway Western policies in favor of recognition throughout much of the Second World War and the Cold War as well. Nevertheless, few Western countries ever recognized the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states.

Baltic-Crimea Similarities

Even the conditions surrounding the birth of the Baltic policy bear some similarities to today, as the West faces the strategic problem of ISIS even as Russia holds out its hand in an apparent offer of partnership against this foe. Ukraine did not offer armed resistance to the Russian annexation of Crimea. Yet, the conditions of the early 1940s were much more dire and demanding than circumstances today. The full story of the establishment of the West’s non-recognition policy of the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states has been recounted by others, but certain other details salient to this analogy emerge.

First, the British in particular were willing throughout the war to recognize the Soviet annexation—but only as the seal affixed to a larger and much wider-ranging treaty, rather than as an enticement to achieve a treaty. Putting aside the moral question of recognizing an illegal annexation, this attitude at the very least showed a clear diplomatic understanding that concessions should be dearly sold rather than freely gifted. During the Second World War, Britain never received a benefit from the Soviet Union for which it was worth legally recognizing the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states. It remains to be seen whether the Trump administration will understand this diplomatic point with regard to Crimea.

This understanding did not necessarily extend to the public, the source of some pressure to recognize the annexation of the Baltic states. During the Second World War, this pressure mainly stemmed from academic experts and politicians who argued vehemently in favor of recognition in the name of “realism” and friendship with the Soviet Union. AJP Taylor, EH Carr, and Walter Lippmann were all hostile to the Baltic states, as well as socialists like Stafford Cripps who were favorably inclined toward the Soviet Union. Across the West today, Russia is supporting political parties, including Marine Le Pen’s National Front, which are similarly sympathetic to Russia, to the point of recognizing the legality and legitimacy of the Russian annexation of Crimea.

The question of recognition has real consequences for the citizens of the area in question. In the Baltic case, in the immediate aftermath of the war, this issue determined the fate of approximately one million Balts who had fled their homes before the second arrival of the Soviet army. These were men and women whose return the Soviets demanded of the West, on the basis that they were Soviet citizens. The West refused on the basis of their non-recognition. Unlike Ukrainian and Belorussian displaced persons, who were forcibly repatriated, the Balts were given a choice. Only a small handful chose to return. Many have also fled Crimea, primarily Tatars, but for them, the question of non-recognition differs compared to the Balts. Tatars remain Ukrainian citizens, and Ukraine itself still exists although they have yet again been forcibly evicted by Russia from their homeland.

Beyond this immediate effect, the non-recognition of the Baltic annexation also gradually influenced Soviet attitudes. This policy weighed surprisingly heavily on the minds of the Soviet leadership and remained a constantly sensitive point. At times, the Soviet Union tried to condition other events on recognition, such as requiring that a Papal visit to the Soviet Union be preceded by recognition of Soviet sovereignty over the Baltic states. Western recognition had been a significant Soviet policy goal since 1940 and throughout the Cold War. Continuous Western refusal to recognize the Soviet annexation and propensity to denounce it throughout the Cold War left Soviet decision-makers feeling insecure in their de facto possession of the Baltic states. Outside of diplomatic gambits to trick the West into recognizing the annexation, however, it is unclear how much this insecurity may or may not have affected Soviet decision-making, even in the era of perestroika and glasnost. It was, however, a source of a constant encouragement for the Balts themselves, especially as they took the fateful steps to free themselves in the latter half of the 1980s.

Finally, and ironically, despite the long-sustained policy of non-recognition, when the Soviet Union finally fell apart, some Western countries, most prominently the United States, were actually slow to recognize the renascent Baltic states. Once the Baltic states reemerged, the United States initially shied away in favor of maintaining an intact Soviet Union which could then act as the United States’ partner on the international stage.

The similarities between the Baltic and Crimean cases are clear. Both were illegal, armed annexations made by Russia in the face of no local armed resistance at a time when the West was focusing on a much different strategic problem. Concurrently, Russia sought to leverage its role as a third party to that problem to gain recognition of its actions. Numerous Western public figures—academics and politicians—sided with Russia over the West in each case as well.

Baltic-Crimea Differences

It is also important to acknowledge the differences between the Baltic and Crimean cases, as these may influence the effects of a policy of non-recognition. Ukraine was not wiped off the map, unlike the Baltic states. The offense is, in a sense, smaller in 2014 than in 1940. The surviving overseas representatives of the Baltic states had to fight to preserve the legal continuity of their respective states for fifty years. The Ukrainian polity does not face such an existential problem.

Military base at Perevalne during the 2014 Crimean crisis. (Source: Anton Holoborodko/Ex.ua)

Moreover, Putin has sought to raise Crimea’s profile in the Russian psyche, suggesting that it was a holy place for Russian history, religiosity, and culture—Russia’s Temple Mount. This attempt at cultural branding has been unsuccessful so far, given that Kyiv, not Muscovy, was the original seat of Slavic religion and culture; nevertheless, it highlights the apparent importance with which the Kremlin views Crimea. The Baltic states had never been ancient Slavic lands or held in such high public esteem by the Soviet leadership, a factor which may have made their breakaway easier to bear. However, this lack of mythical connection was perhaps counterbalanced by the Baltic states’ status as the Soviet Union’s own border with the West, as well as with the Russian perception that the Baltic states were still culturally Western even during the Cold War.

Lasting Effects?

Will non-recognition of the Russian annexation of Crimea have the same effect as the past policy of non-recognition of the Soviet annexation of the Baltic states? The problem with analogies concerning policy issues is the lack of information, as details of the future are fundamentally unknowable. Baltic non-recognition lasted fifty years, whereas, at the time of writing, the policy of not recognizing the annexation of Crimea has yet to enjoy its third birthday. Effects generated by a policy of non-recognition might only be felt one, two, or even more generations into the future; therefore, one may only speculate on the potential consequences.

Even after many generations, any effects derived from such a policy will always be soft—without any coercive or compellent power whatsoever. This is unavoidable. But among such soft effects are important legal and emotional considerations, such as a ready-made basis for reintegration of the region, while the cost of maintaining such a policy is commensurately low. World history does demonstrate that strong national feelings towards certain patches of land can last for not just a few generations, but for centuries or even millennia.

In the end, Russia is hardly likely to alter its behavior because of recognition or non-recognition of the annexation of Crimea. One may anticipate that policy effects will only finally be felt if a future analogous to the fall of the Soviet Union comes. A sustained policy of non-recognition may, in such circumstances, embolden Ukraine to retake what was once its own. At the same time, the West might once again be hesitant about such a move despite having sustained non-recognition, in favor of stability over justice. In the meantime, there are few disadvantages to maintaining the policy of non-recognition, which additionally supports the established world order which has been so relatively advantageous to the West over the past seventy years. If the Trump administration is serious about restoring relations with Russia, it should still maintain non-recognition as a politically low cost option because it does not impinge on Russia in real terms, but still leaves the United States on the right side of justice and open to potential countervailing future developments.

About the author:
*Lukas Milevski is a Baltic Sea Fellow at the Eurasia Program. He is a visiting lecturer on Grand Strategy at Leiden University. He was Smith Richardson Strategy and Policy Fellow 2015-16, researching and writing a manuscript on contemporary Baltic defense from a strategic and historic perspective at the Changing Character of War program at the University of Oxford.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

By Theodoros Papadopoulos

The Trump administration’s first special operations attack certainly didn’t go as hoped. On the night of January 28, in a village in central Yemen, the first raid authorized by the new president allegedly killed 14 Al-Qaeda fighters, at least 11 women and children, and one US commando. In addition to causing the deaths of civilians and a member of the US military, it’s questionable if the attack even achieved its stated objective. While the raid succeeded in killing its target, Abdel Raouef Dhahab, a suspected leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), it might well cause unintended consequences. Farea Muslimi, chair of the Sanaa Center for Strategic Studies, claimed that his death will merely stoke anti-US feelings, since “he is a tribal sheikh and has nothing to do with AQAP.”

It’s well known that the US’ history of killing civilians only plays into the hands of the terrorists they are supposedly targeting. And Trump’s statements that he believes torture works, his comments that he might revive CIA-operated “black site” prisons, and his attempts to ban visitors from seven majority-Muslim countries, are likely to backfire, giving terrorists more motivation to attack US targets.

However, one of the most insidious holes in US counterterrorism policy is likely to be Djibouti, the very base that serves as a launch pad for the administration’s war on terror in Yemen and East Africa. Despite Trump’s oft-repeated quip that he would take out the families of terrorist suspects – a clear infringement of the Geneva Convention that amounts to nothing less than a war crime – there is one black swan event that could make him rethink the entire drone program: China’s moves inside Djibouti. How the former real estate mogul negotiates this relationship will have drastic consequences for America’s relations with other small and medium countries that are nevertheless important for national security.

Djibouti, a barren, forgotten “sandlot” of a country roughly the size of New Jersey, is the host of America’s only bricks and mortar base in Africa. Camp Lemonnier, leased for $60 million per year, houses 4,500 troops and contractors who lead missions against Al-Shabab in Somalia and AQAP. The US military bought the base from the French soon after 9/11, seizing on its strategic potential. They selected Djibouti for its relative stability in a volatile region and for its position, close to both East Africa and the Arabian Peninsula. Since then, other powers have taken note of Djibouti’s increasingly critical placement. The country also hosts Japan’s only overseas base, Spanish and German anti-piracy soldiers, and Saudi Arabia is set to start building its own installation as well.

Despite Djibouti’s undeniably choice location, US officials might have made a deal with the devil in choosing to partner with such a government. Ismail Omar Guelleh, the four-term president that rules with impunity over this pin sized country, is now one of China’s closest allies. The Middle Kingdom is the biggest investor in the East African nation, prompting the Djiboutian finance minister, Ilyas Moussa Dawaleh, to say that relations with China are “much more important than any other long-standing partner.”

What’s more, Beijing decided to break with decades of foreign policy restraint and open its first foreign military base here. In 2015, the US was reportedly ordered to vacate a supply base in the Obock region so that it could be turned over to the Chinese. Guelleh has also attempted to give Beijing a concession over its key port, which would force the US military to run key supplies through a Chinese-run zone.

It’s highly unlikely that the new US administration will look kindly on Djibouti’s efforts to play both sides while still receiving injections of US funds. Trump himself has sharply questioned the value of foreign aid during his campaign, saying the US should stop sending such funds to “countries that hate us.” As a candidate, he said little to nothing about US policy in Africa, only recently breaking the silence to ask State Department staff a series of questions that only further demonstrated his skepticism about aid to the continent.

When considering Trump’s hostile stance towards China, it’s not impossible to see the White House deciding to take a step back and scaling down its drone wars in East Africa while the relationship with Djibouti is reassessed. Were Camp Lemonnier compromised by Chinese counterespionage – as the US ambassador there worried – the short-fused Trump would likely take drastic action and simply move the base or start a proxy war with Beijing.

And therein lies the rub: while many analysts worry about US alliances with other G20 members (as the ruckus over the call with the Australian Prime Minister showed), some forget just how dependent Washington is on a network of small, rarely-mentioned countries that act as its “unsinkable aircraft carriers.” Djibouti is just one example out of many: Lithuania, Austria, and Greece hosted CIA black sites and participated in the “extraordinary rendition program,” Romania boasts the American missile defense shield, and Kuwait has no less than four camps used by US forces. Each of these countries has a special interest in working with the Trump White House, but their US allegiances should never be taken for granted. Greece has been flirting with Russia, the Austrians are deeply skeptical of the U.S., and Kuwait has historically been one of Iran’s closest allies.

Moving forward, it’s important to take note of these undercurrents streaming across the global landscape. America’s approximately 800 military bases spread across more than 70 countries is perhaps the biggest indicator of the sheer size and unparalleled reach of the US military. Both the special ops program and the drone program are utterly dependent on these installations and it remains to be seen how Trump will navigate through these rocky waters.

This article was published at Geopolitical Monitor.com

Neither President Donald Trump, nor his competitor, Hillary Clinton, are known for their devoutness, but unlike the loser, Trump is a reliable friend to people of faith. That is exactly why he is coming under fire from militant secularists. The latest hit job comes courtesy of the Center for American Progress.

John Podesta founded the organization and George Soros funds it. They make quite a pair. In the Wikileaks email exchanges, Podesta was caught bragging about his efforts to subvert the Catholic Church. Soros, as anyone who has looked at the Catholic League’s website knows, has a long record of lavishly giving to anti-Catholic groups. So it is hardly surprising that one of their own, Claire Markham, would rip Trump for being religion-friendly.

Markham’s first salvo is so obtuse that it makes one wonder how low the hiring bar has fallen at the Center for American Progress. She accuses the Trump administration of wanting to “redefine religious liberty to only people who share its vision of faith.” Vision of faith? No one save a dunce speaks that way. The administration has no “vision of faith,” but it is committed to the defense of religious liberty, something Podesta and Soros have worked to undermine.

Repeating the lie that is so popular among Trump’s critics, Markham decries his “Muslim ban.” But there is no ban—only select Muslim-run nations with a history of sponsoring terrorism (as determined by the Obama administration) are under a temporary ban.

Markham makes a big deal out of the White House statement on the Holocaust that did not specifically mention Jews. This political attack reflects the desire to tag Trump with being unfriendly to every religion, save Christianity. Ironically, it is not Trump or his staff who has been tagged for being an anti-Semite—it is employees at the Center for American Progress.

Trump was also criticized for his desire to repeal the Johnson Amendment, the IRS rule that limits tax-exempt organizations, such as churches, from involvement in the political process. While there are legitimate grounds to question what a repeal might mean, the issue raised by Markham about a “dark money loophole for political donations” is pure demagoguery. Has anyone at the Podesta-Soros organization complained how this has affected the teachers unions and the Democratic Party?

What upsets Markham most is what Trump might do: He might issue an executive order protecting religious liberty. The draft that has circulated is magnificent, notwithstanding the need to do some tweaking. It clearly represents a commitment to expand the reach of religious rights, insulating religious individuals and institutions from being encroached upon by government. Astonishingly, Markham criticizes the draft for its “narrow view of religious liberty.” That’s Orwellian doublespeak. It is precisely because it has a broad view that she is going ballistic.

Trump’s dedication to religious liberty stands in stark relief to the assault on this First Amendment right by the Obama administration. Religious leaders have a moral obligation to support him in these efforts.

Contact Claire Markham: cmarkham@americanprogress.org

Resistance is the new watch word for millions of people who oppose Donald Trump and his administration. This is a positive development against a president who made such open appeals to white American supremacy and the 21^st century iterations of manifest destiny.

His announcement of a travel ban directed at citizens of seven mostly Muslim nations rekindled outrage and denunciation from millions of people around the country. Those protests were righteous and needed to take place. What they did not need was the presence of Democratic politicians who are still committed to imperialism and neoliberalism and to their failed policies which brought Trump to the presidency. It is the Democrats who must be resisted first. If not this nascent movement will be just the latest in a long line of failure for the left. The left must create the political crisis necessary to end not just Trumpism but all of the isms that are ruining the lives of millions of people.

Democratic Senate leader Charles Schumer shed tears for stranded refugees but fully supported the invasion and occupation of Iraq, one of the nations targeted by the travel ban. Schumer is also one of the key spokespersons for Israel’s occupation of Palestine and endless massacres in Gaza. Cory Booker is an opportunist and a corporate hooker who also quickly stepped into that spotlight. Elizabeth Warren may ask tough questions at confirmation hearings, but invariable votes to approve Trump’s nominees. They and their colleagues can always be counted on to approve of American imperialism.

The debacle that brought Trump to the presidency has been moving in slow motion for years. It was just a matter of time before the Democrats would lose this office as they had done with the House, the Senate, and most state legislatures. They have no desire to move away from their corporate sugar daddies, instead preferring to devolve into pretense, which was obvious to the voters who wouldn’t stand with Hillary Clinton.

The unprincipled scoundrels of that party have done everything except take responsibility for years of treachery. They did nothing to fight against the gerrymandering which gave the Republicans safe seats all over the country. They didn’t care about Republican triumphs in Wisconsin which made the country safe for union busting. They don’t care about the anti-abortion laws that have been passed in state after state. The only way to fight what they claim they don’t want would be to engage and energize their voters, but they have no interest in doing that. Their modus operandi is inherently hostile to the interests of the masses. The Democrats were content to hold the presidency and make deals with Republicans and fool people into thinking they had done their best.

They continue to make excuses for Hillary Clinton’s defeat while simultaneously pushing anti-Russian propaganda. They ratchet up the call for war while also diverting attention from their own failures. Trump is no better as he engages in threats against China and Iran. Trump can’t peel Russia away from its alliance with those countries. They are allied precisely because of American aggression and they won’t be fooled by the newest criminal in the White House. The Democrats and Republicans may continue to wreak havoc around the world, but none of their mad dreams will come to fruition.

They all must be rejected. It may be true that Trump will pass national right to work legislation but the Democrats made that possible. They could have passed card check and made it easier for workers to organize. They could have raised the minimum wage. They didn’t do what Democrats wanted them to do and have legitimized all of Trump’s plans that they now say would be so terrible.

There can be no resistance to Trump which includes the Democratic Party. The Democrats are the obstacle to justice at home and peace abroad. Democrats are not on the left and they can’t be trusted to bring about the fundamental changes needed at this critical time in history.

This is no time for fear or pandering to discredited lesser evilism. This is not the time to discuss which of the Democrats is the best candidate for 2020. This is a moment to reject the duopoly and fight for something completely new.

Words like resistance are powerful and fulfill the human need to think well of oneself. But they are also dangerous for the same reason. At this moment everyone wants to think they are resisting because they wear a pink hat or protest a travel ban at the airport. But if these same people spend time wondering if they should back Cory Booker of Elizabeth Warren in 2020 or ponder who should run the Democratic National Committee they aren’t resisting anything. Booker and Warren don’t oppose imperialism or the carceral state and they don’t really want to fight the Republicans that badly. That is because both wings of the duopoly are on the same team. If both aren’t resisted the people will continue to be crushed. The only question is whether Democrats or Republicans will do the crushing.

By Samuel Gregg, D.Phil*

Times are tough for free trade — the toughest since the first era of globalization came to a shuddering halt with the outbreak of war in 1914 and tariffs swept the world after 1918.

Across the planet, economic nationalism is on the march. Faith in economic globalization’s benefits is waning throughout the West. Nothing symbolizes this more than Donald Trump’s election to the American presidency.

If the case for free trade is to have a future, it requires a radical rethink. And part of that makeover is going to involve shedding something that only damages the cause of free trade. This is its association with what’s often called “Davos Man.”

No Borders, No Roots

Devised by the late political scientist Samuel Huntington, the term Davos Man originally referred to those political, cultural, and economic leaders from around the globe who gather annually at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

According to Huntington, Davos Man eschews any loyalty to nation and views patriotism as a quaint sentiment. For Davos Man, these are primeval attachments which need to be dispensed with.

Davos Man isn’t limited to business titans, heads of multinational corporations, and people who work in financial markets. He also takes the form of transnational officials who work in institutions such as the United Nations or the European Commission in Brussels as well as people employed by international NGOs. Nor will anyone be surprised to learn that Davos Man enjoys the company of actors and celebrities.

To the extent Davos Man has a moral creed, it’s a mélange of social liberalism, environmentalism, and a new order of a borderless world. Religion is seen as, at best, potentially useful at providing poverty relief. At worst, religion is considered the refuge of fanatics and anyone stupid enough to be skeptical of gender ideology and techno-utopianism.

As for Brexit and Trump’s election as president, Davos Man is aghast at the parochialism and ignorance of anyone who voted in favor of either of these supposed calamities.

Of course, much of Davos Man is a parody. Not everyone who works at the UN or a hedge fund is a soulless globalist. While many of them believe that free markets are vastly preferable to protectionism, they’re also proud of their country, involved in their local community, and regard aspirations of world government as a dangerous illusion.

Still, there’s enough truth to Davos Man to make his association with free trade a major handicap to the case for an open global economy.

It’s one thing for people to accept, for example, that for all the trade-offs associated with free trade, the long-term benefits are in the national interest. It’s quite another to be treated with condescension by people who seem utterly unaware that economic globalization has social, economic and psychological costs, and who regard anyone questioning the notion of a borderless, nation-free world as a bigoted Neanderthal.

Reframing Free Trade Arguments

So what can free traders do to put distance between themselves and the agenda and culture associated with Davos Man?

One positive step would be to acknowledge publicly that opening up markets brings with it real disruption that not everyone is well-equipped to cope with. The 56 year-old manufacturing worker who loses his job because of automation or foreign competition can’t just pick up and move to Silicon Valley to find a tech job.

Second, free traders should stop making arguments which involve endlessly citing graphs and economic data produced by international institutions and statistical agencies. The economic facts about how free trade reduces poverty, lowers prices, facilitates the spread of technology etc., aren’t going to change. But they clearly haven’t persuaded millions of free trade’s merits.

Data matters because it allows us to compare some of the measureable effects of free trade versus protectionism. But excessive reliance upon this type of information can give the impression that free traders are more concerned about statistics than actual people.

Global growth numbers simply don’t mean much to people worried about whether the bank is going to foreclose on their business loan tomorrow. By contrast, talking about the export opportunities that free trade creates for small and medium-size businesses is far more compelling.

Third, free traders need to ditch the rhetoric of a “new global order” or “new world order.” More people may be more open to free trade arguments if they could be sure that it didn’t imply handing over national sovereignty to the likes of European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker — a man who once described borders as “the worst invention ever.”

Fourth, free traders should point out that many Davos-types are not, deep-down, enthusiastic about genuinely free trade. One reason why many people attend Davos-like summits is to network, lobby, and stitch-up deals. That includes trade deals, many of which involve writing provisions into trade agreements that protect and promote their interests rather than advance free trade.

In short, free traders need to get smarter about making their pitch to non-elites and recognizing that their association with transnational globalists has played a major role in putting free trade in a defensive position.

That’s going to require humility on the part of those free traders who already spend way too much time associating with government officials, corporate boards, transnational agencies, and any number of politically-correct causes. If the case for free trade isn’t quickly transformed into a “free trade for the people” argument, the rise of economic nationalism could take decades to reverse.

This article first appeared on The Stream on February 3, 2017.

About the author:
*Dr. Samuel Gregg is director of research at the Acton Institute. He has written and spoken extensively on questions of political economy, economic history, ethics in finance, and natural law theory. He has an MA in political philosophy from the University of Melbourne, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree in moral philosophy and political economy from the University of Oxford.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

By Gary Galles*

From a small pilot program created by John F. Kennedy’s first executive order in 1961, the food stamp program (now called the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP) has grown to be the largest federal food assistance program. However, there have always been major questions about whether the hunger and nutrition goals of the program justify its design.

A good way to see the logic of SNAP supporters is to ask, “Why give poor people food stamps rather than money?” Some fear that low income recipients may “waste” the money for some other goods than food, and want to preclude that possibility. Agricultural and grocery interests piggy-back on the belief that food stamps will increase food demand more than giving recipients money, which promises them higher sales and profits. Politicians do the same, because they can assert greater effectiveness at reducing hunger with the funds.

Unfortunately, a major problem with that shared understanding is that money is fungible. A person can redirect money put to ones use to any other use as he or she chooses.

Consider a numerical example. The average family SNAP benefit was recently reported as $256. But the vast majority of eligible families already spend more than that on food. Say that a family already spending $400 per month on food received $256 in SNAP benefits. Would it all go to food purchases? That would be very unlikely. In fact, it is possible that no SNAP dollars would be used to expand food purchases. A recipient who wanted to spend more on anything other than food, from alcohol to child care, could simply replace $256 in cash food purchases they are already making with SNAP resources, freeing up $256 in cash for whatever purpose the recipient wishes, just as if they were given cash directly.

Consequently, for the vast number of recipients, SNAP accomplishes the same thing as a cash program, except for requiring substantially higher administration costs. But that means the primary arguments for food stamps rest on a major analytical error.

That error is masked by the fact that SNAP benefits increase the effective incomes of recipients (by $256 a month in the example above). Since estimates of consumer behavior suggest that an increase of $1 of income would tend to increase food purchases by about 20 cents, the likely effect of an effective $256 increase in income would be just over $51 in added food purchases, with the rest going to other uses. However, SNAP supporters can then claim success in increasing low-income families’ food purchases, when the exact same result would have occurred with cash assistance.

There are some low-income recipients, however, who are forced to buy more food than they would choose by the food stamp program (their SNAP allotment exceeds what they would have spent on food, even if they received the benefits as cash). These are disproportionately low-low-income families, because, with more limited incomes, they would buy less food, and they would get larger SNAP allotments. But while they can be pointed to as a greater success in inducing more food purchases, we must realize that to the extent food stamps increase food consumption compared to giving recipients money, they do so at the expense of other goods recipients judge to be even more important. And given the tight constraints on their consumption of almost everything, it is unsurprising that there is little evidence that poor families waste large amounts of income.

Despite SNAP’s $70-some billion annual price tag, backed by logically confused support and misleading evidence of increased food purchases, what does it do about hunger and nutrition, its main targets? After all, as Senator Hubert Humphrey claimed in a hearing over four decades ago, “The food stamp program plays a very critical role in enabling millions of low-income families to have a better diet.” Unfortunately, a 2010 GAO report concluded that, “the literature is inconclusive regarding whether SNAP alleviates hunger and nutrition in low-income households.” In other words, we get very little nutrition bang for a great many bucks.

Nutrition and hunger advocates have noticed SNAP’s limited effectiveness in those dimensions and advocated changes in the system. However, despite their understanding that SNAP achieves far less than proponents claim, their suggested “reforms” also fail to incorporate a recognition of the fungibility of money.

This was made clear in a January 14 New York Times article by Anahad O’Connor, titled, “In the Shopping Cart of a Food Stamp Household: Lots of Soda.” It was triggered by a November 2016 USDA report comparing the types of food bought by SNAP participants with those of non-participants. Attention was focused on three findings: for the SNAP recipients, soft drinks accounted for 5% of food purchases, “sweetened beverages” accounted for 9.3%, and a broad category of “junk foods,” including sweetened beverages, desserts, salty snacks, candy and sugar accounted for 22.6%.

Nutrition and hunger advocates jumped on those numbers as apocalyptic, even though the USDA study itself cited national survey data showing “food purchases, consumption patterns, and dietary outcomes among SNAP participants and higher income households are more similar than different,” echoed by their study results that non-SNAP consumers spent 4% rather than 5% on soft drinks, 7.1% rather than 9.3% on sweetened beverages, and 20% rather than 22.6% on junk foods. NYU professor Marion Nestle concluded they meant SNAP was “a multi-billion-dollar taxpayer subsidy of the soda industry.” David Ludwig, of Boston Children’s Hospital, concluded that “let’s not use government benefits to pay for foods that are demonstrably going to undermine public health.”

A reform such advocates, along with several city and state governments, commonly endorse is to ban purchases of sweetened sodas from SNAP eligibility. Others want to expand the ban to all sweetened drinks or all junk food. To date, such proposals have not gotten USDA approval, but many are trying to leverage the latest study findings into permission.

Reconsider our family already spending $400 per month on food, and then getting $256 in SNAP benefits. The percentages for those “unwelcome” categories would increase soda spending from $20 to $32.80, sweetened beverage spending from $37.20 to $61.01, and junk food spending from $90.40 to $148.26. The consequence is that even exempting the broadest category, SNAP’s effect would still be the same as giving cash. $250 in allowed food (now paid for with SNAP benefits rather than cash) plus $148.26 in disallowed food (still paid for in cash) is less than the $400 cash previously spent on food. Incorporating the fungibility of money, the $256 in SNAP benefits still gives the family $256 more to spend any way it wants, despite the restriction.

For years, food stamps have been promoted with logically invalid arguments. Ignoring the fungibility of money has been an important component. SNAP supporters ignore the fungibility of money to overstate the increases in food consumption produced by SNAP, which also overstates the stimulative effect on agriculture and grocery interests (not to mention ignoring that the taxes imposed on others to fund SNAP will decrease their similar purchases). Further, any food consumption increases come at the expense of other consumption that consumers deem even more valuable. When we look beyond food purchases to effects on hunger and nutrition, however, clear benefits cannot be conclusively demonstrated. That justifies criticism of SNAP. Unfortunately, many critics make a similar mistake when they want “reforms” that would exclude unwelcome food from the program that will similarly leave the results essentially the same as if recipients received cash (except for much higher administrative costs, which would reduce the actual benefits received for a given program budget, harming recipients).

Money’s fungibility undermines rationales for current SNAP policy, as well as proposed SNAP reforms. But it also undermines intended or promised effects of policies in several other areas, including housing subsidies, heating subsidies, bond financing of construction, state lotteries with proceeds dedicated to education, and foreign aid. Further, in a broader sense, such common failures to understand a very simple characteristic of money across many areas provide one more gaping set of holes in any trust that our “public servants” are expert enough to make us better off than we would make ourselves with our own resources.

About the author:
*Gary M. Galles is a professor of economics at Pepperdine University. He is the author of The Apostle of Peace: The Radical Mind of Leonard Read.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Alexander Murray*

On February 4, the UN Security Council (UNSC) agreed to remove Hezb-e-Islami-e-Gulbuddin (HIG) power-broker and former Afghan Prime Minister, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, from its international sanctions list. Having negotiated a truce with HIG and settled on the peaceful terms of Hekmatyar’s reintegration into Afghan civil society, the government of President Ashraf Ghani is sure to welcome the news.

This action by the UNSC is precisely what they had requested nearly two months ago. This sudden development, as I have previously warned, should be met with great skepticism not only for the regional actors involved, but also concerning the ever changing role of Russia.

The current situation regarding Russia and Hekmatyar is an abrupt change to what was, until now, long standing distrust and animosity. Russia has clearly given up on these sentiments in order to combat what it sees as a growing threat by Daesh in Central Asia, forge stronger regional ties with Pakistan and consequently China, and expand its sphere of influence in what may be a waning space of former American influence. All of this ensures Russian security, a manageable amount of regional instability, and the maintenance of Russian energy companies’ regional pre-eminence.

Hekmatyar’s Russian Role

Russian foreign policy circles do not hold Gulbuddin Hekmatyar in high regard. He has consistently been regarded as a man who was understood to be actively hostile toward Russia, Pakistani supported, and American legitimated. The current change in Russian sentiments pertaining to Hekmatyar should not be seen as a shift to embrace, but rather a prioritization of dealing with the threat of Daesh. Almost none of the changes pertaining to Hekmatyar and HIG have been covered by major Russian news outlets. Such news would not sit well with the Russian population, as they are most likely unaware of how Hekmatyar no longer fills two of the three criteria aforementioned.

The nasty guerilla war waged by Hekmatyar against the Soviets has passed. Hekmatyar, according to Afghan sources, does not currently have any real capacity to engage in destabilizing Afghan security. Since the 1990s, American support for Hekmatyar via the Pakistani ISI has waned significantly. Given his propensity to unrealistically seek absolute power, America withdrew its support allowing the Taliban to fill a vacuum that international peace building initiatives could not. Russia recognizes that Hekmatyar’s real power lacks any destabilizing capacity, and that he is no longer an American stooge.

What Hekmatyar may still have, however, are lasting points of influence within the Pakistani security state, and most likely, Russia recognizes this. Once a foe, Hekmatyar may ultimately serve Russian aims in the region as a pawn in bringing Pakistan (another shifting former American ally) into its long term regional goals. Pakistan is already at the beck and call of China. To unite Pakistan, China, and Russia in this area would certainly serve Moscow well.

The Russian Peacemaker

Moscow has recently witnessed a change in Afghan power dynamics. There is a rising tide of isolationist sentiment in the United States (the preeminent Afghan security guarantor) and a well justified fear of growing ISIS sentiment in Afghanistan as the security situation managed by President Ghani deteriorates. Moscow has also appropriately realized its regional position as a legitimate Middle East peace broker given its action in Syria and talks with the Afghan Taliban. Even prior to these instances, Russia has conducted meetings with high level elements of the Afghan Taliban. Compounding each of these concerns is Russian energy and the Central Asian market, both of which Moscow demands control.

By removing sanctions on Hekmatyar, Moscow has indicated a willingness to work with the government of President Ghani. More than likely, this will be utilized as an act of good faith to begin Russian lead efforts to bring the Taliban into the fold. Hopefully, such an act would be of a non-violent political nature working with, rather than against the Ghani government. Regardless, Russia seeks to empower Taliban elements for the reasons similar to that of Pakistan. The Taliban remain destabilizing in strictly a domestic capacity. The removal of Daesh is of high priority to the Afghan Taliban and this action satisfies the Pakistani and Russian goals of removing them as a greater regional threat.

Whether or not security returns to Afghanistan is of little concern. Either Russia will claim victorious credit for its struggle against Afghan elements of Daesh or point to the failed policies of previous American administrations for the Taliban’s continued prominence in determining Afghan security. The former scenario assures Russia of its domestic security and elevates Moscow on the international stage, while the latter serves to denigrate the United States’ foreign policy without alienating the ill-informed Trump administration. Russian peace is the only peace Moscow seeks to make.

Central Asian Economics

While little regarding Hekmatyar actually pertains to Central Asian economics, this area of the world returning firmly into the Russian sphere of influence does. Since 2008, Russian exports to Asia have seen growth of nearly 150%. Market destabilization of the Central Asian Republics (CARs) plays directly into Russian economic goals. So long as a limited amount of domestic CAR insecurity exists, Soviet era infrastructure lines retain their primacy.

Pipeline development spearheaded by Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan has been in a state of disarray since their inception as a result of regional insecurity. As a result of new pipelines to China, only recently has there been an increase of CAR exports to countries other than Russia. In this time, Chinese energy consumption has risen steadily. It can be said that CPEC development is a further indication of this. While Daesh may threaten Russia, unlike the Afghan central government, the Taliban only serve to threaten the CARs. A removal of Daesh and restoration of the Taliban play a significant role in maintaining Russian pre-eminence in the Central Asian “Great Game” of energy trade.

Warning Signs

Russia has now allowed Hekmatyar the return he has desired, much to the Russian people’s ignorance and dismay. Moving forward, policy makers should continue to support the government of President Ghani if social liberalism, economic development, and regional security are of concern. Those same policy makers should be wary of further cosiness between Russia, Pakistan, and the Taliban. Even today, there has been an uptick in rhetoric from Moscow extolling its commitment to Afghan security.

What role Hekmatyar plays in the Afghan political scene may also indicate changes to Af-Pak relations. A man well versed in regional power balancing, President Ghani has moved back and forth from commitments to Islamabad toward engaging with Delhi. Given this propensity to oscillate between the two regional powers, look for relations with Islamabad to improve.

Eliminating Daesh from the Afghan political scene would benefit all regional players, however a return to Taliban based insecurity will only benefit Russia and Pakistan. If the Taliban is to be reintegrated into Afghan governing models, it should occur in a very limited capacity, ensuring the primacy of the elected government in Kabul. Ideally they would fill a role similar to that I have suggested of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. It is adamant that the world community continue to view Kabul as the sole legitimate national government of Afghanistan and never provide the Taliban with such a comparison. Following this path will ensure the continued growth of Afghanistan’s democratic institutions.

*The author is a Contributing Researcher and Author, South Asia Analysis Group

Territorial sea disputes can be heated up or cooled off at will or when other political issues require attention. We are currently in a “heating up” stage, though a 2002 Phnom Penh Declaration of Conduct of Parties in South China Sea calls for trust, restraint, and settlement by juridical means. Today, world citizens call for calm and a policy of mediation and arbitration before current tensions lead to ever-greater divisions.

By Rene Wadlow*

The Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying replied on 24 January 2017 to statements of the new US President on US interests in the South China Sea delimitation issues saying “China is firm in safeguarding our rights and interest in the South China Sea… China has indisputable sovereignty over the South China Sea islands and their adjacent waters. The United States is not a party to the South China Sea issue.” Her heated statement came in response to a 23 January statement of White House spokesman Sean Spicer who had said “If those islands are, in fact, in international waters and not part of China proper, we’ll make sure we defend international interests from being taken over by one country.”

The South China Sea islands delimitations have been an issue for some time and can be the source of increasing tensions. Therefore, it is useful to look at the Law of the Sea Convention and the way that national claims have come to dominate what my friend John Logue, then Director of Villanova University Common Heritage Institute called “the Law of the Seize.” What started out in November 1967 with a General Assembly presentation by Ambassador Arvid Pardo of Malta as a call to establish a new political and legal regime for the ocean space ended in December 1982 with a draft convention. It was a mixed bag of successes and disappointments, but the Convention on the Law of the Sea has now been ratified by 162 states but not by the United States and certain other industrialized states.

Ambassador Pardo’s phrase ‘the common heritage of mankind’ meant more than a global commons, open to all to exploit. It implied the establishment of rules by which exploitation of a part of the earth’s resources were to be governed, and of institutions capable of acting on behalf of mankind as a whole. For Pardo, the ‘common heritage of mankind’ was to lead to the transformation of world politics.[1]

For world citizens, the quality of the Law of the Sea Convention was of particular significance. The Convention tried to structure what had been largely customary international law and state practice into a legal comprehensive treaty. The Convention was an effort to formulate a written constitution for the world’s oceans. It was perhaps the most comprehensive legislative attempt in the annals of international law. The Convention specified that the greater part of the oceans was considered res communitis, a global common beyond national ownership, although the diplomats accepted an extension of national sovereignty from three to 12 miles from the coast line and a new concept of a 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ).

However, the UN Law of the Sea Conference was first and foremost a political conference with over 160 states participating. From the outset of the conference, it was agreed that the convention had to be drafted by consensus in order to create a political and legal system for the oceans acceptable to all − to manage what Arvid Pardo had called ‘the common heritage of mankind’. During the negotiations, there were groupings that cut across the Cold War divisions of the times, especially within a group called “the landlocked and geographically disadvantaged countries.” There were also informal groups of persons who acted in a private capacity, a mixture of NGO representatives, legal scholars, and business corporation representatives who prepared suggestions on many of the issues of the conference.[2]

Although the negotiations were carried out by the representatives of governments, all considered to be equal, there were a number of key individuals who through their personality, vision, negotiating skills, and drive played roles well beyond the status in world politics of their States. Thus, the President of the conference, Hamilton Shirley Amerasinghe of Sri Lanka was an outstanding leader, so much so, that when there was a change in government in Sri Lanka and Amerasingh was replaced as Ambassador to the UN, it was decided, after heated debates, that he should continue as President of the conference − the only case of a private citizen directing a UN conference. Unfortunately, he died in 1980 before the conference ended so he did not see the fulfillment of his efforts. He was replaced as President by a man who had already played a key role as chair of a working group, the very able Tommy Koh of Singapore. Paul Engo of Cameroon, chair of a different working group, was the dynamic voice of Africa, while Jens Evensen of Norway was the most active and constructive leader among European and North American diplomats.

The conference was, in many ways, a race against time as unilateral measures by individual states were breaking old conventional rules, making ocean practices a mixed pattern of national legislation, and customary international law. Unilateral legislation was being passed concerning the two key issues of the conference: national sovereignty beyond the shore line and deep sea mineral mining. South American states were claiming a 200-mile limit beyond the shore line, and the US Congress had passed legislation to allow US corporations to mine mineral resources on the sea bed, in particular manganese nodules.[3]

The forces of nationalism were too strong to be swayed by Pardo’s appeals to international cooperation and technocratic rationality. Instead the coastal states, developed and developing alike, saw in the newly available ocean areas an unexpected windfall, offering the prospect of a previously unimagined extension of their natural resource base through the creation of a 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone. The economic goal of national autonomy had prevailed over the interests in global cooperation, setting in motion the processes of establishing vast national enclosures of offshore areas, especially those enclosures consonant with the new Exclusive Economic Zone regime. International cooperation had yielded to national autonomy.

During the conference, there were lengthy discussions concerning the exclusive economic zone of 200 miles around ‘islands’, ‘rocks’, and ‘low-tide elevations’. The distinctions were loosely made, and no one saw that the mining of petroleum around islands would become today an important political issue and a source of international conflict. Conflicts over national sea boundaries are particularly strong in the Pacific Ocean among China, Vietnam, the Philippines, Japan, Taiwan, and Cambodia, with India and Indonesia watching closely. The disputes arise largely because of the claims of waters around small islands as national territory. Most of these island are not permanently inhabited but are claimed as the starting point of “territorial waters”. Originally, the disputes concerned exclusive fishing rights within national territorial zones. Now the issues have become stronger, as it is believed that there are large oil and gas reserves in these areas.[4]

Concerning China’s dispute with Japan (which is also largely true of China’s policy with other Asian countries), Krista Wiegand writes “China’s current strategy is to negotiate with Japan over joint development of natural gas and oil resources outside the disputed zone This seems to be the most rational strategy it can take in the disputes. Rather than dropping its territorial claim, China continues to maintain its claim for sovereignty, while at the same time benefiting from joint development of natural gas resources. By maintaining the territorial claim, China also sustains its ability to confront Japan through diplomatic and militarized conflict when other disputed issues arise”.[5]

Territorial sea disputes can be heated up or cooled off at will or when other political issues require attention. We are currently in a “heating up” stage, though a 2002 Phnom Penh Declaration of Conduct of Parties in South China Sea calls for trust, restraint, and settlement by juridical means. Today, world citizens call for calm and a policy of mediation and arbitration before current tensions lead to ever-greater divisions.

*Rene Wadlow is the President of the Association of World Citizens, an international peace organization with consultative status with ECOSOC, the United Nations organ facilitating international cooperation on and problem-solving in economic and social issues.

Notes

1. See A. Pardo The Common Heritage: Selected Papers on Oceans and World Order, 1967-1974 (Malta University Press, 1975) When a new government came to power in Malta in 1971, Pardo was replaced as Ambassador to the UN. His views were presented during the Law of the Sea negotiations through NGO representatives, in particular Elizabeth Mann Borgese, daughter of the anti-Nazi German author Thomas Mann.
2. For a good picture of the active role that well-informed non governmental representatives played during the eight years of negotiations see: Ralph and Miriam Levering Citizen Action for Global Change: The Neptune Group and the Law of the Sea (Syracuse University Press, 1999) For a lively and detailed analysis of the key issues and the techniques of negotiation by a fellow NGO representative see Roderick Ogley Internationalizing the Seabed (Gower Publishing, 1984)
3. For the world citizen positions that John Logue and I were advocating at the time see: Finn Laursen (Ed.) Toward a New International Marine Order (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1982)Louis B. Sohn, Professor of International Law at Harvard Law School was an outstanding example of an individual scholar. His proposals for dispute settlement largely formed the basis of the dispute mechanisms of the Convention.
4. Douglas M. Johnston and Mark J. Valencia Pacific Ocean Boundary Problems (Martinus Nijhoff Publishers, 1991)
5. Krista R. Wiegand Enduring Territorial Disputes (University of Georgia Press, 2011)

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