One fine day in the late of quarter of 2010, when the whole of the Arab world was totally immersed in harsh and inhuman political absolutism and, almost, lingering in limbo, a young Tunisian university graduate by the name of Bouazizi — turned into fruit street vendor because of staggering youth unemployment — protested the confiscation of his merchandise and wares by local police by pouring kerosene on his body and igniting a match that has by ricochet sparked the Arab uprisings and, most importantly, the dream of democracy, for 350 million Arab people.

Domino effect

Consequently, Arab dictatorships crumbled under the pressure of the youth-led revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, and Yemen and, almost, swept away the military dictatorship of Syria if it were not for the precious helping hand of Iran and Russia. The faltering revolution of Syria, nevertheless, led to thousands of deaths, the destruction of the country and the biggest population exodus since WWII.

This upheaval, with a domino effect, seemed to affect, in appearance, republican regimes only, nevertheless, its tremors shook monarchies, too, if it were not for their immediate action to check the anger and smother it by nimble political moves. Thus, the monarchies of Morocco and Jordan made important reforms that curtailed the monarchs extensive power and brought the Islamists to the government, for the first time, in the case of Morocco. In Bahrain, the uprising of the majority Shiite population almost brought down the Sunni minority government if the Gulf States under the leadership of Saudi Arabia had not intervened swiftly to quell the popular revolution and pushed away the danger. To avoid social unrest, at home, rich Gulf monarchies gave directly substantial cash handouts to the population to buy social peace and stifle any possible political discontent.

Seven years later, the so-called Arab Spring has not brought the much-hoped for democracy, but, instead, it has made substantial changes in the psyche of Arab society and, most importantly, in the balance of power, in the following ways:

1. Empowerment of the people: It has empowered the masses forever and future governments have to put up with this new reality and take it into consideration in political decisions;
2. Demolition of the wall of fear: in the past, the people feared the backlash of the mighty and lethal secret police (mukhabarat) of the governments, now governments fear the people and their vociferous and virulent civil society because thanks to social media they can reach the world and report instantly any wrong doing or breach of human rights;
3. Political activism: growth in political activism which leads, consequently, to political participation, emancipation and freedom.
   Because of all this the governments in place know deep down that they have to be accountable to the people though this does not equate for the time being, at least, with fully-fledged democracy for lack of constitutional checks and balances.

Youth in the vanguard of the uprisings

The Arab uprisings are the diligent work of the Arab millennials, who, armed with their PCs, tablets and smart phones, rallied the masses to topple the dictatorships; one has in mind the endless protest rallies of the Tahrir Square that led to fall of Houssni Moubarek in Egypt.

Thanks to the digital revolution of the third millennium, the Arab youth liberated themselves, duly, from the long-time shackles:

1. Religious conservatism that always considered the young people minors and encouraged them to obey blindly their parents and elders and abide by religious tenets;
2. Tribal allegiance which denies people whatever form of individualism;
3. Patriarchy in which age is seen more rewarding than youth and vigor;
4. Respect of seniority that denies youth any say or any individual initiative within society ruled and regimented by the elder;
5. Rebellion against ruthless established authority, and
6. Social taboos: sex, dress, music and drink.

Thanks to the Internet, the youth were able to date freely, expose their bodies openly in the net, celebrate their charms, criticize politicians and denigrate their behavior, propose alternatives and call for political reform and change.

With time and up-to-date innovations in the social media, they gained in power, willingness to step into action and a predisposition to lead much-wanted change and, consequently, the uprisings occurred.

The Islamists usurped the Arab millennials’ revolutions

It is true that the Arab Spring is the result of the rebellion of the youth against the political gerontocracy in power that was corrupt and absolutist, but the youth in spite of their vigor and drive were not organized politically and lacked, somewhat, political discipline. The Islamists who, joined the uprisings from the word go, usurped the outcome and became to the general public the political alternative.

They owe their astounding success to several reasons, mainly:

1. Political discipline;
2. Proximity to the masses and swift reactivity to their needs;
3. Allegiance to the party equated to allegiance to God;
4. Brainwashing of the general public, mainly among the emasculated poor, that they are God-sent to save them; and
5. Willingness to re-establish past Islamic glory by re-Islamizing society.

As a result, they took power in Tunisia and Egypt through free and democratic elections, flexed their muscles in Libya and imposed severe conditions for the formation of a coalition government, took power in Yemen as Shiite Islamists and engaged in a deadly civil war in Syria, not to forget of course the infamous ongoing tribulations of the anachronistic Islamic State in Iraq and Syria.

The Islamists, in power in Tunisia and Egypt, failed to deliver because they diligently wanted to impose a stringent Islamic code of conduct on the people, as a prelude to the all-out Islamic state, austere and undemocratic. They failed miserably in both countries.

Indeed, in Tunisia, the arrival of Ennahda to power led indirectly to the empowerment and the emboldening of the Salafists, who set out to attack publicly women for not wearing the Hijab and various other symbols of modernity. These events created fear that sent tremors in all parts of society.

Fearing the coming of conservative theocracy to power, worse than the dictatorship of Ben Ali they brought down, the Tunisian people rejected the Islamists in the elections and brought to power the party of Nidaa Tounes, a patchwork of political tendencies, modernist in philosophy but weak in discipline. Since then, the Islamist party Ennahda, seemingly, gave up its Islamist repository, and apparently became secular.

In Egypt, the Ikhwan won massively the legislative and presidential elections, but because of their lack of political experience they were unable to rally under their banner all the Egyptian people. They set out to draft an Islamist constitution curtailing freedom and setting up foundations for a theocracy ignoring the presence of the Copts and secularists in Egyptian society and their needs. Fearing social fracture and consequent economic downslide, the army staged a coup and put one of its generals in power.

Today, Egypt referred to popularly, hitherto, as oumm dounya “the Mother of the World” is no more the leader of the Arab world. It is socially wounded and economically weakened and has serious problems getting up on its feet and regaining its past mobility.

In Yemen the ousting of Ali Saleh from power, pushed the latter in the arms of the Shiites of the North emboldening them to take power in the country with the logistical help of Iran. Frightened by the presence of its Shiite arch enemies at its southern border, Saudi Arabia hurriedly put up an Arab military coalition and started a war to re-conquer the lost land for the Yemeni government. Today Yemen is a moribund and divided country, more than ever and might slide into a state of coma.

In 2011, the end of the rule of Qaddafi, sent millions of people in the streets expressing their boundless joy at the end of dictatorship and looking forward to a bright future, but this dream never materialized, it became a nightmare, instead. The myriad of armed factions are unable to agree on a coalition government, in spite of the relentless efforts of the UN and neighboring countries.

Currently, Libya is in total limbo and the Libyans are regretting the rule of Qaddafi with much bitterness.

Probably, the worst failure of the Arab Spring is Syria. After six years of civil war, financed by Saudi Arabia and encouraged by the West, the Islamists were unable to bring down the dictator Bachar al-Assad who is shouldered militarily and diplomatically by Iran, Hezbollah and Russia. The civil war has caused the destruction of the country, the death of thousands and the flight of millions to Europe and elsewhere. As of today, things are back to square one with Assad still in power.

Blurred view

Today, six years after the Arab uprisings, the Arab world is tormented, fragmented and in total disarray. The revolutions did not bring democracy and, worse; they have made getting bread in many countries difficult, if not to say impossible.

The dream of democracy is marred by the following players and factors:

1. The army which sees in any sudden change and in democracy the loss of its preeminence in the affairs of the country and consequently loss of benefits;
2. The Islamists for whom democracy s a Trojan Horse of the West to set up modernity and rule of law that is not religiously-inspired (Shari’a);
3. Patriarchal and tribal traditions; and
4. Nobility and traditional powerful families feeding on rentier privileges.

But the nightmare scenario in full action today is that the gerontocracy continues to be stronger than ever and the youth is muzzled by a collusion of tradition and religion and, as such, the sick Arab body is not getting the much-needed young blood to serve as medicine to heal its numerous ailments.

Nevertheless, hope for democracy remains strong and willingness for another bout of uprisings is still alive and kicking.

*Dr. Mohamed Chtatou is a Professor of education science at the university in Rabat. He is currently a political analyst with Moroccan, Gulf, French, Italian and British media on politics and culture in the Middle East, Islam and Islamism as well as terrorism. He is, also, a specialist on political Islam in the MENA region with interest in the roots of terrorism and religious extremism.

The year 2017 will witness a double anniversary in the convoluted history of the Middle East, one of 50 years, the other a centenary.  June 6 is the date in 1967 which marked the outbreak of the Six Day War; “November 2nd, 1917” is the date that appears below the words “Foreign Office” on the single sheet of paper that contains the Balfour Declaration.  Both continue to influence every aspect of Arab-Israeli relations and the interminable Israel-Palestine dispute.

How is that situation ever to be resolved?

Hard-liners on each side see a solution only in the utter defeat of the other.  Hard-line Israeli opinion favours annexing the West Bank and incorporating it into Israel proper; the Palestinian hard-line objective is to eliminate Israel altogether, converting the whole of what was once Mandate Palestine into a new sovereign state of Palestine.

The consensus of world opinion rejects both extremes, overwhelmingly supporting what has become known as the two-state solution. Indeed a joint Palestinian-Israeli poll revealed on 16 February 2017 that a majority of Israelis and just under half of Palestinians are also in favour.

The idea of partition traces its origins back to the Balfour Declaration, the statement by Great Britain supporting the concept of establishing a Jewish homeland in the region then known as Palestine.  Subsequently Britain was mandated by the League of Nations to realize the project, but reconciling Jewish and Arab interests proved impossible and civil disturbance proliferated. The Arab revolt of 1936 finally goaded Britain into establishing a Commission under Lord Peel charged with reaching a workable solution. After much deliberation, Peel proposed the partition of Palestine into two states – one Jewish, the other Arab.

The rationale?  “An irrepressible conflict has arisen between two national communities … Their national aspirations are incompatible. The Arabs desire to revive the traditions of the Arab golden age. The Jews desire to show what they can achieve when restored to the land in which the Jewish nation was born. Neither of the two national ideals permits of combination in the service of a single State.”

What was true then remains true today, but the situation has become ever more complicated with the passage of time.  In particular, the combined Arab attack which followed Israel’s Declaration of Independence on 14 May 1948 ended with armistice agreements between Israel and both Egypt and Jordan.  These agreements recognised that where the three armies were positioned at the moment the fighting ceased would be Israel’s temporary boundaries, but not its permanent state borders.  These were to be established in final status negotiations.

In the event the boundaries lasted for twenty years.  When combined Arab forces massed against Israel in 1967 for a three-pronged attack, the resultant Six-Day War saw Israeli forces overrunning vast tracts of land.  In subsequent peace treaties the Sinai was returned to Egypt, and Jordan was granted oversight of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem, but Israel remained the occupying power in the West Bank and the Gaza strip. Attempts over the years to reach a negotiated settlement between Israel and the Palestinians proved fruitless. The Gaza strip was handed back to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in 2005, and shortly afterwards was seized by the extreme jihadist group, Hamas.

“Any proposals to bring the two parties back to the negotiating table,” declared Hamas leader Yahya Moussa in June 2016, “aim at slaying the Palestinian cause.”  Hamas’s solution to end the conflict, he declared, is based “on the Israeli withdrawal from the entire Palestinian territories occupied since 1948. Hamas will always opt for armed resistance until the restoration of Palestinian rights.”

The world supports the two-state concept, but the question rarely asked is how peaceful co-existence can be achieved when Hamas, representing a substantial proportion, if not the majority, of Palestinians is opposed tooth and nail to any accommodation with Israel.

Other problems obstruct the two-state route. PA president Mahmoud Abbas leads a Fatah party whose constitution states quite unequivocally that Palestine, with the boundaries that it had during the British Mandate, is an indivisible territorial unit and the homeland of the Palestinian people.

Why then, one might ask, has Abbas spent the past twelve years nominally supporting the two-state solution? Because pressing for recognition of a Palestine within the pre-Six-Day War boundaries is a tactic inherited from Abbas’s predecessor, Yassir Arafat.  It represents the first stage in a strategy ultimately designed to gain control of the whole of Mandate Palestine.

Nevertheless, given that the PA provides lip-service to the two-state solution, a Palestinian state on pre-Six Day War boundaries will not do.  Hamas would seize power, just as it did in Gaza, and the new state would become a Gaza-type launching pad for the indiscriminate bombardment of Israel. This prospect may not concern the PA leadership overmuch, but what does worry them very much indeed is the prospect of losing power to Hamas. Like it or not, they would need stronger defences against “the enemy within” than their own resources could provide.

Just as threatening would be Islamic State which would pounce on a new sovereign Palestine, entirely dependent on its own weak military for its defense, like a cat on a mouse.

An even more fundamental issue militates against the classic two-state solution. Vying with Hamas on the one hand, and extremists within its own Fatah party on the other, the PA has glorified the so-called “armed struggle”, making heroes of those who undertake terrorist attacks inside Israel, continuously promulgating anti-Israel and anti-Semitic propaganda in the media and the schools, and reiterating the message that all of Mandate Palestine is Palestinian. The end-result is that no Palestinian leader dare sign a peace agreement with Israel. The consequent backlash, to say nothing of the personal fear of assassination, have made it impossible.

How is the circle to be squared?

At the instigation of the Arab League, the PA might be invited to an Arab-Israeli peace conference with the aim of establishing a sovereign state of Palestine, but only within the context of a new three-state confederation of Jordan, Israel and Palestine – a new legal entity to be established simultaneously, dedicated to defending itself and its constituent sovereign states, and to cooperating in the fields of commerce, infrastructure and economic development. Such a solution, based on an Arab-wide consensus, could absorb Palestinian extremist objections, making it abundantly clear that any subsequent armed opposition, from whatever source, would be disciplined from within, and crushed by the combined defence forces of the confederation.

A confederation of three sovereign states, dedicated to providing high-tech security and future growth and prosperity for all its citizens – here’s where an answer might lie.

Things are never quiet on the climate front.

After calling dangerous manmade climate change a hoax and vowing to withdraw the USA from the Paris agreement, President Trump has apparently removed language criticizing the Paris deal from a pending executive order initiating a rollback of anti-fossil-fuel regulations, to help jumpstart job creation.

Meanwhile, EPA Administration Scott Pruitt says he expects quick action to rescind the Clean Power Plan, a central component of the Obama Era’s war on coal and hydrocarbons. The US House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is reopening its investigation into NOAA’s mishandling or tampering with global temperature data, for a report designed to promote action in Paris in 2015.

Hundreds of scientists signed a letter urging President Trump to withdraw from the UN climate agency. They warn that efforts to curtail carbon dioxide emissions are not scientifically justified and will kill jobs and exacerbate US and international poverty without improving the environment or stabilizing climate.

Hundreds of other scientists told Mr. Trump he must not waver on climate stabilization efforts or make any moves to defund government or university climate research. Hundreds of businessmen and investors told the President failure to build a low-carbon economy puts American prosperity at risk.

Over in Britain, Members of Parliament say efforts to build a low-carbon economy have led to a 58% rise in electricity prices since 2006, sending manufacturing and jobs overseas, to countries that are under no obligation to reduce fossil fuel use or CO2 emissions. MPs are also angry that carefully hidden “green subsidies” will account for nearly one-fourth of sky-high residential electricity bills by 2020.

All of this is a valuable reminder that the Climate Crisis & Renewable Energy Industry is now a $1.5-trillion-a-year business!And that’s just for its private sector components, the corporate rent-seekers.

This monstrous price tag does not include the Big Green environmentalism industry, the salaries and pensions of armies of federal, state, local, foreign country and UN bureaucrats who create and coordinate climate and renewable energy programs, or the far higher electricity and motor fuel costs that businesses and families must pay, to cover the costs of “saving people and planet from climate ravages.”

Earth’s climate is likely changing somewhere, as it has throughout planetary and human history. Our fuel use and countless other human activities may play a role, at least locally – but their role is dwarfed to near irrelevance by powerful solar, oceanic, cosmic ray and other natural forces. Moreover, real-world ice, sea level, temperature, hurricane, drought and other observations show nothing outside historic fluctuations. Unprecedented disasters exist only in the realm of hypotheses, press releases and computer models.

So there is no reason to cede control over our livelihoods and living standards to politicians, activists and bureaucrats; replace reliable, affordable fossil fuel energy with expensive, unreliable renewables; destroy millions of jobs in the process; and tell billions of impoverished people they must be content with solar ovens, solar panels, wind turbines, and health, nutrition and living standards little better than today’s.

There is no reason to honor the document that President Obama unilaterally signed in Paris. As Dr. Steve Allen observed in a masterful analysis: “The decisive action promised in the treaty that is not a treaty consists of governments, most of them run by dictators and thieves, promising, on an honor system, to take steps of their own choosing, to change future weather patterns, and then coming up with ways by which they can measure their own progress and hold themselves accountable by their own standards for the promises they have made, on penalty of no punishment if they break their word.”

Mainly, Allen continues, the Paris con is about “taking money from taxpayers and consumers and businesspeople and electricity ratepayers, and giving it to crony capitalists; and taking money from people in relatively successful countries and giving it to rich people in poor countries, to benefit governing elites.”

India alone wants hundreds of billions of dollars in climate “adaptation and reparation” money from industrialized nations that are supposed to slash their fossil fuel use, CO2 emissions and economic growth, while pouring trillions into the Green Climate Fund. Meanwhile, India, China and other rapidly developing nations are firing up hundreds of coal-fueled power plants, burning more oil and gas, and emitting more CO2, to industrialize their countries and lift their people out of abject poverty – as well they should.

So just follow the money – and power-grabbing. That is the real source of the religious fervor, the Catechism of Climate Cataclysm, behind the vehement denunciations of President Trump for having the gall to threaten the global high priests who drive and profit from climate change fear mongering.

Those forces are desperate and determined to keep their power and money train on track. They’re ramping up indignation and cranking out “research” to justify their demands. For example:

Expert Market (whose core expertise is helping companies compare prices for postage meters, coffee machines and other B2B products) has just released a study purporting to show which US states will suffer most “from Trump’s climate change denial” and America’s “climate change inaction.”

The total cost will be $506 billion by 2050, just for hurricane and other real estate damages, extra energy costs, and more frequent and severe droughts. “Vermont emerged as the state worst equipped to handle the cost,” the study contends, while Montana, Wyoming and the Dakotas are also “severely at risk.” California and New York are among those best able to endure the imminent chaos.

It sounds horrific – and it’s intended to be, the better to pressure the White House and Congress to codify and enforce the nonbinding provisions of the Paris non-treaty, and retain Obama-era anti-hydrocarbon energy policies. But the entire exercise is a classic example of Garbage In/Garbage Out (GIGO) black box computer modeling, carefully crafted to ensure the justifications required for a predetermined political outcome, especially the monumental “nationwide green initiatives” that Expert Market supports.

Thus, carbon dioxide will drive rapidly rising global temperatures that will warm the planet enough to increase sea surface temperatures dramatically – spawning more frequent, more damaging hurricanes, and melting polar ice caps enough to raise sea levels 23 inches by 2050, the Expert Market experts assert.

Global warming measured in hundredths of a degree over the past 19 years will suddenly be replaced by runaway heat waves. Seas now rising at 7 inches per century will suddenly climb at ten times that rate over the next three decades, sending storm surges far inland. Major US land-falling hurricanes that have been absent now for eleven years will suddenly proliferate to unprecedented levels.

How Vermont and the other top-five “worst equipped” states – all of them inland – will be affected by any of this is anyone’s guess. But the model says they’re at risk, so we must take drastic action now.

Soaring temperatures will increase demand for air conditioning, and thus raise household energy costs, says Expert Market. CA, NY and other “green” state electricity costs are already twice as high as those in coal and gas-reliant states. Imposing wind and solar initiatives on fossil fuel states would likely double their family and business energy costs, but that factor is not included in its calculations.

Droughts “will become more frequent and severe” in states already afflicted by arid conditions – assuming all the dire CO2 depredations, and ignoring both those states’ long experience with drought cycles and how California’s years-long drought has once again given way to abundant rainfall.

The Expert Market study is symptomatic of the politicized assumptions and data manipulation that have driven climate models and disaster scenarios since the IPCC began studying manmade climate chaos.

Indeed, the entire climate chaos exercise is akin to basing public safety policies on computer models that assume dinosaur DNA extracted from fossilized amber will soon result in hordes of T rexes running rampant across our land. We deserve a more honest, rational basis for policies that govern our lives.

The number of recorded unemployed people in Spain at the State Public Employment Services has fallen in February by 9,355 in relation to the previous month. This fall is the second largest fall of the month of February in the last 12 years. Unemployment has increased in February in each of the last eight years, by an average of 57,863 people.

The total number of recorded unemployed now stands at 3,750,876 people, and is at the lowest level for the last seven years.

In seasonally-adjusted terms, unemployment fell in the month of February by 32,711 people.

Compared with February 2016, unemployment has fallen by 402,110 people (down 9.68%), the largest fall in a month of February on record.

Unemployment among young people under the age of 25 has fallen over the last 12 months by 48,970 people, an 14% decrease, which is above the general average of 9.68%.

In terms of recorded unemployment by sector of activity, this fell in the services sector by 13,738 people (down 0.54%), in construction by 6,676 (down 1.81%) and in industry by 3,388 (down 0.98%). By contrast, it rose in agriculture by 9,734 (up 5.61%) and among first-time job seekers by 4,713 (up 1.52%).

Recorded unemployment fell in 11 autonomous regions, headed up by the Balearic Islands (down 3,086), Aragon (down 2,818) and Extremadura (down 1,982). In contrast, it rose in the other six regions, headed up by Andalusia (up 2,361) and the Region of Madrid (up 1,673).

Permanent employment contracts increase by 8.4%

The number of contracts registered in the month of February amounted to a total of 1,452,528, the highest figure on record for a month of February. This represents an increase of 75,048 (up 5.45%) on the corresponding month in 2016.

The number of permanent employment contracts registered in February 2017 amounted to 151,072, an 8.4% increase, or 11,708 additional contracts, on the same month of last year.

Full-time permanent employment contracts increased by 8.8% year-on-year, more than three points above the increase registered in temporary employment contracts, which stood at 5.1%.

The senior-most judge of Sri Lanka’s Supreme Court, Priyasad Depp was sworn in as the new Chief Justice before President Maithripala Sirisena at the President’s official residence on Thursday.

Justice Priyasad Depp held the office of the Solicitor General from 2007 to 2011 and became a judge of teh Supreme Court in 2011. He had fulfilled his duties as the Acting Chief Justice several times.

Minister of Justice, Wijeyadasa Rajapakhse Secretary to the President P. B. Abeykoon, and family members of Justice Priyasad Depp participated in this swearing in ceremony.

Russia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said Thursday that is concerned that the political crisis in Macedonia, “provoked by the gross external interference in the country’s internal affairs is getting worse.”

In a statement, the Russian Ministry said that “attempts, which are actively supported by EU and NATO leaders, are being made to make Macedonians accept the “Albanian platform” designed in Tirana in the Prime Minister’s Office based on the map of the so-called Greater Albania, which illustrates its territorial claims to vast regions in neighboring Montenegro, Serbia, Macedonia and Greece.”

The Ministry said that of particular concern is the involvement of the authorities of Kosovo, “which has unilaterally declared independence, in this scam.”

“We believe this line of action to be extremely dangerous as it may lead to the destruction of Macedonian statehood and destabilisation of the whole of the Balkans,” the Ministry said in the statement.

The Ministry noted that the early parliamentary elections in Macedonia held on December 11, 2016 at the EU’s and the United States’ insistence, were won by the ruling party led by Nikola Gruevski.

“Now the West is trying to take advantage of the Albanian minority to have the defeated opposition, who has subscribed to the Albanians’ requirements that sound more like an ultimatum and lead to the undermining of the country’s constitutional basis, come to power in Skopje,” the Russian Ministry statement continued.

According to the Russian Ministry, “The on-going destructive attempts to impose, from the outside, schemes contradicting the Macedonian voters’ will can only exacerbate the situation. The external interference in Macedonia’s internal affairs has to be stopped, and the right of the Macedonian people to decide their future on their own and in compliance with the fundamental democratic principles has to be treated with respect.”

The EU Commission is legally obliged to take measures temporarily reintroducing visa requirements for US citizens, given that Washington still does not grant visa-free access to nationals of five EU countries.

In a resolution approved on Thursday, MEPs urged the Commission to adopt the necessary legal measures “within two months”.

The text prepared by the Civil Liberties Committee was adopted by a show of hands.

Visa reciprocity

Citizens of Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Poland and Romania still cannot enter US territory without a visa, while US citizens can travel to all EU countries visa-free.

According to the visa reciprocity mechanism, if a third country does not lift its visa requirements within 24 months of being notified of non-reciprocity, the EU Commission must adopt a delegated act – to which both Parliament and the Council may object – suspending the visa waiver for its nationals for 12 months.

Following a notification of non-reciprocity on April 12, 2014, the Commission should have acted before April 12, 2016, but it has yet to take any legal measure. Canada also imposes visa requirements on Bulgarian and Romanian citizens, but it has announced that they will be lifted on December 1, 2017.

In April 2014, the European Commission was notified that five countries were not meeting their obligations towards the EU with regard to reciprocity of visa-free travel: Australia, Brunei, Canada, Japan and the US.

Australia, Brunei and Japan have since lifted their visa requirements for all EU citizens and Canada will do so in December this year.

By Jim Garamone

US President Donald J. Trump on Thursday promised to rebuild the U.S. military and called for a 12-carrier Navy during a visit to the future USS Gerald R. Ford in Newport News, Virginia.

Trump addressed the pre-commissioning unit of the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier on the ship’s hangar deck. He told the crew that if Congress passes his budget, the military “will win again.”

“The proud dignity of the ship is a fitting tribute to Gerald Ford – the man and the president,” Trump said. He congratulated the men and women of Newport News Shipbuilding who labored on the aircraft carrier – the first of its class and the first new carrier design since the Nimitz-class began joining the fleet in 1975. The $13 billion carrier will be commissioned later this year.

“This warship and all who serve on it should be a source of shared pride for our nation,” the president said.

Rebuilding Military

Defense Secretary Jim Mattis accompanied the president to the carrier, and Trump said the secretary has been charged with rebuilding the U.S. military. “We will give the men and women of America’s armed services the resources you need to keep us safe,” he said. “We will have the finest equipment in the world – planes, ships and everything else.

“We will give our military the tools you need to prevent war and, if required, to fight war and only do one thing: win.” he continued. “We’re going to start winning again.”

The U.S. military needs stable, consistent funding, the president said.

“In these troubled times, our Navy is the smallest it’s been since World War I,” he said. “That’s a long time ago. In fact, I just spoke with Navy and industry leaders and have discussed my plans to undertake a major expansion of our entire Navy fleet, including having the 12-carrier Navy we need.”

Trump said America has always led, and will continue to do so. “My budget will ensure we do so and continue to do exactly that,” he said. “American ships will sail the seas. American planes will soar the skies. American workers will build our fleets.”

The president said the big-deck carriers are the centerpiece of America’s military might. “We are standing today on 4.5 acres of combat power and sovereign U.S. territory, the likes of which there is nothing to compete,” he said.

He called the Ford a “monument” to American might. The ship will have a smaller crew than the Nimitz-class carriers sailing with 4,500 personnel. It will carry 70 aircraft and will be able to project American power to the farthest reaches of the world. “Hopefully, it’s power we won’t have to use,” Trump said. “But if we do, they are in big, big trouble.”

Trump noted that the three aircraft carriers that won the Battle of Midway – the USS Enterprise, USS Yorktown and USS Hornet – against the Japanese fleet in 1942 were built in the same shipyards that produced the Ford. The battle was the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

Midway Heroes

“The sailors at Midway are part of a long line of American heroes, an unbroken chain of patriots from each generation to the next, who rose to defend our flag and our freedom,” the president said. “That legacy continues today as American warriors protect our people from the threat of terrorism.”

Trump told the sailors that his budget calls for an end to sequestration spending cuts and an increase in 2018 of $54 billion for the Defense Department. “After years of endless budget cuts that have impaired our defenses, I am calling for one of the largest defense spending increases in history,” he said.

US Attorney General Jeff Sessions has denied any wrongdoing in meeting with the Russian ambassador, saying the two brief encounters had nothing to do with the presidential campaign. He recused himself from any investigations into the campaign, however.

“Let me be clear: I never had meetings with Russian operatives or Russian intermediaries about the Trump campaign,” Sessions told reporters at the Department of Justice on Thursday afternoon.

During the confirmation hearings, Senator Al Franken (D-Minnesota) had asked about contacts between Donald Trump’s surrogates and Russian officials concerning the Republican candidate’s presidential campaign. Sessions, who served as senator from Alabama prior to taking over at the Department of Justice, was also one of the most high-profile Republicans to endorse Trump early on.

“My answer to Sen. Franken was honest and correct as I understood it at the time,” Sessions said, adding there was no discussion of the campaign in both of his brief meetings with Russian ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak.

Sessions had promised the Senate Judiciary Committee he would recuse himself from any probes into the Trump campaign, if they were to happen, and after consulting with the ethics staff at the DOJ, he decided to do just that.

“I have decided to recuse myself from any existing or future investigations of any matters related in any way to the campaigns for President of the United States,” Sessions said. “This announcement should not be interpreted as confirmation of the existence of any investigation or suggestive of the scope of any such investigation.”

“I should not be involved in investigating the campaign I had a role in,” he told reporters.

By Aneta Zachová

(EurActiv) — A constitutional amendment would enable Czechs to acquire and possess a gun for security purposes. This is a partial response to the proposed EU Firearms Directive.

The right to be armed could be included in the Czech constitution. This controversial proposal was discussed by the Czech government this week, with the proposed EU Firearms Directive being mentioned frequently in the debate.

The amendment was backed by the Social Democrats, the main coalition party. The position of other coalition members was not so favourable. ANO 2011, which is currently leading in the polls, was the strongest opponent.

The government has not reached any conclusion on the matter. However, the author of the proposal – Interior Minister Milan Chovanec – perceives this as a positive sign.

Now it is time for the Czech parliament to decide. In order to pass, the amendment would have to get the support of at least three fifths of deputies and three fifths of senators. Chovanec hopes that the act will be approved before the parliamentary elections in October.

“I think that we have very good negotiating position to get 120 votes needed to pass in Chamber of Deputies,” Chovanec said.

According to Martin Plíšek from opposition TOP 09 party, the proposal is useless. “It is pure pre-election populism, because there is no need to set the right to possession of weapon by a constitutional law.”

Firearms directive

Chovanec claimed that there is only a peripheral link between the amendment and the EU’s Firearms Directive restricting acquisition and possession of weapons.

But the explanatory memorandum of the Czech act reads that “the proposal has to be perceived in the context of European Commission’s efforts to limit owners of legal weapons under the pretence of fight against terrorism”.

The original proposal presented by the Commission aimed at a ban of all semi-automatic weapons. The European Parliament’s internal market and consumers committee (IMCO) revised the Firearms Directive and added specific exceptions for current legal owners, sport shooters or military reservists. Semi-automatic weapons with low-capacity magazines should remain legal, too, according to the committee.

“There are still some provisions full of contradiction in the proposal such as restricting the rights of legal owners, groundless limits for magazines capacity and also some sanctions and obligations for sport-shooters,” EURACTIV.cz was told by Czech MEP Dita Charanzová (ALDE) who is the vice-president of IMCO.

Czech fight

Gun owners in the Czech Republic are still strongly opposed to the European proposal and called politicians for help. Almost all of the Czech MEPs have already expressed their negative position to the Firearms Directive.

They are also preparing new amendments to the proposal and convincing other MEPs to vote against at plenary session scheduled on 14 March. Czech ANO 2011 MEP Pavel Telička, vice-president of ALDE, has already announced that his faction will not support the Firearms Directive.

“There is a rare consensus among Czech MEPs on this matter with only one exception,” Czech Křesťanská a demokratická unie MEP Tomáš Zdechovský (EPP) said.

The only Czech in the European Parliament who supports the new directive is TOP 09 MEP Luděk Niedermayer (EPP). In his point of view, the amended version of the directive is acceptable. It does not demand any expropriation of weapons from current legal owners and includes useful provisions such as the better sharing of information among member states or common rules on marking of firearms.

“No directive will stop terrorist attacks. But it sets clear rights to possess weapons for whole Union, where people and guns can move quite easily,” Niedermayer said.

The Czech government debate on the constitutional amendment was preceded by meeting of the interior minister with representatives of gun owners. He received new package of signed petitions against the Firearm Directive. It has so far been signed by 50,000 people.

Currently there are more than 300,000 gun owners in the Czech Republic. “We will do our best to protect their rights,” Chovanec said. He also noted that “in the beginning Europe had good intentions, but the realisation could be given an F-“.

By Arthur Herman*

International shipping of packages has become an important cog in the global economy, fueled by a growth in e-commerce averaging 19 percent a year since 2000. E-commerce makes it possible for Americans to order goods from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and other countries literally with the click of a button.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) is the United Nations agency that regulates the government-to-government overseas postal package system. The primary international agreement of the UPU governing the international postal system is the “Universal Postal Convention” (or, informally, the “UPU Convention”), to which the U.S. Department of State traditionally acts as negotiator and signatory.

Unfortunately, the Hudson Postal Commission has found that the current Convention:

1. Disadvantages U.S. merchants in their competition with foreign merchants;
2. Imposes net costs on the United States Postal Service of tens of millions of dollars each year, which translates into costs for U.S. consumers;
3. Presents serious security risks in terms of combatting terrorism and other threats;
4. Facilitates importation of illegal pharmaceuticals and illicit drug shipments; and
5. Costs the U.S. government millions of dollars in lost customs revenue.

As this report details, a tangle of outdated and anti-competitive international rules promulgated by the UPU make having a strong, safe, and secure post system increasingly difficult, particularly when it comes to handling small packages (weighing less than 2 kg, or 4.4 lbs) arriving from overseas.

After studying the available data and evidence, and after hearing testimony from multiple witnesses, the members of the Hudson Postal Commission have agreed to make the following policy recommendations:

• Limit the Department of State to the negotiation of international postal agreements which implement broad, commercially neutral governmental policies and are consistent with U.S. policies towards trade in services generally.
• Clarify the application of antitrust policy and trade law to international postal services.
• Appoint a high-level commission to review U.S. participation in the UPU and make recommendations for steps needed to advance the national interest.
• Create an inter-agency task force to negotiate an agreement among industrialized countries establishing non-discriminatory principles for terminal dues and other charges for the delivery of inbound international mail with a target date of January 1, 2018.
• Initiate a study at the World Customs Organization of harmonized rules for customs and security controls that could be applied to all low-value packages.
• Increase the U.S. Postal Regulatory Commission’s oversight of the Postal Service, especially with regard to the collection of data for, and the handling of, inbound international packages.
• Apply U.S. customs and security laws and regulations in the same manner to postal shipments and non-postal shipments while allowing a reasonable transition period for foreign Posts in developing countries.

Having a strong, but also safe and secure, United States Postal Service that can handle more than 474 million pieces of foreign mail every year should be an important national priority. The Hudson Commission believes these important steps will help to achieve that goal, and to make sure that our international agreements regarding delivery of overseas mail are consistent with U.S. trade, antitrust, national security policy and law.

Introduction

International shipping of packages has become an important cog in the global economy, fueled by a growth in e-commerce averaging 19 percent a year since 2000.¹ E-commerce has allowed American online shoppers to make direct purchases from around the world, which are then shipped to the United States and delivered by either the United States Postal Service or private carriers like FedEx and UPS.

E-commerce makes it possible for Americans to order goods from China, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and other countries literally with the click of a button. That means hundreds of thousands of packages arrive in the U.S. each day from those same countries via the international postal system, with no check on whether they contain illegal or even dangerous materials.

Very few customers give much thought to whether a clock radio or battery charger or bottle of shampoo is delivered by the Postal Service, on the one hand, or by private carriers, on the other. But strangely, the rules governing how the shippers handle that package in terms of cost, customs, and security protocols, differ widely.

Indeed, there is an alarming disparity between how packages are handled by private carriers and how they are handled by national Posts, including the Postal Service — a disparity that reflects an outdated international postal services agreement and the system of subsidized international package shipping it fosters.

The Universal Postal Union (UPU) is the United Nations agency that regulates the government-to-government overseas postal package system. The primary international agreement of the UPU governing the international postal system is the “Universal Postal Convention” (or, informally, the “UPU Convention”). Unfortunately, as this report will indicate, the current Convention:

1. Disadvantages U.S. merchants in their competition with foreign merchants;
2. Imposes net costs on the Postal Service of tens of millions of dollars each year;
3. Presents serious security risks in terms of combatting terrorism and other threats;
4. Facilitates importation of illegal pharmaceuticals and illicit drug shipments; and
5. Costs the U.S. government millions of dollars in lost customs revenue.

According to the Postal Regulatory Commission (PRC), 474 million pieces of foreign “letter post” mail (i.e., documents and packages weighing less than 2 kg, or 4.4 lbs) entered the U.S. in 2015, of which the UPU estimates one-fifth consists of small packages. That implies that something on the order of 100 million packages entered the U.S. with no accountability in terms of electronic data information, or accountability regarding the overall cost of overseas postal shipments to our own U.S. Postal Service.²

U.S. participation in the UPU is governed by the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act of 2006 (PAEA), the first major revision of the nation’s postal laws since 1970.³ Among other reforms, the PAEA comprehensively revised the international postal policy of the United States and the role of the PRC in reviewing international postal services. The PAEA committed the U.S. to promote and encourage international postal agreements that foster “efficient operation of international postal services and other international delivery services” and “unrestricted and undistorted competition in the provision of international postal services and other international delivery services” (except for services covered by the U.S. postal monopoly). The PAEA thus shifted the focus of U.S. policy from promoting the operations of international postal services per se to supporting the emergence of an efficient and competitive system of public and private delivery services.⁴

Under the PAEA, the Secretary of State is responsible for the negotiation and conclusion of international postal agreements at the UPU. The Secretary’s authority is limited, however. The Secretary may not conclude any convention which would grant an “undue or unreasonable preference” to the Postal Service, a private carrier, or any other person in the provision of competitive postal services. Nor may the Secretary negotiate an agreement relating to non-monopoly postal services that is contrary to U.S. antitrust laws or that would prevent federal agencies from applying customs and other import and export laws “in the same manner” to competitive products offered by the Postal Service and U.S. private carriers.⁵ In addition, the Secretary is directed to coordinate the development of the U.S. position at the UPU with other federal agencies, including the Postal Regulatory Commission, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Transportation, and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Having a strong, but also safe and secure, United States Postal Service is an important national priority. It is the lynchpin of a $1.4 trillion mailing industry that employs some 7.5 million Americans.⁶ Unfortunately, as we shall see, a tangle of outdated and anti-competitive international rules promulgated by the UPU make having a strong, safe, and secure post system increasingly difficult, particularly when it comes to packages arriving from overseas.

The Hudson Postal Commission (“Commission”) met in Washington, DC on September 10 and 11, 2016. This final report draws from the most recent data concerning the manifold problems of the international government parcel post system, in order to provide an overview of the growing crisis in international package delivery.

The second part of this report presents a series of concrete policy recommendations for fixing and reforming the system, with a focus on a multi-dimensional, multi-agency approach — including concrete steps Congress needs to take to make sure our Postal Service is safe and secure.

Any discussion of these issues, however, must begin with the nature and structure of the Universal Postal Union.

What is the Universal Postal Union (UPU)?

Originally created in 1874 and since 1948 a specialized agency of the United Nations⁷, the Universal Postal Union (UPU) was established to create “a single postal territory for the reciprocal exchange of correspondence” between the Union’s twenty-one leading countries.⁸ The international postal system was extended to the conveyance of packages by stages. It was in 1929 that “small packets” were added to the international postal convention.⁹

The UPU establishes rates and standards for the postal delivery of documents and packages exchanged among its member countries, which have now grown to 192 in number.¹⁰ Unfortunately, in recent years the UPU has become an obstacle to, rather than a facilitator of, making the international package shipping system more efficient, more modernized and standardized, and safer. It has also begun to impose unsustainable costs on the Postal Service.

Member countries within the UPU agree that their Posts will carry one another’s documents and packages from their point of arrival, for example a port or airport, to their final destinations. Each Post in turn is obliged to compensate the others for this inbound delivery service with fees set by the UPU.

The fees applicable to the delivery of “letter post” mail — documents and most packages weighing up to 2 kg (i.e., 4.4 lbs) — are known as “terminal dues.”¹¹ They are set every four years in a new version of the Universal Postal Convention adopted by a general “congress” of the UPU. The current Universal Postal Convention was adopted by a UPU Congress held in Doha in 2012. It is in effect from January 1, 2014, to December 31, 2017. The most recent UPU Congress took place in Istanbul in September and October 2016. It adopted a new Universal Postal Convention that will be in effect during the period 2018 to 2021. The terminal dues established in the Universal Postal Convention are the legal default rate for delivery of inbound documents and small packages. Posts can agree on alternative rates in a bilateral or multilateral agreement, but alternative arrangements are usually closely related to UPU terminal dues rates.

How the current UPU Convention determines terminal dues is based on a complex classification of individual countries according to their level of economic and postal development. In 2012, the Doha Congress organized its member countries into six groups, for the purpose of defining terminal dues and other charges.¹² In general, the higher the group number of a country, the less the Post charges for the delivery of inbound international packages and the less it pays for the delivery of packages sent to countries in the categories with lower numbers.

• Group 1.1 includes the United States, Japan, Australia, and most of the world’s other developed economies, as well as most of the overseas territories belonging to Great Britain and France.
• Groups 1.2 and 2 apply the same terminal dues schedule for inbound and outbound letter post. Group 1.2 includes more recently advanced countries, such as Hong Kong and Singapore. Group 2 consists of countries with mid-size economies such as Cyprus, Hungary, Estonia, Poland, Slovakia, and Saudi Arabia.
• Group 3 includes still emerging economies such as Argentina, Bosnia, Brazil, Chile, Jamaica, Gabon, Cuba, Kazakhstan, as well as the People’s Republic of China.
• Groups 4 and 5 apply the same terminal dues schedule for inbound and outbound letter post. These groups generally include least developed countries, but they also include countries with substantial economic potential such as Egypt, India, Iran, Kenya, Nigeria, and Vietnam.

The appearance of China, the world’s second-largest economy, in the Category 3 grouping highlights a fundamental flaw in the UPU ranking system for terminal dues. That ranking is defined by a “postal development index” based on the level of postal service within that country.¹³ This overlooks the fact that a country such as China may have a relatively low level of domestic postal development for historical reasons — in China’s case, its modernization came after the era of paper-based communications — but may actually be a major player in international commerce, particularly e-commerce.

In other words, what a business should be paying for delivery of its e-commerce shipments in a foreign country has nothing to do with the state of development of its national postal service. Yet the current UPU ranking system inappropriately links the two.

Illogical categorization has significant consequences both for the integrity of the UPU, as well as for those Posts like the Postal Service (and their customers) who shoulder the major burden of subsidizing the world’s global postal system and for those Posts like China Post that benefit from it (see Section 4).

So while the domestic postal systems in the United States, the European Union, and other advanced countries have become steadily more liberalized and focused on encouraging competition from the private sector as well as introducing new technologies to make the postal systems more efficient and more accountable, the UPU has moved in the opposite direction. It has evolved into an international cartel of government-sponsored Posts, who use its rules to protect low postal rates for some, including low package rates, while forcing domestic mailers and a handful of advanced countries to underwrite the costs of the system.

At the same time, the international postal system that the UPU oversees has also evolved. Until the last quarter of the twentieth century, the primary purpose of the UPU was to coordinate the exchange of documents between governmental postal administrations, each of which had a monopoly on the carriage of letters. Today, in most industrialized countries and many developing countries, the “Posts” are no longer government administrations but corporatized, and often privatized, successor companies that engage in multiple lines of business. Their primary aim is profits, not public service.¹⁴ The purpose of the UPU has shifted to advancing the commercial interests of these successor Posts in an international market increasingly dominated by conveyance of packages, particularly packages generated by the explosive rise of e-commerce since 1999.

In short, postal operators are increasingly turning into package services as a way to grow their international business. For example, e-commerce small packets (less than 2 kg) from China to the United States increased 182 percent from 2011 to 2012, from 9.5 million packages to 26.8 million — almost a three-fold increase.¹⁵

According to the UPU’s own studies, between 2010 and 2014 packages increased from about 12 percent to nearly 25 percent, or one-quarter, of international mail volume and more than half the weight.¹⁶ Indeed, by the time the rules established by the 2016 Istanbul Congress expire in December 2021, packages will likely constitute the majority of international postal shipments.

As a representative of one of the private carriers explained to the Commission, “What was once an institution that provides a means of linking the world together for societal reasons has morphed into an intergovernmental organization whose real mission has become the promotion of the commercial success of the world’s post offices.”

Today, leading postal operators see international e-commerce shipments primarily as a business opportunity and revenue generator. From 2012 to 2016, for example, Singapore Post’s international mail revenue soared by 85 percent, almost all of it fed by e-commerce: an astonishing example of how a government-sponsored postal company (Singapore Post is 74 percent privately owned, with Chinese online mega-retailer Alibaba owning 10 percent¹⁷) can profit from an international postal system that’s geared to benefit some countries, while penalizing others.¹⁸

“Penalizing” is not an exaggeration. The sobering fact is that a Post in a developed country which has high costs in wages, services, and infrastructure, generally loses money on every piece of international mail that arrives on its shores or crosses its border. For example, Norway Post, which has publicly stated that the money it loses under the UPU system has to be made up by charging more to Norwegian customers, is one of those Category 1.1 nations that are in effect subsidizing other countries’ postal services.¹⁹

Another country being penalized is the United States. To understand why and how, it is important to realize that the massive surge in e-commerce, particularly coming from Asia, has come at considerable cost both to U.S. businesses and the Postal Service, thanks mainly to the UPU terminal dues system.

How the UPU Disadvantages U.S. Merchants in Their Competition with Foreign E-Commerce

E-commerce is not only becoming the dominant source of international post shipping, it’s also become a driving engine of the world’s developed economies. This is particularly true for China.

China has been a manufacturing powerhouse for several decades, but the country’s leadership now sees e-commerce as a way to sustain economic growth by spurring consumption at the same time that it revives exports.²⁰

Although China’s overall trade volume fell by 7 percent in 2015, the first decline since 2010, and exports fell by 13.2 percent,²¹ e-commerce exports increased by 30 percent.²² In addition, China is home to the world’s single largest e-commerce market, with e-commerce expected to supply 42 percent of domestic consumption growth, even as the numbers of Chinese e-commerce businesses now number in the scores.²³

In 2013 Chinese online sales reached $314 billion, or 35 percent of all world e-commerce sales (by comparison, U.S. online sales were $255 billion). An increasing percentage of those sales are export sales to other countries like the U.S.²⁴ — and UPU rules are providing an additional boost for those sales.

How so? It is important to remember that the UPU sets rates for delivery of postal items sent from country to country, i.e. what’s charged back and forth, based on their state of economic and domestic postal development. Category 3 countries like Gabon, for example, get a price break (compared to domestic postage) on the packages it ships to Norway, that Norway doesn’t get shipping to Gabon — or to the United States, another Category 1.1 country.

Since China, the world’s second-biggest economy, also sits in Category 3, alongside Gabon, the Postal Service charges less for the delivery of Chinese packages in the U.S. than it charges U.S. mailers for the same or similar services. For example, in 2016, a shipper in Beijing can send a 500g (1.1 lb) package to Chicago via China Post Airmail for $11.52, whereas the Post Office charges a domestic mailer $12.40 for carrying an identical weight package Priority Mail from San Francisco to Chicago. For China Post eBay ePacket shipments, the cost differential is even greater (see Appendix). This in turn means it is often possible for someone in China to send a package across the Pacific to anywhere in the 48 states for less than an American has to pay to send the same package inside the U.S.²⁵ This built-in cost advantage has enabled Chinese e-commerce firms to routinely offer free shipping to countries like the United States: an important plus in the highly competitive world of online shopping.²⁶

The impact this has had in disadvantaging U.S. online retailers is readily apparent when we compare the costs of shipping small packages of electronics (2 kg or less) from Chinese e-commerce websites, with a similar U.S. retailer, namely Radio Shack.

For example, a standard multimeter for measuring electric voltage sells from Radio Shack for $24.99.²⁷ From Deal Extreme, a Chinese e-commerce company, one can buy virtually the same multimeter for $15.82.²⁸ With Deal Extreme’s free shipping (since the postal rate it pays is so low) versus the $5.95 Radio Shack has to charge, and a multimeter from Deal Extreme costs the customer only $15.82, while Radio Shack charges $30.94 — nearly double the amount.

Of course, some of that lower price reflects lower manufacturing costs in China. Yet looking at the example of an 8GB USB flash drive that sells for $11.99 on the Radio Shack website²⁹ and almost the identical drive for only a dollar more ($12.99) at another Chinese website, DinoDirect,³⁰ is instructive. Thanks again to the advantage of offering free shipping, DinoDirect can sell its flash drive to a U.S. customer at $12.99, while U.S. shipping costs drives Radio Shack’s price up to $17.94.

The ways that free shipping from China skews the e-commerce playing field don’t stop there. There is a soldering iron for electronics that actually costs less from Radio Shack³¹ than from the Chinese website DHGate,³² namely $14.99 versus $17.53. The discriminating customer soon notices, however, that with DHGate’s free shipping he will pay only $17.53 buying his device from China, instead of the $20.94 he’d have to pay Radio Shack when shipping is added in.

How important is this price differential? In Radio Shack’s case, it may have been the margin between solvency and bankruptcy. Radio Shack’s most loyal customers were buyers of small electronics parts for do-it-yourself projects — whether they bought them in the store or from Radio Shack’s website.³³ Radio Shack’s business model for staying in business depended on those 2 kg-or-less orders. Its declaration of bankruptcy in 2015³⁴ was due in part to the fact that it lost a major proportion of its customer base to websites originating in China — supported by the UPU’s anti-competitive arrangement.

What’s true for Radio Shack is undoubtedly also true for other U.S. online retailers — and the United States Postal Service has not been helpful in this regard. In 2010, in an alternative bilateral terminal dues agreement with China Post, the Postal Service established special rates and services for small packages originating from China, dubbed ePacket.³⁵ Under the agreement with China’s state carrier, the Postal Service agreed to provide tracking and delivery confirmation as well as expedited delivery to customers in the U.S. The goal, according to a postal official, was “increasing international package volume for the Postal Service” — even though in 2014 the Postal Service collected only $1.50 for delivering a 1-lb package from a foreign carrier, making it extremely difficult to cover its own costs.

The impact was sweeping. Between fiscal years 2011 and 2012, Chinese ePackets shipped into the U.S. under this program nearly tripled. The Postal Service’s revenue increased, but the Postal Service’s inspector general found that it was losing on average a dollar per incoming item, amounting to a $29.4 million net loss in 2012.³⁶

Yet while the Postal Service itself was losing money on ePacket, American eBay retailers were losing even more. Many were finding that the advantages Chinese online companies were deriving from ePacket were driving them out of business. “I must say that it is simply an economic disaster for U.S. Sellers,” said one eBay member quoted in the Washington Post, “One product we sell for 2.00 with 2.59 shipping a Chinese company is selling for .99 with free shipping.”

As Washington Post reporter Jeff Guo put it, eBay sellers were running afoul of “an international treaty that makes it possible for an individual to send a pound of stuff from Hong Kong to [Washington] D.C. for less than it would cost to send the same package to, say, Seattle.”³⁷

In July 2016, Ina Steiner, editor and publisher of EcommerceBytes.com, an online newsletter for e-commerce sellers, sent a letter to the members of the Postal Regulatory Commission,³⁸ which stated:

“Shipping is a major issue for our readers, and shipping costs directly impact their margins and profitability … Knowing that domestic mailers are subsidizing foreign mailers who use the same postal infrastructure, but who do not contribute to the Postal Service’s institutional costs, is not only upsetting in principle; it harms many US merchants, particularly small online sellers.”

Steiner added, “The USPS Inspector General said in a December 15th [2015] report that inexpensive deliveries from China may potentially penalize domestic retailers. Based on my extensive knowledge of e-commerce as well as what I hear from online sellers, I believe that is absolutely the case.”³⁹

It is not only small online retailers who feel the pressure — and fear the consequences — of the unfair advantage foreign e-commerce sellers enjoy because of UPU rules. In recent Congressional hearings, Amazon added its voice to the concerns that leaving the current rules in place will have a negative impact on its present and future business.

“Delivery is a very important part of the customer experience at Amazon,” Amazon’s Vice President for Global Public Policy Paul Misener told the House Subcommittee on Government Operations during hearings on fair competition in international shipping on June 16, 2015, “accordingly we maintain strong ties to postal operators around the world, including the U.S. Postal Service and China Post. [However] we have concerns about international postal agreements and their indirect effects on American businesses of all sizes.” Misener noted that extremely low bulk shipping rates were currently often cheaper from China to the U.S. than shipments between the U.S.’s 50 states.

He concluded, “For the sake of both effective competition in shipping and fairness to American seller businesses, the UPU terminal delivery compensation system and current bilateral agreements [such as ePacket] between the USPS and key foreign postal operators such as China Post must be reformed.”⁴⁰

Multiple Economic Distortions That Flow from UPU Terminal Dues

To review: the UPU sets the rules for the exchange of mail between its member countries. According to these rules, post offices compensate each other for the cost of delivering inbound international mail. Rates for the delivery of “letter post” mail — documents and packages weighing up to 2 kg (4.4 lbs) — are called “terminal dues” and established in the Universal Postal Convention that the UPU revises and adopts every four years.⁴¹ Post offices may also agree among themselves to different compensation rates, but inevitably alternative rates are heavily influenced by the default UPU rates. So, for example, when the Postal Service receives a document or small package (less than 2 kg) from the post office in Hong Kong or Germany for delivery to an address in Chicago, the Postal Service charges the origin post office “terminal dues” (or an agreed alternative rate close to UPU terminal dues) to deliver it in Chicago. That rate is below the out-of-pocket cost incurred by the Postal Service and even further below the equivalent rate that the Postal Service would charge a domestic mailer.

To allocate a resource such as mail delivery in a competitively neutral manner, rates for delivery of inbound international mail should be set to match the rates of domestic mail for similar services. This would ensure that a German, Canadian, or Chinese e-commerce retailer pays no more or less than his American counterpart for Postal Service delivery of the same package.

In its current form, the UPU system causes distortions in international postal delivery services because it systematically leads to substantial undercharging for the delivery of inbound international mail by industrialized countries (and some other countries). The UPU system also requires some post offices to subsidize others. (Under the current system, fifteen countries end up paying almost the entire net bill for these financial transfers between countries).⁴² These are costs that have to be passed on to domestic customers and/or taxpayers. The U.S. Postal Service is forecasted to join this club of “net losers” in the 2018-2021 period, if it is not already a member.⁴³

As outlined in Section II, China in particular has taken advantage of this system, on a scale that has given birth and sustained an entire industry, namely Chinese e-commerce. The same is true to a lesser degree for Hong Kong and Singapore. In the past few years e-commerce parcels from these three post offices have increased enormously, perhaps by as much as 100 percent or more each year, although firm data are lacking.

In short, terminal dues impose a burden on domestic mailers who have to make up the discounts their Posts are forced to give to foreign mailers. In the U.S., the bottom line is that American consumers and retailers are unwittingly subsidizing foreign competition.

The UPU terminal dues system also produces distortions in the outbound postal market as well as the inbound market. The Postal Service sets postage rates for bulk outbound mail services for commercial mailers at levels that are close to terminal dues plus the cost of international transportation. Because terminal dues in most industrialized countries are set below cost, this means that U.S. commercial mailers are getting a service that is priced below the true cost of production. Good for them, but bad for the U.S. private carriers that provide competing international transportation services. At the same time, individual outbound mailers face substantially higher international postage rates, which may or may not benefit from artificially low terminal dues.

These several distortions affect different groups of Americans differently. American merchants are harmed by the underpricing of Postal Service delivery for foreign e-commerce packages. At the same time, American buyers of foreign e-commerce merchandise benefit. U.S. commercial mailers benefit if postage rates for outbound bulk mail are set below actual costs. Domestic U.S. mailers, however, are paying a little bit more to subsidize this general underpricing of international mail services. In both inbound and outbound markets, however, competing American air carriers and freight forwarders are harmed. They cannot compete in the transportation portion of the international postal market if the destination Post will not give them the same delivery rates as it gives the origin Post.

These various distortions do not truly offset because the groups that are harmed are not the same as those who benefit. Nonetheless, it is possible to roughly estimate the “net financial transfer” for a country as a whole. The costs associated with these price distortions are considerable. In December 2015, Copenhagen Economics, an independent Danish consulting firm, published a report for the Postal Regulatory Commission on the net financial transfers between 154 post offices worldwide, because of UPU rules. It estimated that in 2014 the net transfer totaled $1.4 billion, with about 70 percent of this net transfer due to terminal dues for small packages. Almost all the net losses fell on just 15 post offices and their mailers.⁴⁴

Through disparate pricing, the UPU terminal dues system creates opportunities for participants to turn a profit by bypassing the system, and the effort to prevent bypass has led to even more anti-competitive measures. For example, Posts can compete with each other as gateways into the international postal system by offering to give all customers, not just their own citizens, the benefits of low terminal dues rates. This possibility has, for example, induced some large U.S. mailers to transmit their international mail to such countries as the Netherlands for postal distribution to European addressees. This practice is called “remail.” Another way to bypass the terminal dues system is for Posts to open offices in each other territories — called “extraterritorial offices of exchange” or “ETOEs” — and compete directly for outbound international mail. As Deputy Assistant Attorney General Donna Patterson of the Antitrust Division of the Justice Department explained to Congress in 2000, such competition among Posts “has provided consumers with greater options in mail delivery, and significant benefits in the price and quality of international mail service.”⁴⁵ In response, the UPU has adopted a series of measures to restrain development of remail and ETOEs. The objective is to ensure that each Post has an advantage in the market for outbound mail originating its national territory. Such provisions, however, appear to be contrary to the postal laws and at a minimum run counter to the spirit of antitrust policy in most developed countries, including the United States and the European Union.

In summary, the UPU has skewed both terminal dues and international competition to the advantage of some Posts and to the disadvantage of other Posts, domestic merchants, and private carriers.

During her testimony to the Subcommittee on Postal Service of the House Government Reform Committee, Ms. Patterson went on to say, “We are pleased with the concession the U.S. Delegation obtained at the Beijing Congress [of the UPU] on terminal dues reform.” That was in 2000: there has been little serious reform in the intervening sixteen years. A fair terminal dues structure aligned with domestic postage rates, regardless of country, would eliminate most, if not all, the distortions in the present system.

Terrorism and the Evolution of Sophisticated Customs and Security Controls for International (Non-Postal) Packages

The terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, prompted Congress, in the Trade Act of 2002, to require carriers to provide U.S. customs authorities with electronic data describing all cargo to be brought into or sent from the United States prior to the arrival or departure of the cargo.⁴⁶ In December 2003, the Department of Homeland Security implemented this requirement by adopting the Automated Manifest System (AMS), which defines a comprehensive electronic manifest which must be submitted by air carriers and other parties either upon departure from a foreign airport, or four hours before arrival in the U.S., depending on the port where the cargo is embarked.⁴⁷

The Trade Act of 2002 did not, however, require the international postal system to file advance electronic manifest data for postal items arriving in the U.S. The act provides that, “With respect to requirements imposed on carriers, the Secretary, in consultation with the Postmaster General, shall determine whether it is appropriate to impose the same or similar requirements on shipments by the United States Postal Service. If the Secretary determines that such requirements are appropriate, then they shall be set forth in the regulations.” Fourteen years later, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has still not extended the advance electronic manifesting requirements to inbound international mail.

In 2010, another terrorist incident prompted an extension of data-filing requirements in the U.S. On October 29, 2010, explosives were discovered in two UPS packages collected in Yemen for delivery to synagogues in Chicago.⁴⁸ The bombs were manufactured by an Al Qaeda cell in Yemen which disguised the bombs as printer ink cartridges. Security authorities were tipped off to the presence of the bombs in the UPS system. Because express carriers like UPS electronically track all shipments, security authorities could “go straight to the illicit cargo.”⁴⁹ Nonetheless, the threat from bombs in relatively small packages was dramatically highlighted.

The Yemeni incident prompted the Department of Homeland Security to adopt a voluntary program in 2012 called the Air Cargo Advance Screening or ACAS program.⁵⁰ Under ACAS, air carriers are encouraged to provide CBP with a basic set of eight security-related data on shipments destined for the U.S. prior to consolidation and loading the cargo on an aircraft. The objective is to give CBP an opportunity to issue a “do not load” order to the carrier. ACAS is still a pilot program. The first participants were the express carriers, including FedEx and UPS. The program has been extended to include passenger airlines and freight forwarders. Although ACAS is still only a pilot program, most observers have branded it a success, and in July 2016 CBP extended the program to July 26, 2017.⁵¹ CBP intends to make ACAS mandatory when it is satisfied that it can be implemented smoothly. The European Commission and Canada are pursuing similar programs.⁵² The Posts do not participate in the ACAS program.

The UPU Convention does not address the customs entry of postal shipments except to say that Posts “shall be authorized to submit items to customs control, according to the legislation of those countries.”⁵³ At the same time, the Convention exempts Posts from liability under national customs laws.⁵⁴ This relieves the Posts of a crucial incentive to pressure each other for complete and accurate customs and security data.

The special customs procedures for postal shipments developed by the UPU are the result of Regulations issued by the Postal Operations Council (POC). The POC is a permanent committee of 40 Posts dominated by the largest and most commercially active Posts. The POC has adopted two simplified “customs declarations” which are to be completed by the mailer and affixed to the postal envelope or package. The simpler form, the CN 22 form, is a 2.5 inch by 3 inch green label that has spaces for a description of the item, the weight, and the value. The CN 22 is used for shipments valued less than about $400. A more detailed form, the CN 23, is used for higher value shipments. Since the CN 22 and CN 23 are applicable to all postal shipments worldwide, the POC has, in essence, adopted for Posts (and only for Posts) a simplified customs entry procedure that is applicable in all countries. This replaces the patchwork of national customs regulations that other cargo carriers must contend with. Under the UPU Constitution, POC Regulations are binding on national governments.

In 2012, the UPU Congress in Doha added a new provision of the Convention to forestall the development of multiple national security regulations like ACAS. Article 9 of the 2012 Convention accepts that postal shipments should eventually be subject to advance electronic data requirements, but gives the UPU a substantial role in deciding what and when.

1. Member countries and their designated operators shall observe the security requirements defined in the UPU security standards … This strategy shall, in particular, include the principle of complying with requirements for providing electronic advance data on postal items identified in implementing provisions … adopted by the Council of Administration and Postal Operations Council. …
2. Any security measures applied in the international postal transport chain must be commensurate with the risks or threats that they seek to address, and must be implemented without hampering worldwide mail flows or trade by taking into consideration the specificities of the mail network. Security measures that have a potential global impact on postal operations must be implemented in an internationally coordinated and balanced manner, with the involvement of the relevant stakeholders.

Armed with these legal provisions, the UPU has resisted the application of national customs and security regulations to postal shipments. In 2014, as part of a modernization of its customs and security programs, the European Union proposed to require post offices to provide advance electronic security data similar to that required in the U.S. by ACAS beginning on May 1, 2016. The EU program would apply only to EMS and parcel post shipments; submission of similar data for the much larger volume of small packets would be required at a later date. The UPU protested to EU against this program arguing that “[t]he UPU is the sole specialized agency recognized by the United Nations for action in the field of international postal services,” and urged the EU to delay the application of security requirements to postal package until “a global consensus and solutions can be implemented” with “proper transitional measures.”⁵⁵ The EU has postponed the application of customs and security requirements to postal shipments, apparently until at least the end of 2020.

At the same time, under pressure for aviation security and customs authorities, both national and international, the UPU is gradually taking steps toward providing at least some advance electronic data to customs and security authorities. Over several years, the POC has developed a “roadmap” for implementing a “Postal Model” for advanced electronic data to be provided by Posts.⁵⁶ The core data to be conveyed is defined by the paper “customs declarations” — the simple CN 22 form and more detailed CN 23 form. According to the Postal Model, the origin Post would assemble the CN 22 and CN 23 information provided by mailers into an electronic file. The data file would be limited to postal shipments containing “goods”; the POC has exempted letters, postcards, and printed papers from national advance electronic data regulations.⁵⁷ The origin Post would be responsible for providing basic ACAS-like security data to customs (or the destination Post) in the destination country while the air carrier (or the destination Post) would be responsible for filing the more detailed AMS-like customs data with customs in the destination country based on the shipment-level data supplied by the origin post office. In February 2016, the UPU approved a version of the roadmap that calls for the introduction of the Postal Model over four years, from early 2016 through the end of 2019.⁵⁸

The provision of such data would be an important step forward, but it would be a far cry from placing the Postal Service in the same legal position as private carriers when it comes to import of international packages. Unlike private carriers, the Postal Service would not be required to assume the obligations and liabilities of the “nominal consignee” and (for most shipments) “importer of record.”

In the United States, the disparity between U.S. legal requirements and UPU practices was sharpened by enactment of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) in 2006. With respect to the application of customs and security laws to international postal shipments, the PAEA declared:

The Customs Service and other appropriate Federal agencies shall apply the customs laws of the United States and all other laws relating to the importation or exportation of such shipments [competitive postal shipments] in the same manner to both shipments by the Postal Service and similar shipments by private companies.

The Secretary of State was further directed to exert maximum efforts “to encourage the governments of other countries to make available to the Postal Service and private companies a range of nondiscriminatory customs procedures.”⁵⁹

Unlike the Trade Act of 2002 and other initiatives of CBP, the goal of the PAEA was not to prevent acts of terrorism but to ensure fair competition and economic efficiency. Nonetheless, the requirement of equal application of customs and security laws serves the same end. The customs and security controls developed for cargo generally and private package delivery services should apply equally to packages conveyed by the international postal system since potential terrorists will send packages by whatever means is least protected.

As of today, notwithstanding the requirements of the PAEA, the customs and security controls for packages entering the U.S. — including identical packages arriving on the same aircraft — are vastly different depending on whether the packages are conveyed by the international postal system or not (with a handful of exceptions).⁶⁰ As provided in the ACAS program, express carriers like FedEx and UPS and other cargo carriers electronically transmit basic security data to CBP before they load a package into a plane bound for the U.S. Foreign Posts provide no pre-loading data. As required by the Automated Manifest System, express carriers and other cargo carriers electronically transmit to CBP in advance of arrival in the U.S. an electronic manifest that provides the detailed information needed to make the customs entry for each package conveyed.

Neither the foreign Posts nor the Postal Service provide any advance electronic data on packages conveyed by the international postal system. On arrival, postal shipments are presented to CBP with paper CN 22 or CN 23 affixed and no electronic summary. The Postal Service does not make an entry for any shipments. In principle, CBP is supposed to search through these shipments — the Postal Service imports hundreds of thousands of documents and packages each day — and identify shipments which may violate U.S. law or require payment duty. If CBP finds a package that requires customs entry, a CBP official completes a “mail entry” unless the value of the package exceeds $2,500. In practice, it is simply impossible for CBP to physically inspect any more than a tiny fraction of postal shipments.

In essence, CBP has no information on what the international postal stream is bringing into the country. In the wake of 9/11 and the 2010 Yemeni incident, CBP has developed sophisticated electronic data filing requirements and analysis procedures to counter use of the international package delivery system by terrorists. Yet these controls are not applied to the largest flow of packages entering into the U.S.: the packages shipped via the international postal system. Instead, the U.S. has, to an unfortunate degree, ceded control over the flow of international postal packages to the UPU’s Postal Operations Council, a committee of 40 commercially minded postal officials with the authority to legislate international regulations binding on the U.S.

The Threat of Illicit Drugs in International Postal Packages

We cannot allow our Federal Government and the U.S. Postal Service to become the drug carriers of choice for our drug dealers.

—Rep. John Mica (R-FL), Subcommittee on Criminal Justice, Drug Policy, and Human Resources, Committee on Government Reform, May 26, 2000.

On Thursday, November 3, 2016, Park City, Utah, police confirmed that two local 13-year-old boys who had died suddenly within days of one another had overdosed on a synthetic opioid known as “pink” or U-47700. Search warrants revealed that the two teens had ordered the substance from China and had it mailed to a friend’s house because the boys’ parents were regularly screening the mail for drugs. According to the Salt Lake Tribune, their friend had received the package from mainland China, and it contained “a clear bag with a white powder substance.”

While the coverage has not specified how the package was mailed from China, it may have been delivered to Park City by the U.S. Postal Service.⁶¹

Although the collection and analysis of advance electronic data for international packages was originally introduced to support counterterrorism initiatives, it has become increasingly apparent that this information is also needed to fight what may be an even more deadly threat: the traffic in illicit drugs.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 28,000 people died of opioid drug overdoses in 2014, although many experts believe the actual number is much higher.⁶²

For decades the illegal drug trade has had a devastating impact on American communities, families, schools, and individuals. Recently the problem has become even more acute, thanks to the growing availability of synthetic drugs that mimic the effects of illicit substances such as heroin and marijuana, but with far more dangerous and lethal effects. In many cases these synthetics are made with chemicals that can be cheaply purchased online. Despite Rep. Mica’s warning more than sixteen years ago, there is a palpable risk that use of the international postal system to transport illicit drugs may have, if anything, grown worse.⁶³

Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) expressed this concern in an April 2016 Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee roundtable: “Once drugs are purchased online, they are mailed through foreign postal systems, [and] delivered within the United States by the U.S. Postal Service.”⁶⁴

Because there is no standard system of providing manifests on contents for customs purposes, there is no system for preventing the mail’s use for illegal commodities. As Senator Tom Carper noted in the same April 2016 roundtable, “while the U.S. Postal Service provides advance electronic data to foreign countries about mail originating in the United States, foreign nations do not always reciprocate and provide us with similar information that we need. This failure to share makes it harder for CBP to do its job when mail and mail cargo arrive here.”⁶⁵

As noted by Senator Ron Johnson, while numerous federal agencies are working hard to prevent illegal drugs from reaching America, “the U.S. Postal Service is compelled by treaties on international mail exchange to deliver mail on behalf of foreign posts. Because they cannot control which individuals use these international services, the Postal Service can become an unwitting drug courier.”

In written testimony submitted to the Commission, Senator Johnson explained that his committee has held eighteen sets of hearings on border security, four of which centered on the current opioid epidemic sweeping the country. What they found was that “numerous Federal agencies, including the Drug Enforcement Agency and Customs and Border Protection, agree that illicit goods, including deadly chemicals and counterfeit goods, are primarily produced in and exported from a small number of countries, including China and India.”

LegitScript, a verification and monitoring service for online pharmacies, estimates that there are 30,000 to 35,000 illegal online pharmacies operating at any one time.⁶⁶ How many of these illicit drugs are imported via the international postal system? In 1999, of the 200 billion pieces of mail (domestic and international) handled by the Postal Service, some 15,000 pounds of illegal drugs were seized.⁶⁷ Nearly all that illegal trade came from foreign sources. The big concern at the time was ecstasy, one of the first notorious synthetic drugs. Yet even then the sheer volume of illegal drugs entering the U.S. by mail was making the task of monitoring and intercepting those drugs extremely difficult. As Ms. Betsy Durant, Director, Office of Trade Programs and Office of Field Operations at the U.S. Customs Service, told the House members in the 2000 hearing, “Customs is feeling pretty overwhelmed on all fronts.”⁶⁸

Ms. Durant’s comments were made prior to the explosive growth in international e-commerce, which, it seems reasonable to surmise, has made the problem even larger. While exact numbers are not known, Brenda Smith of CBP told the commission that her agency seized 35 tons of illegal drugs in the mails last year alone, and more than 11,000 shipments of counterfeit goods.⁶⁹

A good example of the heightened risk today is fentanyl, which is fifty times more potent than heroin and killed twice as many people in 2013 than the year before. In fact, the total number of drug-related deaths increased by 5,400 people in 2015 as fentanyl jumped onto the list of the top five most lethal drugs — a drug which also killed the rock star Prince.⁷⁰ A recent front-page article in The Wall Street Journal, based on a recent internal U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration intelligence briefing, concluded that fentanyl is arriving in the U.S. as part of “a vast drug-distribution network beginning in China that feeds lethal fentanyl to the Americas.”⁷¹

As The Wall Street Journal reported, much of the trafficking of fentanyl flows from China to Mexican production labs on the country’s Pacific coast. But some also involves small-time traffickers here in the U.S. buying fentanyl and its analog drugs online. Whether on a small or grand scale, this illicit traffic often comes via foreign posts and the Postal Service.

Why would dealers in fentanyl and similar drugs use the international postal system to ship their goods to the United States? These drugs are so concentrated that even quantities small enough to ship in large envelopes or small packages are commercially valuable. For example, a single kilogram of pure fentanyl can produce up to 100 million recreational doses, or 500,000 lethal doses, which means a packet of only a few grams can service a drug dealer’s entire clientele. The international postal system offers an almost risk-free means of transporting such shipments to the U.S. CBP has no way to monitor such shipments as they cross the border. And unlike private carriers, the international postal system produces no “paper trail” that can be used to investigate past shipments — a major stumbling block for law enforcement agencies. Even if an illicit shipment is discovered in the mail, there is almost no chance of finding the foreign mailer.

There is no way to survey those who traffic in illegal drugs like fentanyl to find out how they ship their goods.⁷² However, between January 2015 and May 2015 LegitScript did a study of a closely related issue, the shipping method used in 29 test buys from illegal online pharmacies.⁷³ LegitScript found that all the purchases were being shipped into the U.S., yet only two of the illegal pharmacies originated in the U.S.

The other 27 test buys originated from foreign countries. All sellers used the national postal services to move the illegal drugs. “In no case did US Customs stop or intercept the package,” the study’s researchers concluded. They note, “In all cases, the US Postal Service provided the distribution once the drugs reached US soil” — without asking what was contained in the packages.

The report also estimated that of the 30,000 to 35,000 websites selling prescription drugs, 5,000 to 10,000 specialize in designer drugs. Approximately 95-97 percent of those Internet pharmacies operate illegally — and 90 percent specifically target the U.S.

Under UPU terminal dues rules (see Section III) those foreign illegal pharmacies also get a discount on their postage. This means that the international postal system is both providing transportation for the illegal prescription drugs, while also subsidizing the trade. Just as Chinese e-commerce firms have taken advantage of the UPU loophole to build their businesses, so have traffickers in illegal prescription drugs.⁷⁴

In sum, although the volume of illegal drugs in the international postal system is unknown, the extreme risk to the health of Americans is apparent. The advance electronic data filing requirements that CBP has developed to prevent the use of international package delivery services by terrorists is also needed to fight the international traffic in illegal drugs.

Lost Customs Duties on International Postal Packages

The absence of reliable data on packages imported via the international postal system also adversely affects the revenue of the U.S. government. As a matter of national law, the United States has the right to impose customs duties on certain goods entering the country from foreign countries — although most industrialized countries also exempt goods below a certain value (de minimis value) from those duties. For shipments with a value higher than the de minimis level, the CBP collects an amount of duty determined by Congress that varies with the type of good imported.

Duty is payable regardless of whether the shipment arrives by post or by private carrier. For postal packages, however, CBP is restricted by the lack of advance electronic data. Duty is collected only when a CBP inspector happens to discover a dutiable package in a vast sea of non-dutiable documents and low-value packages. Customs inspection of international mail deliveries is a matter of physical checks and selective searches based on the country of origin, size of package, or other extrinsic factors. The process is unsystematic and even haphazard, due to the volume of packages, especially small packages, entering the U.S. by mail, and the volume of non-postal items customs inspectors also have to handle.

In the unlikely event that a CBP inspector discovers a dutiable postal package, because of the due to UPU Convention rules, neither the sender nor the destination post office (nor anyone else) is liable for incomplete or inaccurate information in the UPU customs form attached to the package.

Although the problem is apparent, no one really knows its extent. Given the explosive growth of volume in international e-commerce, however, potentially large sums of customs duties are not collected. One recent study casts some light on this issue.

The consultancy firm Copenhagen Economics studied the shipment of international packages to the United States, by value and type of merchandise.⁷⁵ Their report found that exact data on the volume of packages imported via the international postal system into the U.S. are not publicly available. Nonetheless, the study estimated that “at a minimum, 179 million ‘non-letter’ items enter the U.S. annually” (CBP’s estimate presented to the commission was slightly higher). These items typically include music and video DVDs and CDs, medicines and dietary supplements, jewelry and small electronics items — the common commodities of today’s e-commerce.

The report also found that “the US Postal Service will likely receive a greater share of non-letter to letter inbound postal items than many” of the 49 countries examined in another unrelated UPU survey. As of 2012 there were more than 34 million Americans engaged in cross-border e-commerce transactions, with that number forecast to grow to 42 million by 2018 — with more than $80 billion being spent on imported e-commerce goods.

Furthermore, Copenhagen Economics’ researchers found that, in a series of test shipments for which entry and duty payments were required, international express carriers submitted 98 percent of the necessary customs declarations to CBP, but not a single customs declaration was made on packages that were shipped into the U.S. via the international postal system.

The report determined that “[t]he absence of dues and fees collected on postal packages inbound into the U.S. translates to a loss estimated at over $1.06 billion annually in public sector income [in 2014].” Since the de minimis exemption has been raised from $200 to $800, that almost certainly overstates the amount of lost customs duties in the future. Nonetheless, lost customs duties do represent income that could be used to strengthen CBP’s inspection process, or help fund a more efficient electronics system for identifying and tracking international packages entering the U.S.

Conclusion of the 2016 Universal Postal Convention

On October 8, 2016, while this report was being prepared, the plenipotentiary delegates to the UPU Congress in Istanbul signed a new Universal Postal Convention that will be effective from January 1, 2018, through December 31, 2021. The State Department signed for the United States. The 2016 UPU Convention makes small changes in the terminal dues system and adds new restrictions on ETOE competition. The customs and security provisions in the 2016 Convention are unchanged from the 2012 Convention.⁷⁶

As required by the PAEA, the State Department asked the Postal Regulatory Commission to review the new terminal dues agreement before the Istanbul Congress convened. The PRC is required to determine whether the terminal dues that are to be adopted by international agreement are “consistent with the standards and criteria established by the Commission under Section 3622” of U.S. postal laws, title 39 of the U.S. Code, Section 3622 which states that the PRC must “establish … a modern system for regulating rates and classes for market-dominant products.”⁷⁷ The PRC defines the term “market-dominant product” to include all inbound letter post mail. Hence, the task of the PRC was to decide whether terminal dues proposed for 2016 UPU Convention were consistent with the mandate in Section 3622.

On August 31, 2016, after soliciting public comments, the PRC transmitted its views to the State Department. The PRC stated that it was unable to decide whether the proposed terminal dues are consistent with U.S. postal law because the four Commissioners were divided 2 to 2 (there is one vacancy at the PRC). This non-decision was accompanied by two well-reasoned letters written by Acting Chairman Robert Taub and Commissioner Mark Action, both of whom found the proposed terminal dues inconsistent with the criteria of U.S. postal laws.

“Even if the Postal Service projections for proposed terminal dues rates are fully accurate for the first time in history,” Acting Chairman Taub wrote, “domestic mailers will continue to subsidize the entry of Inbound Letter Post by foreign mailers.” He noted that the “exploding” volume of small packets means that in effect the Postal Service is subsidizing e-commerce from foreign countries thanks to non-compensatory terminal dues. He added, “Simple improvement of existing below cost rates to ‘less below’ cost rates [the gist of the proposed UPU changes] is not a foundation for declaring proposed terminal dues rates consistent with the law in 2016.” Taub also found the terminal dues were inconsistent with no less than seven of the nine objectives in 39 U.S.C. § 3622, from the need “to maximize incentives to reduce costs and increase efficiency” and “assure adequate revenues, including retained earnings, to maintain financial stability” to “enhance mail security and deter terrorism.” Taub concluded, “I am compelled to find the terminal dues proposals inconsistent with the law.”

Commissioner Mark Acton concurred: “It is my view that as a function of emergent global market realities alone, these [UPU] proposals are becoming increasing problematic with respect to meeting the relevant statutory objectives and factors.” He suggested, “If a more market-centric resolution cannot be brokered within the UPU, perhaps a coordinated member state initiative without the UPU offers a brighter, longer term prospect toward driving fuller cost coverage and reducing unfair trade distortions.”

As of yet, the parties who have supported the new UPU terminal dues agreement—the Postal Service, State Department, and two PRC Commissioners—have not offered formal analysis to support the proposition that new rates are consistent with the standards and criteria of U.S. postal law.

According to estimates developed by Jim Campbell, a leading consultant in this area and member of the Hudson Commission, using plausible estimates regarding the development of international postal services in the future, the terminal dues provisions in the 2016 UPU Convention would likely:

• Reduce the Postal Service’s pricing preference for delivery of Chinese e-commerce packages (i.e., the discount compared to similar domestic U.S. rates) from approximately 65 percent to 50-55 percent by 2021.
• Continue the Postal Service’s 50-55 percent discounts for delivery of e-commerce packages from industrialized countries, including Japan and Germany.

It appears, however, that this slight reduction in pricing preference for Chinese and other e-commerce businesses will be more than offset by the continuing rise in e-commerce imports, particularly from China. The total amount of discounts given to foreign e-commerce postal packages is thus likely to increase substantially.⁷⁸

Moreover, it appears that the losses on the delivery of inbound international letter post will more than offset any benefits the Postal Service might reap from underpriced terminal dues for outbound mail. According to Campbell’s model, the Postal Service could suffer a negative net financial transfer of about $1 billion over the four years from 2018-2021. In a recent, unrelated paper, the authors of the Copenhagen Economic studies for the PRC estimate that the Postal Service will experience a net financial transfer of $233 million (SDR 170 million) in 2018 alone.⁷⁹

Although the 2016 UPU Convention makes no changes in the customs and security provisions of the UPU, in fall 2016 members in both houses of Congress introduced bills that would override the Convention and require packages (“non-letter class mail”) imported via the international postal system to meet the same customs and security requirements as applied to packages by private carriers. The lead author of the “Synthetics Trafficking and Overdose Prevention Act of 2016” or the “STOP Act” is Senator Rob Portman of Ohio.⁸⁰ In informal comments on the Portman bill, the Department of Homeland Security repeatedly argued it may be inconsistent with U.S. obligations under the Universal Postal Convention. It appears likely these bills will be taken up in the next session of Congress beginning in January 2017.

In sum, the 2016 UPU Convention obliges the United States to comply with the main provisions of the current Convention until the end of 2021, including submission to Regulations adopted by the UPU Postal Operations Council.

Under the Convention and other acts of the UPU, the United States has only two options to mitigate some of the adverse effects of the UPU Convention described above:

• The U.S. and other like-minded countries can agree to a multilateral terminal dues agreement in which the charges for delivery of inbound international mail are properly aligned with equivalent domestic postage.⁸¹
• The U.S. and other like-minded countries can establish a Restricted Union or Special Agreement in which both the charges for delivery of inbound international mail are properly aligned with equivalent domestic postage and each country has the right to apply customs and security laws in the same manner to international documents and packages, whether conveyed by postal or private carriers. However, the legal flexibility to deviate from the UPU Convention and Regulations in such an arrangement is unclear.⁸²

In both cases, these reforms would apply only to postal items exchanged between the U.S. and like-minded countries, not to postal items received from the rest of the world.

Alternatively, the United States can enact legislation that overrides the 2016 UPU Convention as matter of U.S. law. A new U.S. statute would be binding on the Postal Service and the Executive Departments. However, as a matter of international law, such a step may place the United States in breach of its commitments under the acts of the UPU.⁸³ Under the UPU Constitution, the Convention and Regulations are binding on all member countries. To avoid such a breach, the United States would first have to give one year’s notice to other UPU member countries of its intention to withdraw from the UPU before enacting contrary legislation.⁸⁴ On the other hand, the practical consequences of breaking the 2016 UPU Convention are considered minimal. The likelihood that other Posts would refuse to deliver mail from the United States or send their international mail to the United States is low. The exchange of mail between Posts is in their mutual commercial interest.

Still another option is for the United States to consider withdrawing from the UPU Convention altogether. Such a move would require taking an additional step involving Congress, which the Commission has included in its policy recommendations listed below.

The Way Forward

After completing our meetings, the members of the Hudson Postal Commission agreed that our final report should include an analysis of the problems posed by the current UPU Convention, as well as other extrinsic factors, that have led to a growing “crisis in the mails.”

We include a series of policy recommendations, concrete steps that Congress and a new administration can take and/or initiate, both unilaterally and in conjunction with other leading governments, to correct many of the problems posed by the current status quo, in both the economic and the national security spheres.

Limit the Department of State’s negotiating mandate and authority to be consistent with U.S. law as well as competition, trade, and national security policies.

Experience over the last several decades has amply demonstrated that incorrectly establishing rates and operational details via intergovernmental agreement that affect the exchange of international postal items causes large economic distortions. Congress should limit the scope of the State Department’s negotiating authority to agreements that are consistent with Section 407(a) of Title 39, U.S. Code, and in a manner consistent with U.S. competition, trade, and national security policies. In particular, the Department of State should not be able to establish rates or other operations standards on behalf of the Postal Service by intergovernmental agreement (any more than it should be negotiating an aviation agreement establishing the business arrangements for a specific airline). Nor should the State Department be authorized to negotiate exceptions to the customs and security laws of the United States. Customs and security agreements relating to international postal shipments, as for all other international shipments, should be developed by the Department of Homeland Security in cooperation with the World Customs Organization. Intergovernmental postal agreements should be limited to agreements that affect U.S. providers of postal and other delivery services in a competitively neutral manner.

Clarify the application of antitrust policy and trade law to international postal services.

Congress should require the State Department to receive sign-off from the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice stating that any UPU proposal doesn’t raise anti-competitive concerns or provides a distortion to competition between Postal services and private carriers. Similarly, the Department of Commerce and the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative should similarly certify to the State Department that any UPU proposal is consistent with U.S. trade policy and trade commitments.

Several studies over the last three decades point to potential inconsistencies between UPU provisions (and other inter-postal agreements), and (1) the spirit of antitrust laws of the U.S. and other industrialized countries and (2) the General Agreement on Trade in Services.

Appoint a high-level commission to review U.S. participation in the UPU and make recommendations for steps needed to advance the national interest.

Congress should consider appointing a high-level commission to review and reconsider the United States participation in the UPU. Although reasonable persons can disagree about the magnitude of the issues posed, the competitive inequities, economic distortions, adverse financial effects for the Postal Service, and significant risks to the security, health, and revenue of the United States summarized in this report are not in doubt. Also beyond reasonable argument is the fundamental inappropriateness of subjecting the U.S. government to binding international Regulations enacted by the UPU Postal Operations Council, a committee of foreign postal officials (with the exception of the Postal Service delegate). Nor is it reasonable that the United States needs the agreement of the UPU to take a reservation to a UPU provision that is inconsistent with the laws and policies of the United States.

The world of international communications and commerce has changed fundamentally in the last few decades. The international postal system is well along in a transition from a network of government postal administrations whose primary purpose to facilitate the exchange of letters and printed matter between nations to an association of corporatized and privatized successor businesses. Those businesses are vying to capture e-commerce packages in competition with private sector companies and, increasingly, with each other. Moreover, the development of mature global aviation and electronic communications networks —supported by data-processing capabilities unimaginable two or three decades ago — has radically changed the operational problem that the UPU was established to address. That original problem was the movement of a relatively small number of mail bags between approximately 200 national offices.

In short, the time has come to reconsider the UPU and U.S. participation in it.

At the same time, the United States can, and should, support the high social purposes for which the UPU was originally created. In the words of the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA), “to promote and encourage communications between peoples by efficient operation of international postal services and other international delivery services for cultural, social, and economic purposes.”

Likewise, the United States can and should assist citizens in needy developing countries to sustain basic cultural, social, and economic communications with other nations of the world. Yet it is reasonable to ask whether the UPU as currently organized is an appropriate vehicle for accomplishing these noble ends in the twenty-first century.

Create an inter-agency task force to negotiate an agreement among industrialized countries establishing non-discriminatory principles for terminal dues and other charges for the delivery of inbound international mail with a target date of January 1, 2018.

While considering whether to remain in the UPU under present rules, Congress should also create a task force composed of representatives of, at least, the Department of State, the Department of Commerce, the Department of Justice, and Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, to negotiate new terminal dues agreements among industrialized countries. The 2016 UPU Convention permits such alternative arrangements.

The new agreement should be based on the principle that, in respect to exchanges of mail between parties to the agreement, each national Post will charge the same rates for the same services regardless of the nationality or residence of the sender. Put simply, there is no reason why the Postal Service should charge a citizen of Germany or Canada or Japan more or less than an American for the same delivery service. The agreement should also provide that the national regulator in each country will protect the rights of foreign mailers in the same manner as it protects the rights of its own citizens. Each Post Office should be allowed to the same commercial flexibility in international commercial relations as it has in domestic commercial relations, but no Post should discriminate based on nationality.

Such an agreement is politically feasible. The laws of (almost) all industrialized countries reflect a reasonably similar approach to the governance of international postal services. There is no justification for perpetuation of rate discrimination among industrialized countries based on the nationality of the sender.

Although an agreement among industrialized countries will not eliminate losses on the delivery of e-commerce packages from Asia, it will eliminate the majority of other distortions created by the 2016 UPU terminal dues system. It will also substantially enhance the possibility of successful collective action to eliminate discounts for postal e-commerce imports from Asia beginning in 2022, if not before.

Initiate a study at the World Customs Organization to harmonize rules for customs and security controls that could be applied to all low-value packages.

Another important step in reforming the international postal package system is for U.S. Customs and Border Protection to join forces with the countries that make up the World Customs Organization (WCO). The goal is to craft a standard simplified customs form with uniform customs rules that apply to all inbound international low-value parcels and packages whether conveyed by Posts or private carriers. Such a system necessarily relies on the transmission of electronic data in advance of the arrival of packages in the port of entry. As Brenda Smith of CBP testified before our commission, for postal packages, the vast majority of its customs information still comes from paper forms, as opposed to electronic form. Switching to electronic data collection not only helps to standardize the process of gathering customs data, but also speeds the dissemination of that data. It also enables CBP to act more quickly in advance of suspicious or dangerous packages from foreign destinations.

Moreover, the growing volume of e-commerce packages and e-commerce players implies that electronic data is the best way to stay ahead of an increasingly complex game.

Increase Postal Regulatory Commission oversight.

The PRC can have an important role in providing active oversight of the consistency of UPU rules and regulations with U.S. law. It can also ensure that the Postal Service provide more timely, accurate, and transparent data on its international postal package business, including outbound business.

Apply U.S. customs and security laws and regulations in the same manner to postal shipments and non-postal shipments, while allowing a reasonable transition period for foreign Posts in developing countries.

Congress should ensure that U.S. customs and security laws, and all other laws that regulate imports and exports, are applied the same manner to postal shipments and non-postal shipments. Indeed, in the 2006 PAEA, Congress adopted a statutory mandate to this effect for all “competitive products” (as defined by the Postal Regulatory Commission) conveyed by the Postal Service and private carriers. 39 U.S.C. § 407(e)(2). This statute, however, has remained without effect for ten years. It is apparent that further, more explicit legislation is needed to protect the security, health, and revenue of the United States.

Congress should also extend the scope of non-discriminatory treatment to include all postal shipments, not only “competitive products.” For inbound shipments, transportation services for all types of documents and packages are competitive up to the port of entry. In almost all countries, Posts and private carriers compete in the “upstream” portion of the international market, i.e., in the collection and transportation of bulk shipments. In the United States, this is also true even though the Postal Service may be the market dominant supplier of delivery services (as in the case of letters). It may be reasonable (as the UPU maintains) for U.S. customs and security regulations to apply differently to documents and goods. There is, however, no apparent reason why the regulations should apply differently to documents or goods based on the identity of the carrier.

At the same time, however, the Commission recognizes that the UPU’s concerns on this issue are legitimate. CBP should be given reasonable flexibility to adjust the application of customs and security regulations to take into account the technical capabilities of Posts in developing countries, especially regarding non-commercial mail. On the one hand, CBP should not place demands on foreign Posts that unreasonably impede the flow of mail.

On the other hand, CBP should not risk the security or health of Americans simply to accommodate a foreign Post that is reluctant to invest in necessary operational improvements. CBP, working in coordination with the World Customs Organization, should have the discretion to strike an appropriate balance.

The Hudson Institute Postal Commission

The Hudson Institute Postal Commission convened on September 15 and September 16, 2016 to analyze the impact of the Universal Postal Union’s (UPU) international package shipment regulations on the United States and to compose a series of recommendations. The group of seven commissioners heard testimony from experts in the fields of national security, customs and border protection, e-commerce, and international shipping. The Commission ultimately located key areas of concern as a result of UPU regulations, which included disadvantaging the competitiveness of U.S. merchants, facilitating the shipment of illicit drugs into the U.S., increasing threats to national security, and imposing costs on the United States Postal Service and U.S. Customs and Border Protection. The Commission’s recommendations outline steps for mitigating the negative effects imposed by current UPU regulations.

Dr. Arthur Herman would like to thank the commissioners for their help with the research and writing for this report.

Commission Members:

Dr. Arthur Herman (Chair) is a Senior Fellow at Hudson Institute. He is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestselling How the Scots Invented the Modern World (2001); the Pulitzer Prize Finalist Gandhi and Churchill (2008); To Rule the Waves: How the British Navy Shaped the Modern World (nominated for the UK’s Mountbatten Prize); and the highly acclaimed Freedom’s Forge: How American Business Produced Victory in World War II, which The Economist magazine picked as one of the Best Books of 2012. His most recent work, Douglas MacArthur: American Warrior, was published by Random House in June of 2016. His previous book, The Cave and the Light: Plato Versus Aristotle and the Struggle for the Soul of Western Civilization, was published by Random House in 2013. Educated at the University of Minnesota and Johns Hopkins University in history and classics (Ph.D. 1985), Dr. Herman is a frequent contributor on defense, energy, and technology issues to Commentary magazine, the New York Post, National Review, and The Wall Street Journal. He was also the first non-British citizen to be named to the Scottish Arts Council from 2007 to 2009. His newest book 1917: Woodrow Wilson, Vladimir Lenin, and the Year That Created the Global Future will be published by Harper Collins in 2017.

Jim I. Campbell is a lawyer and consultant in Washington, D.C. He is a long- time adviser to Federal Express Corporation on U.S. postal reform and international postal policy. In addition, in recent years he has co-authored, with the German Wissenschaftliches Institute für Kommunikationsdienste, several major studies of European and international postal laws and practices for the European Commission and a review of the history and development of postal law and the postal monopoly in the United States for the Postal Regulatory Commission. Jim Campbell began his career as a staff attorney for the Subcommittee on Administrative Practice and Procedure of United States Senate. In 1976 he joined DHL and led efforts to reform national and international postal, customs, and aviation regulations that impeded the development of the then fledgling international express industry. Jim Campbell was born in Baltimore, Maryland. He graduated from Princeton University and Georgetown University Law Center. He is the author of many articles on postal policy and a book on postal policy and the express industry.

Dr. R. Richard Geddes is a Professor in the Department of Policy Analysis and Management at Cornell University and Director of the Cornell Program in Infrastructure Policy. Geddes is also a core faculty member of the Cornell Institute for Public Affairs (CIPA) and a Visiting Scholar at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). He is a Research Fellow with the Mineta Transportation Institute at San Jose State University. Geddes was also a Fulbright Senior Scholar during the 2009-2010 academic year to study transportation public-private partnerships in Australia, and a Visiting Faculty Fellow at Yale Law School during the 1995-1996 academic year. He has advised numerous Fortune 500 companies, including United Parcel Service and CSX. Geddes’ publications have appeared in numerous academic journals, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Regulatory Economics, Journal of Legal Studies, Journal of Law & Economics, Transportation Research Part A, and Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, among others. Geddes holds MA and Ph.D. degrees in economics from the University of Chicago, and a BS in economics and finance from Towson State University.

Sean Heather is vice president of the U.S. Chamber’s Center for Global Regulatory Cooperation (GRC), which seeks to align trade, regulatory, and competition policy in support of open and competitive markets. He is also executive director of both international policy and antitrust policy. Heather has held a variety of positions during his 18 years at the Chamber, including chief of staff of the Congressional and Public Affairs Division. In addition, he was part of the Chamber’s regional team, heading its Chicago office. During his career at the Chamber, Heather has worked on a number of diverse issues such as international trade and investment, state capitalism, standards, antitrust, tax, labor, health care, environment, energy, transportation, homeland security, immigration, technology, and corporate governance. Before joining the Chamber, Heather worked for the Illinois comptroller and with several political campaigns across the state. He holds an undergraduate degree and an M.B.A. from the University of Illinois.

John Horton is the President and CEO of LegitScript. John sets LegitScript’s overall strategy and oversees its execution. He founded LegitScript in 2007, after working for five years as a drug policy advisor in the White House, where he helped the Drug Czar coordinate national policy on prescription drug abuse, methamphetamine and chemical diversion. He previously worked as a prosecutor and legal counsel to the Oregon House Judiciary Committee. John lived for several years in Tokyo, where he worked in the finance industry and pursued a Master’s degree in International Law.

Dr. John Hudak is deputy director of the Center for Effective Public Management and a senior fellow in Governance Studies. John’s 2016 book, Marijuana: A Short History, offers a unique, up-to-date profile of how cannabis emerged from the shadows of counterculture and illegality to become a serious, even mainstream, public policy issue and source of legal revenue for both businesses and governments. His 2014 Presidential Pork: White House Influence over the Distribution of Federal Grants demonstrates that pork-barrel politics occurs beyond the halls of Congress. John’s work has been recognized for its quality and contribution by the Midwest Political Science Association and the American Political Science Association’s Presidency Research Group. Prior to joining Brookings, John served as the program director and as a graduate fellow at the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions. He holds a B.A. in political science and economics from the University of Connecticut and an M.A. and Ph.D. in political science from Vanderbilt University.

John P. Walters is Chief Operating Officer of Hudson Institute and Director of Hudson Institute Political Studies. As COO, Mr. Walters oversees the Hudson Institute’s operations, including staff and research management. From December 2001 to January 2009, he was director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) and a cabinet member during the Bush Administration. As the nation’s “Drug Czar,” Mr. Walters guided all aspects of federal drug policy and programs—supporting efforts that drove down teen drug use 25 percent, increased substance abuse treatment and screening in the healthcare system and dramatically dropped the availability of cocaine and methamphetamine in the U.S. He also helped build critical programs to counter narcoterrorism in Colombia, Mexico, and Afghanistan. From 1996 until 2001, Mr. Walters served as President of the Philanthropy Roundtable, a national association of charitable foundations and individual donors. His prior government service included work at ONDCP, at its founding in 1989 as Chief of Staff, and later as Deputy Director of Supply Reduction. He was Assistant to the Secretary and Chief of Staff at the U.S. Department of Education during the Reagan Administration. He also served in the Division of Education Programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1982-1985. Mr. Walters has taught political science at Michigan State University’s James Madison College and at Boston College. He holds a BA from Michigan State University and a MA from the University of Toronto.

About the author:
*Arthur Herman, Senior Fellow

Source:
This article was published by the Hudson Institute

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Appendix⁸⁵

Cost to ship to Chicago from San Francisco ^{86, 87}

List of Names and Acronyms

Universal Postal Union UPU
Postal Regulatory Commission PRC
Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act PAEA
United States Postal Service USPS
Extraterritorial Offices of Exchange ETOEs
Automated Manifest System AMS
Customs and Border Protection CBP
Air Cardo Advance Screening ACAS
Postal Operations Council POC
European Union EU
Express Mail Service EMS
World Customs Organization WCO
Cornell Institute for Public Affairs CIPA
American Enterprise Institute AEI
Global Regulatory Cooperation GRC
Office of National Drug Control Policy ONDCP

Armenia has secured a total of 23 medals – 10 golds and 13 silvers – at the MUNDUS VINI 20th Grand International Wine Awards, held in the German town of Neustadt in late February.

19 winemaking companies from Armenia participated in the event, bringing 58 types of wine to the professional jury’s attention.

6,000 types of wine were presented at the awards overall from 44 countries globally.

In terms of the medals it won, Armenia left behind a number of countries including Georgia (4 golds, 7 silvers), Moldova (8 golds, 12 silvers), Macedonia (6 golds, 3 silvers), Romania (6 golds, 5 silvers) and China (1 gold, 1 silver).

New Zealand snatched the same amount of medals as Armenia, both countries placed the 14th among the 44 states represented.

Dwindling populations created a “mutational meltdown” in the genomes of the last wooly mammoths, which had survived on an isolated island until a few thousand years ago. Rebekah Rogers and Montgomery Slatkin of the University of California, Berkeley, report these findings in a study published March 2nd, 2017 in PLOS Genetics.

Woolly mammoths were one of the most common large herbivores in North America, Siberia, and Beringia until a warming climate and human hunters led to their extinction on the mainland about 10,000 years ago. Small island populations persisted until about 3,700 years ago before the species finally disappeared. Researchers compared existing genomes from a mainland mammoth that dates back to 45,000 years ago, when the animal was plentiful, to one that lived about 4,300 years ago. The recent genome came from a mammoth that had lived in a group of about 300 animals on Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean. The analysis showed that the island mammoth had accumulated multiple harmful mutations in its genome, which interfered with gene functions. The animals had lost many olfactory receptors, which detect odors, as well as urinary proteins, which can impact social status and mate choice. The genome also revealed that the island mammoth had specific mutations that likely created an unusual translucent satin coat.

The comparison gives researchers the rare opportunity to see what happens to the genome as a population declines, and supports existing theories of genome deterioration stemming from small population sizes. The study also offers a warning to conservationists: preserving a small group of isolated animals is not sufficient to stop negative effects of inbreeding and genomic meltdown. For those interested in wooly mammoth “de-extinction,” the study demonstrates that some mammoth genomes carry an overabundance of negative mutations.

Rebekah Rogers adds: “When I first started this project, I was excited to be working with the new woolly mammoth sequences, published by Love Dalen’s lab. It was even more exciting when we found an excess of what looked like bad mutations in the mammoth from Wrangel Island. There is a long history of theoretical work about how genomes might change in small populations. Here we got a rare chance to look at snapshots of genomes ‘before’ and ‘after’ a population decline in a single species. The results we found were consistent with this theory that had been discussed for decades.

The mammoth genome analysis was also a great project to do with Monty Slatkin. He has spent his career developing mathematical models of how genomes will look different when population conditions change. With only two specimens to look at, these mathematical models were important to show that the differences between the two mammoths are too extreme to be explained by other factors.”

In September 2015, the German Volkswagen Group, the world’s largest car producer, admitted to having installed “defeat devices” in 11 million diesel cars sold worldwide between 2008 and 2015. The devices were designed to detect and adapt to laboratory tests, making the cars appear to comply with environmental standards when, in fact, they emitted pollutants called nitric oxides, or NOx, at levels that were on average four times the applicable European test-stand limit.

While Volkswagen has issued recalls of affected vehicles in both the U.S. and Europe, scientists at MIT and elsewhere have found the excess emissions has already had an impact on public health. The team previously estimated that the excess emissions generated by 482,000 affected vehicles sold in the U.S. will cause approximately 60 premature deaths across the U.S.

Now the researchers have looked closer to Volkswagen’s home base, examining the health impact from the 2.6 million affected cars sold in Germany under Volkswagen Group’s brands VW, Audi, Skoda, and Seat. In a paper published today in Environmental Research Letters, the team reports that the manufacturer’s emissions in excess of the test-stand limit value have had a significant effect on public health not just in Germany but across Europe.

The researchers estimate that 1,200 people in Europe will die early, each losing as much as a decade of their life, as a result of excess emissions generated between 2008 and 2015 by affected cars sold in Germany. Of these premature deaths, 500 will likely occur in Germany, meaning that more than 60 percent of premature mortalities stemming from those German-sold cars will occur in neighboring countries, most notably Poland, France, and the Czech Republic.

“Air pollution is very much transboundary,” said co-author Steven Barrett, the Leonardo-Finmeccanica Associate Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT. “[Pollution] doesn’t care about political boundaries; it just goes straight past. Thus, a car in Germany can easily have significant impacts in neighboring countries, especially in densely populated areas such as the European continent.”

If Volkswagen can recall and retrofit affected vehicles to meet European standards by the end of 2017, this would avert 2,600 additional premature deaths, or 29,000 life years lost, and 4.1 billion Euros in corresponding health costs, which would otherwise be expected in the absence of a recall.

Barrett’s co-authors from MIT are lead author and graduate student Guillaume Chossière, postdoc Akshay Ashok, research assistant Irene Dedoussi, and research scientist Raymond Speth. Sebastian Eastham of Harvard University and Robert Malina of Hasselt University in Belgium are also co-authors.

Something in the air

Barrett said that it’s not surprising that Germany, and Europe as a whole, incur higher health impacts from Volkswagen’s excess emissions, as compared to the U.S. Not only were more affected cars sold in Germany (2.6 million) than in the U.S. (482,000), differences in population density, driving behavior, and atmospheric conditions also help explain the aggravated health impacts across Europe.

For instance, Europe’s average population density is about three times higher than the U.S. average, and historical data has shown that diesel cars in Germany are driven on average 20 percent more, in terms of annual mileage, compared to the average American car that was considered in the U.S. study. In other words, there are more affected cars on the road, generating emissions that affect a higher concentration of people.

Atmospheric conditions play a role, as well. NOx is emitted from the engine as a gas, which can be carried by winds over long distances before or while reacting with ammonia in the air to form fine particulates. Since the atmosphere in Europe happens to contain more ammonia than in the U.S., more fine particulates may form from a given amount of NOx. It is exposure to these fine particulates which has been shown to cause cardiopulmonary and respiratory disease. NOx emissions also contribute to the formation of ozone, another pollutant known to be detrimental to human health.

“It takes time for NOx to get converted into particulates, at which point, they could be 100 to 200 kilometers or further away from their source,” Barrett said.

Excess emissions’ health effects

The researchers arrived at their mortality estimates using a method similar to the one they adopted to assess Volkswagen’s health impacts in the U.S. The team based their analysis in part on the German Federal Motor Transport Authority’s measurements of emissions from Volkswagen cars.

They then used historical data on driving behavior in Germany to estimate the number of kilometers driven by each car per year and where drivers were likely to drive the most. From that, the researchers generated a map of excess emissions within Germany.

Barrett and his colleagues worked this emissions map into a simulation of the atmosphere, modeling where the NOx emissions traveled, given prevailing winds, temperature, and precipitation, and where the gas interacted with other compounds to form fine particulates and ozone.

The atmospheric models produced a map of fine particulates and a map of ozone, which the team then overlaid on population density maps across Europe. With these maps, they calculated people’s exposure to Germany-derived excess emissions, for each country in the European Union. From these exposure estimates, the researchers calculated the increased risk of dying early in the population, using a “concentration response function” — a relationship between a person’s exposure to a given dose of a pollutant and the person’s related health risk.

“It ends up being about a one percent extra risk of dying early in a given year, per microgram per meter cubed of fine particles you’re exposed to,” Barrett said. “Typically that means that someone who dies early from air pollution ends up dying about a decade early.”

Volkswagen and beyond

Overall, the researchers found that 1,200 premature deaths will likely occur as a result of excess emissions that have already been released into the atmosphere between 2008 and 2015. Of these, 500 early deaths occur in Germany, followed by 160 in Poland, 84 in France, and 72 in the Czech Republic, with the remainder split among other European countries.

The researchers performed the same analysis a second time, under a scenario in which Volkswagen fixes affected cars to meet regulatory standards by the end of 2017, generating no excess emissions starting in January 2018. Under this scenario, the company would avert 2,600 premature deaths, or 29,000 years of life lost.

Going forward, the researchers plan to expand their study of auto emissions’ health impact, concentrating on diesel vehicles in Europe.

“It seems unlikely that Volkswagen is the only company with issues with excess emissions,” Barrett said. “We don’t know if other manufacturers have these defeat devices, but there is already evidence that many other vehicles in practice emit more than the applicable test-stand limit value. So we’re trying to do this for all diesel vehicles.”

FishChoice, a new online tool to help consumers and professionals efficiently and effectively balance the benefits and risks of eating seafood, has been launched by the EU-funded ECsafeSEAFOOD project at www.fishchoice.eu.

Seafood plays an important role in a balanced diet. It is a nutrient-rich food that is a good source of protein, vitamins and minerals and contains a unique type of fat – namely omega-3 fatty acids, which have considerable health benefits. Like any other food type, seafood can also be a source of harmful contaminants with the potential to impact human health negatively.

The ECsafeSEAFOOD project ran from February 2013 until January 2017 and assessed food safety issues related to priority contaminants present in seafood as a result of environmental contamination.

One of the most important objectives of the project was to assess the health risks associated with the intake of chemical contaminants, such as inorganic arsenic and methylmercury, through the consumption of seafood. In this framework, a new interactive tool called FishChoice was designed, developed and validated. FishChoice provides users with the means to minimise their exposure to chemical pollutants from eating seafood, whilst helping them ensure important nutrients, such as fatty acids, are still consumed.

FishChoice is a digital tool which assists users by taking both the benefits and risks into consideration when choosing seafood. Two versions of the tool have been designed, one for everyday users and one for professionals working in the field of nutrition and health. Both versions are freely available at the website www.fishchoice.eu.

The tool allows the user to create a weekly menu by selecting among 24 of the most consumed seafood species in Europe. The benefits and risks for each choice are then calculated by comparison with threshold values. What makes this program particularly unique is the inclusion of specific information for pregnant women and nursing mothers, whose increased health risk from consuming certain species such as tuna, was incorporated into the system. FishChoice is currently available in five languages (English, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese and Spanish), and others will be added shortly.

A team of scientists from the universities of Granada and Jaén has designed a new computer method that allows monitoring the movement of people or vehicles using the WIFI and Bluetooth signals emitted by their mobile devices.

Among many other applications, this system allows real-time measurement of traffic flow in urban environments at different times of the day, the number of people participating in a protest, or the people who come in and out a mall each day.

The project, called Movilidad Sostenible en Tiempo Real (Real-Time Sustainable Mobility), has been fully funded by the Andalusian Regional Government through its Andalusian Studies Foundation, and it has been implemented thanks to the collaboration of Granada’s Mobility Area. Its main novelty is that it uses a non-intrusive device, that is, it’s not necessary to perform any work on the road in order to install it, since it is a small box that can be placed, for example, at a traffic light.

“We only need a place with electricity and an Internet connection to install the device, which is also much cheaper to manufacture than other similar devices that already exist in the market,” said María Isabel García Arenas from the UGR department of Computer Architecture and Technology, lead researcher of this project.

Information available on Twitter

In the case of traffic measurement, the software designed at the UGR allows to accurately monitor the number of vehicles passing near the traffic light where the device is located, based on the WIFI and Bluetooth signals emitted by their cellphones (even when said technologies are not being used at that time and are turned off). That way, the system counts how many cars per minute pass through that point and automatically sends this information to the Twitter account @mobywit to make it public. It can tell the user how long would it take to get from one point of the city to another, for example.

So far, researchers have tested this system at various traffic lights in the center of Granada to measure traffic, and at the entrances and exits of the Higher Technical School of Information Technology and Telecommunications Engineering of the University of Granada (ETSIIT, from its abbreviation in Spanish) for monitoring the number of students entering and leaving the school.

“The possible applications for this new system are many and varied,” said Pedro Castillo Valdivieso, another of the UGR researchers involved in the project. “For example, we can estimate how many people participate in a protest based on the signal of their cellphones, or how many people attend to a concert. We could also monitor the path that tourists follow in the center of a city, which is a greatly useful information for municipalities wishing to improve accessibility, for example, or to increase security through police officers or the installation of traffic lights”.

The local government of Palo has scrapped a plan to remove a “heritage cross” in the central Philippine province of Leyte after Catholic pilgrims protested.

Vice Mayor Ronnan Resposar said the plan was cancelled for “further study” although repairs are being done on the steps leading to the cross.

The cross on top of Guinhangdan Hill, which offers a panoramic view of Leyte Gulf where American General Douglas MacArthur landed in 1944 during World War II, has become a landmark in the province.

The hill is also a favorite pilgrimage site during Holy Week when thousands of devotees climb 522 steps to the cross where candles and flowers are offered. In 2016, some 21,000 climbed the hill on Good Friday.

Resposar said the government is planning to regulate the number of people going to the cross because of the amount of garbage usually left by pilgrims.

“It is not just about the cross but the whole hill,” said the vice mayor, adding that the history of the place also has significance. “You can find a shrine, a mini-forest reserve, and remnants of World War II,” said Resposar.

Father Ivo Velasquez, coordinator of the Archdiocesan Commission on Culture and Heritage, said the church welcomes the improvements being done on the hill.

“We are with the government in this endeavor,” said the priest, adding that improvements “should be guided by respect to the religious belief and heritage of residents.”

“This budget will be a public safety and national security budget.” — President Donald J. Trump, Feb 27, 2017

Humming along the road of American empire to its state of noisy exception, US President Donald J. Trump has promised more money and fuel for a military industrial complex he considers starved and depleted. (As it is, the entire complex remains unbecomingly bloated and far from accountable.) Before the National Governor’s Association on Monday, he suggested that US military spending increase by some 10 per cent, amounting to some $54 billion.

The themes of the promised budget are old and tried: when in doubt, scare the American people into apoplexy; when feeling that patriotism is waning before sagacious voices, encourage more dramatic assessments of threats. White House press secretary Sean Spicer has suggested that Trump will persuade Congress to focus on the theme of “renewal of the American spirit.”

Much of this reeks of Ronald Reagan administration’s efforts to use money and obesely inflated budgets as a cudgel to advance agendas. The difference then was that the threat seemed, at least superficially, more tangible: the apparent satanic evil of the Soviet imperium, getting away under the protective umbrella of Détente. “We were right,” said an oft misguided Vice President Dan Quayle, “to increase our defence budget.”2

“This budget,” claimed Trump, “follows through on my promise to keep Americans safe. It will include an historic increase in defence spending to rebuild the depleted military of the United States.” Display, power, project, all words deemed necessary in Making America Great Again.

There is, unsurprisingly, nothing refined in this. The object is winning, and engaging in wars that the US can win. In recent times, the US military machine has been specialising in the atrophy of counter-insurgency, open-ended conflicts where exit strategies are rebranded draw-downs, where defeat is simply rebranded as continued engagement of another sort. When a war enterprise has failed, use air strikes and send in advisors. The circle continues being re-invented.

“We have to start winning wars again – when I was young, in high school and college, people used to say we never lost a war,” intoned President. “We need to win or don’t fight it at all. It’s a mess like you have never seen before.”

Few would disagree that the Middle Eastern conflagration, characterised by botched interventions and failed visions, has been a calamity of immeasurable proportion, though this, it would seem, would require a clipping of the US military establishment. Trump, as he only knows how, wants to reward it.

This obsession is going to be funded, at least in part, by cuts to the State Department, possibly by up to 30 per cent (a war on experts, perhaps?) of their budget, and the Environmental Protection Agency, ever the enemy of Trumpland. The pointy-heads, it would seem, are being given the heave-ho in favour of the boys and girls with murderous toys. As are those in favour of the softer side of US brutishness: the humanitarian aid budget.

The central feature of such spending is a darkly humorous fiction: to prevent war, it is best to prepare for it with all the resources you have – and more besides. “We must ensure that our courageous servicemen and women have the tools they need to deter war and when called upon to fight in our name, only do one thing: win.”

The merry schizophrenic show continues to cause despair and consternation in the corridors of power. The true enemy of Trumpism remains collective alliances and arrangements that supposedly weigh down on the muscular assertion of US power. The wise counsel of friends is being mocked in favour of the belligerent counsel of the inner circle. Some European states are making a hurried dash to the party, promising an increased military budget in turn.

While Trump has amused and shocked hawks with suggestions that NATO is obsolete, passing into rickety oblivion, while also insisting that allies need to beef up their part of the security bargain, he is happy to keep the empire on its own track, resolutely distant from the fray. Where this fits in the alliance system is the befuddling feature of the enterprise.

The other aspect of the Trump military increase will also foster another delusion: that government can be “lean and accountable to the people,” while doing “much more with the money we spend” even as it seeks to aggrandise and expand the focus of the US defence complex. Many a pig has attempted to fly on this point, and failed (vide the Cold War).

The times are riddled with perverse reflections. President George W. Bush, a president hardly known for his sophisticated awareness of liberties and the US constitution, has hitched his colours to the mast of press freedom.

Hawks are becoming confusingly dovish – or at the very least hypocritically so. The aggressive shake-up from Trump continues, and will re-enact the follies of old: embracing the values of the military at the expense of the Republic.

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

In Syria, on February 24 last, Iraq carried out its first bombing against Isis in the region of Abu Kemal, but the tactical and intelligence support to the Iraqi forces was been given by Russia and Iran, not by the United States which, however, also tacitly allowed the operations.

This also means that Putin has lost his patience and fears the new fragmentation of power and factionalism in the United States, considering Donald Trump’s Presidency and the intelligence agencies now deployed against the new President. Hence Putin goes on with his operations in Syria with the support of Iran and not with the US support, as had previously been planned by the Russian intelligence services.

It is also assumed that the United States does not accept the primary role of the Turkish forces in the conquest of Raqqa, the capital of the so-called “Caliphate”. However, after the conquest of the town of Al Bab in Northern Syria, the Turkish Foreign Minister, Mevlut Cavusoglu, announced that the Turkish armed forces would continue actions towards Raqqa with the support of France, Great Britain, and Germany – not to mention the United States.

Therefore, if the United States is de facto expelled from Syria, it will be irrelevant in the Greater Middle East. If the United States is short-lived in the Greater Middle East, America will be fully marginal in Europe. If it will not be present in Europe, this will not be a problem for the European Union which will not even notice it, but the United States will also be non-existent in the Maghreb region and in Central Asia.

The US absence will not be a danger for the EU’s foreign policy. The European foreign policy does not even exist now, let alone in the future.

Nevertheless for Russia and China it will mean “green light” for the great Eurasia planned by Russia and for the new Silk Road, namely the Road and Belt Initiative, conceived by China as early as 2013.

In both cases, this marks the end of the EU-US relationship as we currently know it, but in Brussels nobody has yet noticed it – hence let us leave them asleep.

It is exactly in this context that the rapprochement between Israel and Saudi Arabia must be seen.

Between February 21 and 22 last, while the United States showed their weakness in the Middle East and in the rest of the world, the Saudi Chief of the intelligence services, Khalid bin Ali al Humaidan, secretly visited both Ramallah and Jerusalem.

Al Humaidan, recently appointed Head of the main intelligence service of the Saudi Kingdom does not belong to the network of the most important princes of the Al Saud family, the so-called “seven Sudayri”, but has emerged solely thanks to a brilliant military career – and it is the first time that this happens.

In fact, the Saudi intelligence services are very worried about the project, authorized a few weeks ago by the Iranian Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, and also by President Rouhani, whom Westerners stupidly define as a “reformist” – a project that the Iranian Armed Forces define as Riyadh, at first.

For Iran the issue lies in adding further 100 kilometres to the range of their SCUD-C and SCUD-D missiles, which is currently 600 and 700 kilometres, respectively, so as to enable the missile to directly reach the Saudi capital city.

Currently the Iranian operation is implemented at the Al Ghadi base in the Ganesh area, about 48 kilometers from the capital city of the Shiite republic.

Al Ghadi is a few kilometres from Hamadan, the base that Iran granted to the Russian air force last August which, however, has already been left by it, with some Iran’s complaints.

Therefore the strategy of the Shiite republic is clear: instead of accepting diversions or multiple regional conflicts by proxy, Iran will hit immediately and directly the Saudi Kingdom with such a missile salvo as to block its decision-making centres and much of its economy.

On the other hand, just on February 4 last, Yemen’s Shiite Houthi rebels attacked with a Borkan missile (i.e. a Volcano 1 missile) – which has an average range of 800 kilometers – the Saudi camp of Al Mazahimiyah, 40 kilometres west of Riyadh.

The Borkan 1 is a tactical ballistic missile developed on the basis of the R-17 Soviet Elbrus model, but it is not very likely for this medium-range missile fuelled with solid propellant to have been launched by the Houthis. It is rather the first test of the new Iranian extended-range SCUD missile.

What will the Head of the Saudi intelligence services have said to the Palestinian leaders gathered in Ramallah?

Certainly he will have told the PLO heirs to stop strengthening their ties with Iran.

As early as 2014 Hamas and the Al Qassam Brigades have publicly reaffirmed their political-military relationship with the Shiite republic, even though Hamas is an offshoot of the Sunni Muslim Brotherhood that has always been the number one enemy of the Sunni kingdom of the Al Saud family.

While in 2012 Hamas had broken its relations with Iran, in the phase of the silly “Arab Springs”, by supporting the political legitimacy of President Hadi in Yemen, currently Haniyeh, the Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, wants a preferential relationship with Iran for its financial and military support, while the Saudi and Arab Emirates’ support is vanishing.

And this happens even though the Hamas leaders would accept, at first and preferentially, the support of the Saudi Kingdom.

Support to the Palestinian struggle which, however, is currently not provided “for internal reasons within the Saudi regime,” as said by our sources within the Muslim Brotherhood in the Palestinian Territories.

Furthermore a meeting was already held between Iranian and Palestinian delegations in Brussels, in mid-February 2017.

It is that meeting which alerted the Saudi intelligence services.

The whole Iranian delegation had been appointed directly by President Rowhani, the “reformist,” while the Palestinian one was led by Jibril Rajoub, whom Mahmoud Abbas, the President of the Palestinian Authority, will probably appoint as his deputy in the coming days.

Rajoub is “persona non grata” for Jordan; he emerged as leader at the Fatah Congress held in Ramallah in 2016 and cannot even travel to Egypt.

On the contrary, in Jerusalem, the Head of the Saudi intelligence services will have talked about the issues relating to the next Middle East Conference proposed by President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu in their last meeting.

However, what is the current relationship between Israel and the Gulf petromonarchies?

It is worth recalling that Israel sent its first diplomatic mission to the United Arab Emirates, precisely to Abu Dhabi, on November 27, 2015.

Obviously both for the United Arab Emirates and for Saudi Arabia the relationship with the Jewish State is instrumental to contain Iran, a sworn enemy of both counties.

But we must consider the economy and, above all, the advanced technology, which is essential for the economic diversification of the Sunni petromonarchies.

Recently Qatar has even tried to establish some unofficial diplomatic channels with Israel – channels that had been disrupted after the 2008-2009 Israeli military actions in the Gaza Strip.

Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf petromonarchies are ever less interested in the Palestinians, but ever more greedy for the Israeli advanced technology that the United States has not or does not want to grant.

As early as the Six Day War, the Jewish State’s leadership has used the concessions made to the Palestinians with a view to defusing the threat that the Arab States posed to its very survival.

Moreover the Israeli diplomacy has always used the 1994 model of normalizing relations with Jordan to propose similar actions with the other Arab League countries.

And, over the years, the Qatari support to Hamas and the Saudi support to the whole Palestinian military and political region has become ever less passionate and relevant.

The primary reason is the massive corruption reigning in the Territories, which prevents also the Saudi and the Emirates’ counterparts from doing business, while the Saudi strategic equation is increasingly focused on Al Sisi’s Egypt, a ferocious enemy of the Muslim Brotherhood, rather than on Hamas, which is the Palestinian armed wing of the Brotherhood and, hence, directly operating in the Sinai region.

Currently the Saudi and Emirates’ support to the Palestinians is increasingly tactical and vague, except for preventing Iran from conquering the thriving market of “aid” to the Palestinian National Authority’s military forces.

Saudi Arabia does not want the increasingly close relationship between Mahmoud Abbas and Iran, nor it wants to support a military struggle against Israel – and it is worth noting King Salman Al Saud’s absence from the Arab League’s meeting held in Mauritania on July 25, 2016 – a Summit focused precisely on the Palestinian issue.

Currently the Israeli high-tech products and advanced technologies for irrigation have already entered the Kingdom through “third” companies.

In 2011, some Israeli companies sold military technology to the Arab Emirates to the tune of 300 million US dollars, while the members of the Gulf Security Council use technologies produced by the Jewish State to maintain safety and security in their oil wells.

In 2009 Saudi Arabia even tested its air defences to check the possibility of an Israeli attack on Iran launched from its territory while, on the basis of 2015 data, 53% of the Saudi citizens see Iran as the primary threat, while Israel is considered the number one enemy only by 18% of the Saudi citizens.

Moreover, Israel publicly supported the Egyptian granting of the two Red Sea islands to Saudi Arabia in April 2016, while the primary strategic relationship in which Israel is interested is the one regarding the Saudi – or anyway Sunni – opposition and contrast to Iran’s penetration into the Palestinian universe.

The companies resulting from the spin-off of the Israeli intelligence services are used by Saudi Arabia to probe the deep web, while much of cybersecurity in the Emirates is originated from Israel.

Recently the United Arab Emirates have spent six billion dollars in security infrastructure, by using Israeli engineers and companies owned by or linked to Israeli businessmen.

The main intermediary for these relations, at least at government level, is Ayub Kara, an Arab-Israeli Druze who is currently Minister in Netanyahu’s government.

He is a Likud man, who cherishes no illusions about the strategic aims of Israel’s possible “friends” in the Middle East.

The starting point for new networks between Riyadh and Jerusalem is the Red Sea-Dead Sea Conveyance Project.

The “Two Seas Canal” will bring drinking water from Aqaba to Lisan, in the Dead Sea – water available to Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories – and will generate electricity. It is located entirely on the Jordanian territory and will be funded by the Jordanian government and by some international donors.

Its construction is expected to start next year and Ayub Kara, in particular, supports the redevelopment and enhancement of the Haifa port for the transport of goods to the EU and Turkey, in addition to conceiving a role for the Israeli port towards Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

Another Israeli project in which Saudi Arabia is interested is the old Red Sea pipeline, an old network of 50 years ago from Eilat to Ashkelon, built jointly with the Iranian Shah.

It avoids the Suez Canal and hence reduces many political costs, as well as the costs for transporting oil to Europe and the United States.

Last year, however, a Swiss court granted to Iran 1.1 billion US dollars for loss of earnings, but Israel refuses to pay this sum to Iran, as can be easily imagined.

Other Israeli companies in the safety and security sector sold to the United Arab Emirates integrated systems for monitoring networks and people flows – systems which are also used for the remote supervision of pilgrimages to Mecca and Medina.

Hence the new strategic coordinates of the Greater Middle East will be, on the one hand, the Iranian management of the Shiite minorities in Bahrain, Yemen, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Syria and, on the other, Saudi Arabia’s opening to every Iranian enemy in the region.

The United States will continue their withdrawal from the Middle East system. Russia will become the true and only broker of military power and equilibriums in the Fertile Crescent. If there are no future military crises on its borders, in addition to the Syrian one, Israel will become the point of reference both for Russia and the Sunni world, which is orphan of the United States.

As is currently the case, Europe will be irrelevant and devoid of ideas.

About the author:
*Professor Giancarlo Elia Valori is an eminent Italian economist and businessman. He holds prestigious academic distinctions and national orders. Mr Valori has lectured on international affairs and economics at the world’s leading universities such as Peking University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Yeshiva University in New York. He currently chairs “La Centrale Finanziaria Generale Spa”, he is also the honorary president of Huawei Italy, economic adviser to the Chinese giant HNA Group and member of the Ayan-Holding Board. In 1992 he was appointed Officier de la Légion d’Honneur de la République Francaise, with this motivation: “A man who can see across borders to understand the world” and in 2002 he received the title of “Honorable” of the Académie des Sciences de l’Institut de France.

Source:
This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

Developed nations have specific operational vulnerabilities and much to lose – the US president needs to understand the meaning of victory and defeat.

By Louis René Beres*

President Donald Trump, who during the US presidential campaign accused previous administrations of grievous error,  and claimed to have a far better personal understanding of how to defeat the Islamic State than the nation’s generals, has just pronounced the core mission for America’s  military: to “win” in war, any war.  Such dangerously simplistic pronouncements need not come from a US president, who, after all, would normally have unhindered access to astute counsel from senior military professionals and national security experts.

By now, it should be readily apparent that the traditional criteria of winning and losing in war have generally become outdated and counterproductive. More precisely, whether the United States might “win” or “lose” in most ongoing or still-expected theaters of military operation, the basic vulnerability of American cities to mass-destruction terrorism or ballistic missile attack could remain largely unaffected. In other words, seeking “victory” per se would make no operational sense.

Looking ahead, the overriding point of US military involvements must be to blunt or prevent infliction of substantial military harms upon the population, not to flaunt any viscerally satisfying exclamations of machismo.

Trump has proposed bumping up the military budget by $54 billion. To begin, however, he should promptly recognize that any increase in military spending oriented primarily toward “winning” would be sorely misguided.  Such recognition is especially urgent in any expressly planned expenditures for nuclear weapons, as the sole legitimate purpose of any such WMD ordnance must be deterrence, not actual war-fighting. He should understand that nuclear weapons must be reserved for deterrence ex ante, not revenge ex post.

There are relevant particulars. To meet the specific requirements of adequate deterrence, US nuclear weapons need to be conspicuously secure from first-strike attacks and also “penetration-capable” with regard to enemy missile defenses. Today, the capacity to deter need not necessarily display a capacity to win. Indeed, contrary to Trump’s assessment, US nuclear weapons need not be numerically or destructively “superior.” In fact, any deliberate US search for superiority as an objective would be fiscally excessive and also plausibly self-destructive.

Without doubt, times have changed with regard to the core security implications of any still-conceivable military victory. Here, we can learn from historian Herodotus, who describes the Greeks’ stunning defeat at Thermopylae in 480 BCE.

Then, the Persian King Xerxes could not contemplate the conquest of Athens until first securing a decisive victory. The Athenians could be forced to abandon Attica only after the defeat of Spartan King Leonidas. The Greeks chose Thermopylae for their final defense because of a narrow pass between cliffs and the sea, a geographically reassuring place where relatively small numbers of resolute troops could presumably hold back a larger army. Leonidas defended the pass for a time with about 7000 men, but finally the Persians emerged as victors and the Greeks could only passively witness the burning of their houses and temples.

While there is presently no real need to worry about suffering a contemporary Thermopylae, this ancient Greek tragedy remains meaningful for the United States and other countries in the crosshairs of a determined jihad. Modern targets do not enjoy absolute freedom from worry. After all, preventing any form of classical military defeat no longer assures safety from mega-aggression or terrorism.

Significantly, until the onset of the nuclear era, states and empires were essentially safe from homeland destruction unless their armies had first been defeated.

Before 1945, the capacity to destroy had required an antecedent capacity to win. But by August of that year, the United States could inflict nuclear destruction upon civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki without first having to defeat Japanese armed forces. Producing a final defeat was the actual rationale of the two atomic strikes. Then, in a notably stark inversion of what had been sought much earlier at Thermopylae, the principal American goal had been to kill large numbers of enemy noncombatants in order to prod Japan’s surrender.

Understandably, from the standpoint of ensuring any one state’s national survival, the “classical” objective of defeating an enemy army and preventing military defeat is now a distinctly secondary goal. There is no cumulative benefit to waging a “winning” war if a determined enemy still maintains an undiminished capacity to bring massive civilian harm. A daunting enemy today can be another state, a sub-state terror group, or even myriad forms of a “hybrid” coalition.

The strategic implications here are exceedingly complex and far-reaching; the analytic task for the US national security team is to consider and answer key questions, continuously, unhesitatingly, through orchestrated oppositions of thesis and antithesis, aiming for indispensable goals – thus calling to mind the prophetic counsel of Carl von Clausewitz in On War: “The subordination of the political point of view to the military must always be unreasonable, for politics had created the war. Policy is the intelligent faculty, war is only the instrument.”

For Trump, no particular military wisdom could be so plainly vital.

Today, many disparate enemies could inflict severe harm without first weakening armies and navies, and so for the most focused enemies, US generals have little reason to work out extensive calculations on force correlations or “order of battle.”

This is not due to error on the part of the United States and other major powers, and the new vulnerabilities generally represent a byproduct of evolving technologies. The US defense community must pursue all available technological breakthroughs – including attack drones and enhanced surveillance capabilities – to best ensure protection from both irregular army attacks “in theater” and plausible terrorist proxy aggressions at home. Above all, this means staying focused on specific operational threats and opportunities, and not on any abstract notions of “winning.”

Nonetheless, such recommended efforts carry no ironclad guarantees of success, and rapid technological evolution in warfare cannot be reversed. On the contrary, all current vulnerabilities must be acknowledged and then suitably countered.

To counter these vulnerabilities, the United States must soon refine combat orthodoxies involving an advanced integration of deterrence, preemption and war-fighting options and also strive for more productive international alignments. This includes examining arrangements for both active and passive defenses as well as cyber-defense. During his speech to the Congress on February 28th, Trump made a special point of praising NATO capabilities and preparations.

Going alone is no longer an option and, further, nothing is more practical than a coherent strategic doctrine, nuanced and well thought out.

Americans must quickly understand that even the most advanced civilization can be made to suffer without enduring national defeat. This counterintuitive conclusion is a difficult lesson to accept, but the alternative could cause the United States to misallocate limited military resources toward sorely misconceived objectives.

The pertinent threats to the United States are shared by others including the nation’s major enemies. In essence, all states must prepare to confront consequential vulnerabilities in the absence of suffering any prior military defeats.

In the final analysis, the United States should prepare to exploit these common vulnerabilities systematically, not by seeking to “win” – an illusory goal – but rather by shaping realistic, precise, and operationally specific strategies for both offense and defense. Nowadays, when formal peace treaties and war-terminating agreements are the exception, and not the rule, neither the United States nor its enemies can ever know for certain whether a particular conflict has actually been won or lost. To be sure, Trump cannot hope to authenticate any presumed “win,” especially over terrorism, with the formality of signed agreements or publically reassuring parades along Fifth Avenue and Main Street. It follows that US military and defense planning should increasingly be based upon specifically identifiable national security hazards, including terrorist surrogates, and not upon outdated and abstract notions of victory and defeat.

*Louis René Beres (PhD, Princeton, 1971) is Emeritus Professor of International Law at Purdue. Born in Zürich, Switzerland, on August 31, 1945, he lectures and publishes widely on nuclear strategy and nuclear war. In Israel, Dr. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel  (2003). He is the author of many major books and articles on both strategic and jurisprudential matters, most recently a monograph at Tel Aviv University, titled Israel’s Nuclear Strategy and America’s National Security and published with a special postscript by US General (USA/ret) Barry R. McCaffrey. Professor Beres’ 12^th book, Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy, was published in 2016 by Rowman & Littlefield.