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Reasons For Rejecting Globalisation: Beyond Inequality And Xenophobia – Analysis

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The authors analyse reasons accounting for the growing discontent with globalisation and the liberal establishment in advanced democracies.

By Miguel Otero-Iglesias and Federico Steinberg*

This paper presents five hypotheses to account for support for anti-establishment and anti-globalisation movements. In addition to the predominant perception that the economic decline of the middle classes and the growing xenophobia evident in the West account for Donald Trump’s victory in the US, Brexit and the rise of the National Front in France, among others, the authors set out another three reasons: the difficulties that significant layers of the population are having in adapting to technological change, the crisis of the welfare state and the growing disenchantment with representative democracy.

Analysis

A consensus has existed for decades among the main political forces of the US and Europe revolving around the idea that economic openness is positive. The flows of trade and investment and, to a lesser extent, workers have thus been gradually liberalised over time. Thanks to this liberal order, Western societies have become more prosperous, more open and more cosmopolitan. Although some lost out from this economic openness, the majority of voters were prepared to accept a greater level of globalisation. As consumers they could acquire products more cheaply from countries such as China, and they also understood that the welfare state would protect them appropriately if they temporarily fell into the category of the losers (in political economy this is known as the ‘compensation hypothesis’,1 according to which more open countries tend to have larger state sectors and redistribute more). For their part, developing countries have also benefitted from economic globalisation, exporting products to the wealthy transatlantic market (which is more and more open) and sending remittances from the West to their countries of origin. The invention seemed to work.

In recent years however, and in particular since the global financial crisis and the Eurozone crisis, the advocates of these policies (social democrats, Christian democrats and liberals) have become increasingly squeezed electorally by new extremist parties calling for, to a greater or lesser extent, the closing of borders, both to trade and to immigration. Most of these are parties of the far right (although there is also a far-left variety), and they call for regaining national sovereignty, the loss of which they attribute to global markets, to a dysfunctional EU and to migration policies that they consider excessively liberal. ‘Take back control of the country’ is a slogan shared by Trump in the US, the more nationalist supporters of Brexit in the UK and the French National Front. All of them aspire to achieving this by reducing international trade and expelling immigrants. Their protectionist, nationalist and xenophobic messages seek to give simple solutions to complex questions, and are attracting increasing numbers of voters disenchanted with the directions their societies are taking.

Over the course of what follows we put forward five hypotheses to account for the support for these new parties. To the idea that the economic decline of the middle classes and the growing xenophobia evident in the West account for Donald Trump’s victory in the US, Brexit and the rise of the National Front in France, among others, we add another three reasons: the difficulties that significant layers of the population are having in adapting to technological change, the crisis of the welfare state and the growing disenchantment with representative democracy.

Economic decline and xenophobia

In general, experts and news media concentrate on two (not necessarily contradictory) hypotheses to explain why the electorate is lending increasingly more support to the new anti-establishment parties. First, there are those who maintain that the populist revolt is fuelled by lower and middle-class voters who have seen their incomes stagnate and are convinced that their offspring will be even worse-off than they are. As Branko Milanovic2 has shown (see Figure 1), these are the people who have lost out from globalisation. In the main they are poorly-qualified workers from Western countries who have been unable to adapt to the new world-wide economic and technological reality and who, on losing their jobs due to the competition from products made in low-wage countries and seeing how the welfare state is not helping them enough, choose to support those who promise to protect them by closing borders. This hypothesis would explain why the French National Front, for instance, is increasingly drawing on the support of socialist voters, from the working and even middle classes, disillusioned with Hollande’s economic policies, and why many unemployed and poorly-paid workers in areas suffering industrial decline, traditional Labour voters, supported Brexit in the hopes that a UK outside the EU and with greater political room for manoeuvre might better protect them from external competition.

The second, similarly plausible, hypothesis is that voters are not leaning to the right for economic but rather identity and cultural reasons. Thus, the latent racism and xenophobia that have always existed in the West (but since the end of the Second World War it has been politically incorrect to express) are emerging owing to the social and cultural impact of the increase in immigration in recent decades. Voters are thus turning to parties with strong leaders (whose pronouncements verge on the authoritarian, as with Orbán in Hungary) promising to protect the ‘national identity’ and halt the process of change and watering-down of values and cultural traditions that openness and multiculturalism have entailed. Fear of terrorist attacks perpetrated by extremist Islamic groups fuels this discourse because it enables hostility towards foreigners to be focused on Muslim immigrants (who are mixed in with the debate on refugees in Europe), placing security at the heart of the political debate, something that Europe has not experienced for many years. Thus, strong leaders with simple and clear ideas (featuring such messages as ‘us against them’) seduce a fearful electorate, fuelling the hope that the answer to their fears involves installing a protective father-figure at the head of the government, the paradigmatic example of which is Putin in Russia, a person both Trump and Le Pen profess to admire.

For the moment there is empirical evidence to corroborate both hypotheses. In a recent study, the management consultancy McKinsey showed that between 2005 and 2014 real income in advanced countries had stagnated or fallen for more than 65% of households, comprising some 540 million people.3 Moreover, various studies show that those regions of the US that import the most Chinese products tend to de-industrialise most rapidly, creating pockets of unemployment that, far from rapidly finding work in other industries, find themselves permanently excluded from the labour market. Furthermore, it is precisely these areas that tend to vote for the most radical politicians, with the most protectionist policy platforms.4

Meanwhile, other studies have shown that voters supporting parties of the extreme right in Europe and Trump in the US, far from being the losers of globalisation, are mainly white middle and upper classes who are becoming more and more openly xenophobic. Thus, according to a study of electoral behaviour in seven European democracies, the best predictor of voting for the far right is support for policies clamping down on immigration, not centre-right economic preferences or mistrust of politicians in general or of European institutions in particular. Another study showed that men are more disposed to supporting these parties than women, even though it is the latter who are worst affected by the increase in free trade, occupying as they do low-wage jobs to a greater extent.5

For many, it is important to discern which of the two hypotheses is correct to be able to design public policies that confront the rise of anti-establishment parties threatening to reverse decades of economic policies that have generated wealth and prosperity. But perhaps both hypotheses are correct, in which case it will be necessary to address both causes together. It is possible, however, that limiting the problem to economic decline, inequality and xenophobia is overly reductionist. The reality is more complex and there are other factors that might account for the rejection of globalisation and the liberal order. This is what we intend to explore below.

The impact of new technology

Robotics and artificial intelligence are normally presented as major advances for our societies. They increase productivity and create huge opportunities. Robots have been introduced into many industries, from car-making to aviation and even shipyards. In the future they will drive and cook for us and make household repairs. The simple daily use of smart phones has solved a good many headaches. We can use them to chat instantaneously, carry out banking operations, watch a football match or film and find out how to get anywhere as fast as possible. The advent of Uber as a replacement for conventional taxis, in addition to other applications, is transforming our lives. But it is precisely this progress, and the speed with which it is unfolding, that scares many people. In New York the drivers’ union has announced that it is going to fight against the introduction of Uber’s driverless cars. The hotel industry is alarmed by the growth of Airbnb.

Technology increases productivity, but it also reduces employment in the short term, particularly routine work not requiring much in the way of qualifications. This leads many members of the working classes, but also more and more members of the middle classes, to look askance and even reject modernity and the major technological changes underpinning the liberal order, just like the Luddite movement that called for the destruction of the machines during the Industrial Revolution. Robots are now not only replacing employees in assembly lines, they are also gradually replacing white collar workers such as secretaries, bank employees, accountants and even lawyers and financial advisers (see Figure 2).

Many millennials (those born between 1980 and 2000), for example, rarely visit a branch of their bank and they manage their savings using a robot-advisor logarithm (in other words, via a computer screen). All this is creating a major technological gulf between the highest-qualified professionals, who see their incomes rise and are consequently comfortable in an ever-more competitive, cosmopolitan and globalised world, and those that are not. This division explains in part why the average rural voter supported Trump and Brexit whereas the big cities were inclined towards Hillary Clinton and the UK’s membership of the EU.6

In this case, the fear being expressed in the protest vote does not so much reflect jobs that have been lost as the fear of losing future jobs or joining the ranks of low-paid workers. Millions of poorly-qualified and rural voters feel that the state has failed to do enough to help them clamber aboard the train of modernity. The educational gulf is becoming ever wider. Those who can afford to invest in an education that will prepare them for the 21st century have everything to gain. Those who cannot afford this will experience more and more difficulties in finding work and will be stranded on the sidelines, even if they have a university degree. This creates enormous frustration and may account for the anti-establishment vote.

The welfare state fosters protectionism

Another possible cause of the discontent among a large part of the electorate is the one Robert Gilpin pointed out in the 1980s: that the gradual expansion of the welfare state can create protectionist interest groups.7 Consider pensioners. Otto von Bismarck introduced the first pensions system in 1881. In those days, people retired at the age of 65 because life expectancy at the time was exactly 65 years. These days, however, while retirement has remained at 65 (or has risen to 67), life expectancy in most developed countries has risen to around 80 years. In an increasingly competitive and globalised world, this level of social spending is hard to maintain. It requires raising the retirement age, increasing the contribution years or cutting the value of pensions, but the resistance is enormous. Most people in many European countries view pensions as an inalienable acquired right. Some of the solutions put forward to protect them are increasing tariffs on products originating from Asia, introducing capital controls to preserve wealth inside the country and raising taxes to offset the social cost.

Another group that may be becoming more and more protectionist is public sector workers. Hitherto, workers in the state sector have been much less exposed to foreign competition than their counterparts in the private sector, which enabled their salaries to remain relatively high. However, once the globalisation of economic activity passes from the secondary sector of industrial manufacturing to the service sector, including public services, competition is also going to be noticed in the public sector. And because public-sector workers tend to have better-organised trade unions, resistance to liberalisation will be accordingly greater. The recent opposition to the free-trade agreement between the US and the EU (TTIP) and TISA (a multilateral agreement to liberalise trade in services negotiated under the auspices of the World Trade Organisation), which both seek to liberalise services, may be explained from this perspective. By the same token, the opening up of the public tendering process to foreign suppliers is seen as a threat because it is argued that the tendency to privatise public services could start with awarding contracts for a limited number of years, which then act as a Trojan horse for completely privatising such sectors as education, health and water.

Indeed, teachers –workers– and students in state education comprise another interest group that is becoming more and more resistant to globalisation. The former do not want to be exposed to the competition that exists in the private sector. And the latter demand high-quality state education funded by public spending. Like many pensioners, they argue that wage competition with emerging economies should be restricted and capital controls should be used to retain the generation of wealth and its taxation in order to be able to fund state education. Again, this rationale would explain the hostility evident in many universities towards such free trade and services treaties as TTIP and TISA. There is a feeling that free trade benefits the upper echelons of the establishment above all, because they can provide their offspring with a better education and insert them into the transnational elite that has benefitted from globalisation. They can afford an education at Harvard or Berkeley in the US, Oxford, Cambridge or the London School of Economics in the UK or the Grandes Écoles in France, to give just some examples, while the children of the middle and lower-middle classes are educated at public universities with dwindling resources.

The crisis of representative democracy

The fifth and final cause that might account for the rejection of the liberal order is the growing mistrust that large swathes of the population feel towards democratic institutions. This is due to various factors. First, many Western countries have witnessed the development of a kind of partitocrazia,8 mainly among parties of the centre-left and centre-right, that have played an excessively dominant role in political life. For many voters, this liberal centre takes turns wielding power, but their policies are very similar. Moreover, there is the ever-growing sensation that this partitocrazia is at the mercy of a plutocracy, comprising major economic interests, that benefits disproportionately from the way the system operates. This leads to a lack of connection and trust between the elites and the rest of the population. The principle of authority itself is being called into question. Many citizens think that the political class does not represent them, that they are deprived of a voice (or for that matter a loudspeaker to express their ideas, as they do through social media) and think, moreover, that experts form part of this elite that benefits from the current system, which is why they fail to offer solutions benefitting the majority.

According to this hypothesis, the global financial crisis of 2008 and the way it was subsequently handled will have had social effects, the impact of which we are only just starting to discern. The credibility of experts, above all of economists, the most influential profession in the public debate, has been conspicuously damaged by their failure to predict the crisis. Thereafter the perception that the current political and judicial system benefits the elites will have been reinforced by the fact that taxpayers had to bail out banks while very few bankers have had to pay for their mistakes. On the contrary, many voters feel that the banks’ upper echelons have walked away with early retirement pay-offs worth millions of dollars, or euros, while ordinary employees have to work all their lives and never earn such amounts. The reputation of experts was even more damaged after the crisis. Many television viewers and newspaper readers became aware that experts were not neutral. Each expert explained the causes of the crisis from a very different perspective and put forward solutions that were often in mutual conflict. Some called for greater fiscal stimulus, while others defended austerity. This has created a good deal of confusion, while simultaneously undermining the role of experts. For many there is a sensation that each expert has his or her own agenda, and that almost all defend the liberal order because it benefits them. By the same token, it is thought that many of these experts, who are educated at the finest universities and therefore far removed from the average citizen, hold liberal values towards religion, abortion, same-sex marriage, racial diversity and gender equality that are not shared by a large part of the population, especially in the US.9

Experts’ and technocrats’ loss of legitimacy arises from the lack of political solutions to our societies’ problems. For many years, politicians have hidden behind a veil of technical solutions. They have agreed that central banks should be independent and headed by technocrats shielded from public and democratic scrutiny. They have also delegated the negotiation of free-trade and investment treaties to experts and ceded sovereignty to international bodies such as the World Trade Organisation and the International Monetary Fund. In the case of Europe, the transfer of sovereignty to the European Central Bank and the European Commission (still far removed from voters) has been even greater. Such delegation worked well for as long as the economy and employment were growing. But with the advent of the crisis, the authority and legitimacy of the technocrats started to be called into much greater question, particularly when, amid the lack of a political response, they began to accumulate more and more power. Indeed, it may be argued that the politicians have left it to the central banks to tackle the crisis with monetary stimuli. Unfortunately, however, it is becoming more and more evident that the structural problems besetting developed societies cannot be solved by monetary policy alone.

All this questioning has led to doubts being cast on the open society and many voters being prepared to lend their support to candidates who speak in a way that connects with the ordinary citizen and promises easy solutions to complex problems. The anti-establishment message thereby succeeds in attracting an amalgam of highly heterogeneous voters, but with an ever-wider basis. It encompasses those who feel vulnerable and left behind, but also those who are doing well economically but are disillusioned with politicians and technocrats and who therefore wish to curb the power of the state and the establishment to unleash market forces. The questioning of experts emerged particularly starkly in the Brexit campaign.10

Conclusions

Donald Trump’s victory in the US elections, Brexit and the rise of parties like the French National Front and the Alternative for Germany have taken the establishment by surprise and have called into question decades of moderate forces alternating power in Western countries. The causes of this phenomenon are manifold. They encompass the anger of those who have lost out from globalisation, the widespread fear of losing national identity in societies that are increasingly diverse and cosmopolitan, anxiety about technological change and its impact on employment, frustration concerning the dwindling resources available to maintain the welfare state and indignation at the unrepresentative nature of many aspects of the democratic system in an ever-more globalised world where the concept of national sovereignty has been rendered obsolete.

All these intermingle and threaten the open society and the international order that has held sway for decades and been responsible for spectacular economic progress but has also produced growing material inequalities and inequalities of opportunity in advanced societies.

Responding to the well-founded fears of their citizens is perhaps the greatest challenge confronting Western nations. The nationalist, protectionist, xenophobic and authoritarian leanings of many anti-establishment parties’ new agendas need to be combated by focusing on the causes from which they arise. Simply ignoring them and hoping that the storm will blow over, as has been the habit of recent years, is a recipe for failure. Developing better policies for integrating immigrants and refugees is crucial in this context. It is also necessary to ensure a better redistribution of the enormous amounts of wealth generated by globalisation, to emphasise the advantages of diversity and to prepare citizens for technological change, equipping them with the resources to adapt themselves. It is not so much a case of protecting against the effects of globalisation as empowering citizens, enabling them to get the most out of it to the fullest extent possible. Finally, it is necessary to give a better explanation of the limitations faced by the welfare state and the reforms it needs in order to be sustainable, and to open new public forums and channels enabling citizens to feel more and better represented.

*About the authors:
Miguel Otero Iglesias
, Senior analyst, Elcano Royal Institute | @miotei

Federico Steinberg, Senior analyst, Elcano Royal Institute | @Steinbergf

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute.  Original version in Spanish: Causas del rechazo a la globalización: más allá de la desigualdad y la xenofobia

Notes:
1 See Dani Rodrik (1998), ‘Why do more open economies have bigger governments?’, Journal of Political Economy, nr 106, p. 997-1032.

2 Branko Milanovic (2016), Global Inequality. A New Approach for the Age of Globalization, Harvard University Press.

3 McKinsey Global Institute (2016), Poorer Than Their Parents. A New Perspective on Income Inequality, June.

4 David Dorn & Gordon H. Hanson (2013), ‘The China syndrome: local labor market effects of import competition in the United States’, American Economic Review, vol. 103, nr 6, p. 2121-2168; David Dorn & Gordon Hanson (2016), ‘Importing political polarization? The electoral consequences of rising trade exposure’, Working Paper nr 22637, NBER; and Yi Che, Yi Lu, Justin R. Pierce, Peter K. Schott & Zinghan Tao (2016), ‘Does trade liberalization with China influence US elections?’, Working Paper nr 22178, NBER.

5 These and other examples are summarised by Zack Beauchamp in ‘White riot’.

6 A good summary of the impact of technology on the labour market can be found in David Rotman (2013), ‘How technology is destroying jobs’, MIT Technology Review, 12/VI/2013.

7 See chapter 2 of Robert Gilpin (1987), The Political Economy of International Relations, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

8 For this concept, see Peter Mair (2013), Ruling the Void: The Hollowing of Western Democracy, Verso Books, New York & London.

9 This idea is explained in Charles Camosy (2016), ‘Trump won because college-educated Americans are out of touch’, The Washington Post, 9/XI/2016.

10 For the rise and fall of the role of experts, see Sebastian Mallaby (2016), ‘The cult of the expert – and how it collapsed’, The Guardian, 20/X/2016.


Foreign Graduate Students And Postdocs Consider Leaving US

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On March 6, President Donald Trump signed a second executive order to suspend immigration from six predominately Muslim countries, this time excluding Iraq from the list. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson issued a decision blocking the order late March 15, hours before it was due to take effect.

Nevertheless, according to an article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical Society, the move has prompted foreign graduate students and postdoctoral researchers currently in the U.S. to start looking elsewhere for educational, training and job opportunities.

Linda Wang, a senior editor at C&EN, notes that science and engineering graduate school programs across the U.S. rely heavily on an international pool of students.

A National Science Foundation survey in 2015 found that 45 percent of full-time graduate students in science and engineering were on a temporary visa. Some of these students expressed concern about their future prospects in the U.S., and professors have said they are worried about the executive order and its impact on U.S. competitiveness in science and engineering.

Even international students who are not from the six countries affected by the executive order say they are now seriously considering pursuing their education and careers outside the U.S. In addition to the March 6 executive order, the Trump administration suspended expedited processing of H-1B visas, which are granted to foreign workers in specialty occupations, and several bills now in Congress propose additional changes to that program.

Milkweed Losses May Not Fully Explain Monarch Butterfly Declines

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Steep declines in the number of monarch butterflies reaching their wintering grounds in Mexico are not fully explained by fewer milkweeds in the northern part of their range, researchers report in a new study.

The research, published in the journal BioScience, reviews decades of studies of monarchs and includes an in-depth analysis of milkweed populations in Illinois, a state at the heart of the butterflies’ summer range.

It takes a few generations of monarchs to make the trip north from Mexico to the Midwestern United States and Canada where they summer, but the return trip is a long one. A single generation travels back to the monarchs’ wintering ground in Michoacan – flying up to 2,500 miles.

Milkweed

Milkweed

Monarch numbers in Mexico have dropped from a high of 682 million in 1997 to a recent low of 42 million in 2015. Researchers are struggling to understand what is driving the decline. A popular hypothesis is that the loss of milkweeds – the only plants on which monarch larvae can feed – is to blame.

Milkweed losses are tied to the use of herbicide-resistant crops, a practice that began in the late 1990s and allows farmers to apply nonselective herbicides to their fields. Milkweeds are susceptible to glyphosate, the most common herbicide used to protect those crops from weeds.

The new analysis confirmed that milkweed numbers have dropped by about 95 percent in cropland in Illinois over the last 20 years, said Illinois Natural History Survey plant ecologists Greg Spyreas and David Zaya, who conducted the study with research ecologist Ian Pearse, now at the U.S. Geological Survey Fort Collins (Colorado) Science Center. The INHS is a division of the Prairie Research Institute at the University of Illinois.

“But we have more milkweeds in natural areas than previous studies suggested,” Zaya said. “I would say the milkweeds in natural areas are buffering the loss of milkweeds in the agricultural areas.”

Milkweeds in natural areas also have declined in the past two decades, primarily as a result of the conversion of pastures and other marginal sites to cropland, Zaya said. But the overall drop in the number of milkweeds in Illinois – roughly 50 percent, the researchers found – is not as large as the huge decline in monarch butterflies making it back to Mexico.

Other lines of evidence challenge the notion that milkweeds are the sole cause of monarch declines, the researchers said. Despite smaller numbers leaving Mexico each spring, once they get to Illinois, the monarchs seem to quickly rebound.

“You’re talking about as many as 350 million monarchs in peak years across eastern North America,” Spyreas said. “Previous studies have found that even when small numbers of monarchs leave Mexico, they’re able to rebuild their populations within a couple of generations of reproduction in the summer in the Midwest. That suggests that the supply of milkweed plants here is not the primary problem.”

“There are fluctuations in the number of monarchs in the Midwest year to year, but studies suggest there is not an overall decline,” Zaya said.

“Conservation efforts also need to look beyond milkweed populations to other possible causes of monarch declines,” he said. Habitat loss, disease, parasites and climate change all could be playing a role.

“While boosting milkweed numbers can be part of the solution, I don’t think it is the entire solution,” Zaya said.

Because the population crashes tend to occur on the way to Mexico, the researchers think a lack of late-flowering nectar sources along the route also may be a significant contributor.

“Monarch adults feed on flowers, including milkweed flowers, before and during their southern migration,” Pearse said. “If they are suffering from a lack of nutrition during migration, it could make them more susceptible to other stresses.”

“This is what we’ve found in other extinctions of migratory animals in North America and elsewhere,” Zaya said. “It’s multiple things coming together to cause this problem. And I think this is along the same lines.”

Physicians Say Climate Change Is Making Patients Sick

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More than half of the US physicians — including family doctors, pediatricians, obstetricians, allergists, geriatricians and internists — are launching a campaign to help patients, the public and policy makers understand the damage climate change is doing to people’s health and what needs to be done to prepare and protect ourselves.

Eleven of the nation’s leading medical societies are forming the Medical Society Consortium on Climate & Health and releasing a new report that highlights crucial health harms from climate change. Among them: cardio-respiratory illness associated with wildfires and air pollution; heat injury from extreme heat events; spread of infectious disease, including dangerous conditions such as West Nile virus and Lyme disease; and health and mental health problems caused by floods and extreme weather.

The new report, Medical Alert! Climate Change is Harming Our Health, combines research on the health impacts of climate change, physician stories, and research-based evidence showing that reducing greenhouse gases improves heath and saves lives. The report will be delivered to members of Congress before being distributed more broadly to state leaders, businesses and medical groups.

“Doctors in every part of our country see that climate change is making Americans sicker,” said Mona Sarfaty, MD, director of the new consortium and a professor at George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. “Physicians are on the frontlines and see the impacts in exam rooms. What’s worse is that the harms are felt most by children, the elderly, Americans with low-income or chronic illnesses, and people in communities of color.”

The report documents that most Americans don’t realize that worsening health, such as increases in asthma attacks and allergies, is linked to climate change. A 2014 poll showed that only 1 in 4 Americans can name even one way in which climate change is harming our health.

The Medical Alert! report outlines three types of harms from climate change:

  • Direct harms, such as injuries and deaths due to increasingly violent weather, asthma and other lung diseases that are exacerbated by extremely hot weather, wildfires and longer allergy seasons;
  • Spread of disease through insects that carry infections like Lyme disease or Zika virus, and through contaminated food and water; and
  • The effects on mental health resulting from the damage climate change can do to society, such as increasing depression and anxiety.

The report draws on a number of peer-reviewed reports, including The Impacts of Climate Change on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment, issued by the U.S. Global Change Research Program in 2016.

Doctors are joining climate scientists to encourage energy efficiency and accelerating the transition from fossil fuels to clean renewable energy, like solar and wind, citing both the long-term health benefits and immediate health effects of cleaner air and water. Americans also can help, for example, by driving less, and walking and biking more, according to the Consortium report.

“Doctors work to prevent smoking and help patients quit, because smoking harms health and increases the risk of cancer or lung disease. We see efforts to combat climate change in the same way: they will improve health today and reduce health risks down the road,” said Nitin Damle, MD, MS, MACP, president of the American College of Physicians (ACP) and founder of South County Internal Medicine Inc. in Wakefield, Rhode Island.

A January 2017 Abt Associates study found that, in the Northeastern states that are taking actions to reduce heat-trapping pollution through the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI), there were immediate public health benefits. Researchers found this initiative has prevented 300-830 early deaths among adults, 39,000-47,000 lost work days, 35-390 non-fatal heart attacks, 8,200-9,900 asthma flare-ups and 180-220 hospital admissions. It has also saved money.

“Here’s the message from America’s doctors on climate change: it’s not only happening in the Arctic Circle, it’s happening here. It’s not only a problem for us in 2100, it’s a problem now. And it’s not only hurting polar bears, it’s hurting us,” said Sarfaty.

DeepMind-Royal Free Deal ‘Cautionary Tale’ For Health Care

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Researchers studying a deal in which Google’s artificial intelligence subsidiary, DeepMind, acquired access to millions of sensitive NHS patient records have warned that more must be done to regulate data transfers from public bodies to private firms.

The academic study says that “inexcusable” mistakes were made when, in 2015, the Royal Free NHS Foundation Trust in London signed an agreement with Google DeepMind. This allowed the British AI firm to access sensitive information about 1.6 million patients who use the Trust’s hospitals each year.

The access was used to create monitoring software for mobile devices, called Streams, which promises to improve clinicians’ ability to support patients with Acute Kidney Injury (AKI). But according to the study’s authors, the purposes stated in the agreement were far less specific, and made more open-ended references to using data to improve services.

More than seven months after the deal was put in place, an investigation by New Scientist then revealed that DeepMind had gained access to a huge number of identifiable patient records and that it was not possible to track how these were being used. They included information about people who were HIV-positive, details about drug overdoses and abortions, and records of routine hospital visits.

As of November 2016, DeepMind and the Trust have replaced the old agreement with a new one. The original deal is being investigated by the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), which has yet to report any findings publicly. The National Data Guardian (NDG) is also continuing to look into the arrangement. DeepMind retained access to the data that it had been given even after the ICO and NDG became involved, and the app is being deployed.

The new study reviews the original agreement in depth, with a systematic synthesis of publicly available documentation, statements, and other details obtained by Freedom of Information requests. It was carried out by Dr Julia Powles, a Research Associate in law and computer science at St John’s College, University of Cambridge, and Hal Hodson, who broke the New Scientist story and is now Technology Correspondent for The Economist.

Both authors say that it is unlikely that DeepMind’s access ever represented a data security risk, but that the terms were nonetheless highly questionable, in particular because they lacked transparency and suffered from an inadequate legal and ethical basis for Trust-wide data access.

They say the case should be a “cautionary tale” for the NHS and other public institutions, which are increasingly seeking tech companies’ help to improve services, but could, in the process, surrender substantial amounts of sensitive information, creating “significant power asymmetries between citizens and corporations”.

“Data mining and machine learning offer huge promise in improving healthcare and clearly digital technology companies will have a major role to play,” Powles said. “Nevertheless, we think that there were inadequacies in the case of this particular deal.”

“The deal betrays a level of naivety regarding how public sector organisations set up data-sharing arrangements with private firms, and it demonstrates a major challenge for the public and public institutions. It is worth noting, for example, that in this case DeepMind, a machine learning company, had to make the bizarre promise that it would not yet use machine learning, in order to engender trust.”

Powles and Hodson argue that the transfer of data to DeepMind did not proceed as it should have, questioning in particular its invocation of a principle known as “direct care”. This assumes that an “identified individual” has given implied consent for their information to be shared for uses that involve the prevention, investigation, or treatment of illness.

No patient whose data was shared with DeepMind was ever asked for their consent. Although direct care would clearly apply to those monitored for AKI, the records that DeepMind received covered every other patient who used the Trust’s hospitals. These extended to people who had never been tested or treated for kidney injuries, people who had left the catchment area, and even some who had died.

In fact, the authors note that, according to the Royal Free and DeepMind’s own announcements, only one in six of the records DeepMind accessed would have involved AKI patients. For a substantial number of patients, therefore, the relationship was indirect. As a result, special permissions should have been sought from the Government, and agencies such as the ICO and NDG should have been consulted. This did not happen.

Such applications of “direct care” have been queried before. In December 2016, Dr Alan Hassey of the NDG, which provides national guidance on the use of confidential information wrote that: “an erroneous belief has taken hold in some parts of the health and care system that if you believe what you are doing is direct care, you can automatically share information on a basis of implied consent”. Dr Hassey noted that direct care is not “of itself a catch-all… The crucial thing is that information sharing must be in line with the reasonable expectations of the individual concerned”.

The researchers’ survey also criticises the lack of transparency in the agreement, pointing out that neither party made clear the volume of data involved, nor that it involved so many identifiable records. How that data has been, and is being, used, has never been independently scrutinised. Last week, DeepMind announced plans to develop a new data-tracking system, to make such processes more transparent, at an unspecified future stage.

The authors liken the relationship overall to a one-way mirror. “Once our data makes its way onto Google-controlled servers, our ability to track it – to understand how and why decisions are made about us – is at an end,” they write.

The paper says that an obvious lesson is that no such deal should be launched without full disclosure of the framework of documents and approvals which underpins it. In light of the 2013 Caldicott review of sharing of patient information, they write that: “The failure of both sides to engage in any conversation with patients and citizens is inexcusable.”

They also suggest that private companies should have to account for their use of public data to properly-resourced and independent bodies. Without this, they argue that tech companies could gradually gain an unregulated monopoly over health analytics.

“The reality is that the exact nature and extent of Google’s interests in NHS patient data remain ambiguous,” the authors add. Powles notes that while Google has no stated plans to exploit the data for advertising and other commercial uses, its unparalleled access to such information, without any meaningful oversight, does not rule out the possibility in future.

“I personally think that because data like this can get out there, we are almost becoming resigned to the idea,” Powles added. “This case stresses that we shouldn’t be. Before public institutions give away longitudinal data sets of our most sensitive details, they should have to account to a comprehensive, forward-thinking and creative regulatory system.”

Powles and Hodson are working on a second paper, analysing the terms of the revised DeepMind-Royal Free arrangement since November 2016 and the ongoing regulatory investigations. Their current study is published in the journal Health and Technology.

Deep Learning And Stock Trading

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A study undertaken by researchers at the School of Business and Economics at Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU) has shown that computer programs that algorithms based on artificial intelligence are able to make profitable investment decisions. When applied to the S&P 500 constituents from 1992 to 2015, their stock selections generated annual returns in the double digits — whereas the highest profits were made at times of financial turmoil.

In March 2016, South Korean Lee Sedol, one of the best Go players in the world, lost to the AlphaGo computer program. It was a milestone in the history of artificial intelligence because up to that point the Asian board game had been considered too complex for computers. Behind successes such as this are programs that are modelled on biological systems and are constructed in a form similar to neural networks so that they can independently extract relationships from millions of data points.

“Artificial neural networks are primarily applied to problems, where solutions cannot be formulated with explicit rules,” explained Dr. Christopher Krauss of the Chair for Statistics and Econometrics at FAU. “Image and speech recognition are typical fields of application, such as Apple’s Siri. But the relevance of deep learning also increases in other domains, such as weather forecasting or the prediction of economic developments.”

Analysing capital market data

The international team headed by Christopher Krauss — consisting of Xuan Anh Do (FAU) and Nicolas Huck (ICN Business School, France) — were the first researchers to apply a selection of state-of-the-art techniques of artificial intelligence research to a large-scale set of capital market data. ‘Equity markets exhibit complex, often non-linear dependencies,” said Krauss. “However, when it comes to selecting stocks, established methods are mainly modelling simple relationships. For example, the momentum effect only focuses on a stock’s return over the past months and assumes a continuation of that performance in the months to come. We saw potential for improvements.”

To find out whether automated learning processes perform better than a naïve buy-and-hold strategy, researchers studied the S&P 500 Index, which consists of the 500 leading US stocks. For the period from 1992 to 2015, they generated predictions for each individual stock for every single trading day, leveraging deep learning, gradient boosting, and random forests.

Outperformance with machine learning

Each of these methods was trained with approximately 180 million data points. In the course of this training, the models learned a complex function, describing the relationship between price-based features and a stock’s future performance. The results were astonishing: “Since the year 2000, we observed statistically and economically significant returns of more than 30% per annum. In the nineties, results were even higher, reflecting a time when our machine learning approaches had not yet been invented,” added Krauss.

These results pose a serious challenge to the efficient-market hypothesis. Returns were particularly high during times of financial turmoil, for example the collapse of the dot-com bubble around the year 2000 or the global financial crisis in 2008/2009. Dr Krauss: “Our quantitative algorithms have turned out to be particularly effective at such times of high volatility, when emotions dominate the markets.”

Deep learning still has greater potential

Christopher Krauss urged caution, however, insisting that this is not necessarily the Holy Grail of capital market trading: “In the latter years of the study profitability fell and even dipped into the negative at times. We assume that this decline was driven by the rising influence of artificial intelligence in modern trading – facilitated by increasing computing power and the popularisation of machine learning. We assume that the downturn may have been caused by the increasing influence of artificial intelligence in modern trading.”

However, the researchers agree that deep learning still has significant potential.

“We are currently working on very promising follow-up projects with far larger data sets and very deep network architectures which have been specifically designed for identifying temporal dependencies,” explained Krauss. “Initial results have already shown significant improvements in the forecasting quality – also in recent years.”

US Indicts Russian FSB Officers Over 2014 Yahoo Hack

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Two officers from the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) and two Russian hackers are being charged over a mega data breach at Yahoo, the Justice Department has announced, stressing that the charges do not allege Russian involvement in the DNC hacks.

A grand jury in California charged the four defendants with computer hacking, economic espionage, and other criminal offenses.

The department has accused the four defendants of illegally accessing information about millions of subscribers from Yahoo, Google, and other webmail providers.

“Dmitry Dokuchaev and Igor Sushchin, both FSB officers, protected, directed, facilitated and paid criminal hackers to collect information through computer intrusions in the United States and elsewhere,” Mary McCord, the acting assistant attorney general, said during a press conference.

McCord said the indictment alleges the two Russian FSB agents were acting on behalf of their agency.

“There are no free passes for foreign state-sponsored criminal behavior,” McCord said.

The indictments represent the first time the US has brought criminal charges against Russian officials for cyber offenses.

She went on to accuse the FSB agents of working “with co-conspirators Aleksey Belan and Karim Baratov to hack into computers of American companies providing email and internet-related services, to maintain unauthorized access to those computers and to steal information, including information about individual users and the private contents of their accounts.”

The Justice Department alleged that Belan’s “notorious criminal conduct and a pending Interpol Red Notice” did not result in him being detained by FSB officers Dokuchaev and Sushchin.

“Instead of detaining him, [they] used him to break into Yahoo’s networks,” the department alleged.

The Department went on to accuse Belan, who is on the FBI’s list of most-wanted cyber criminals, of using his relationship with the FSB agents and access to “line his own pockets with money.”

Belan has been previously indicted twice in the US, for three intrusions into e-commerce companies. He has been one of the FBI’s most-wanted cyber criminals for more than three years.

The 2014 breach affected some 500 million Yahoo users, along with at least 18 users of other service providers, including Google.

Yahoo announced the breach in September 2016, stating at the time that it was working with law enforcement authorities and believed the attack was state-sponsored.

The department said the operation began at least as early as 2014, adding that conspirators lost access in September 2016. They continued to use information until December.

Meanwhile, McCord said the Wednesday indictment does not allege any connection between the Yahoo hacking and the hacking of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) last year.

Previously, the US government accused Russia of hacking the Democratic Party’s computer networks, alleging that Moscow was attempting to “interfere” with the 2016 presidential election – an allegation which the Kremlin has vehemently denied as untrue and baseless.

The hack resulted in a leak which consisted of 19,252 emails and 8,034 attachments from the DNC. It was published by WikiLeaks in July 2016.

Among other revelations, the leak included emails which suggested the Democratic National Committee (DNC) was actively trying to undermine Bernie Sanders’ campaign for president, in favor of Hillary Clinton.

Despite Washington’s allegations that Russia was behind the hack, no hard evidence has linked the leaks to Russia.

Earlier this year, several reports in the Russian media citing sources said that Dokuchaev — who apparently worked for FSB, along with other accomplices linked to a Russian hackers group — were arrested on suspicion of high treason in December 2016. However, these reports haven’t been confirmed by government officials.

Dokuchaev reportedly used to work at the FSB’s Data Security Center dealing with cyber crimes.

According to RBC, he was allegedly forced to cooperate with the agency after he had been nabbed on credit card fraud in 2005 and could have faced criminal prosecution and a prison sentence.

Novaya Gazeta reported that Dokuchaev also used to be a columnist for the Russian magazine “Khaker” (Hacker) with ex-editor-in-chief Sergey Pokrovsky describing him “an expert on data security.”

Novaya Gazeta also links Dokuchaev to the activities of Shaltai-Boltai (Humpty Dumpty), a group known for hacking the mobile devices and emails of Russian officials and business personalities and then selling the information abroad. The group leaked correspondence of Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, editor-in-chief of the Russian Life TV channel, and Timur Prokopenko, deputy head of Internal Affairs Administration in the Russian Presidency.

Former CIA intelligence analyst Ron Aledo believes the situation has the signs of a “double agent operation” that went wrong, given that one person is being charged by both the Russian and US governments.

“That person that worked for the FSB and was arrested by the Russian government on high treason charges, and now is also charged by the US government for hacking into the US corporation – has looks, the appearance of being a double agent,” Aledo told RT. “I’m not saying that it is, but it has the appearance of being a double agent operation that went bad.”

Despite the Justice Department explicitly denying any connection of the DNC hack to the latest indictment, Aledo believed the greater part of the American press which is “left-wing and very sympathetic to the Democratic party” will be pushing this narrative.

“They are going to tell the American people: ‘You see? The Russians are hacking us! This is the evidence – they hacked American company, so they obviously… are connected. You see, Obama was right!’” Aledo said.

Russian Agents In Minsk Pushing Lukashenka To Crack Down Hard – OpEd

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Russian agents in the Belarusian security services along with Russian agents in the blogosphere are calling on Alyaksandr Lukashenka not to make any concessions to the protesters but rather to crack down hard as he did in 2010, according to Minsk analysts.

Such an action would not only completely block any possibility that Lukashenka could achieve a further rapprochement with the West and thus force Minsk back into Moscow’s tight embrace but also spark the kind of clashes that the Russian government could use to justify armed intervention in Belarus.

Analysts at the Minsk Center for Strategic and Foreign Policy Research have released a new study arguing that “the special services are misinforming [Lukashenka] by playing on his fears of ‘a Ukrainian trace’ in the protests” and thus blocking any concessions and pushing him toward a crackdown.

(For the Center’s Crisis Watch report on this subject, see csfps.by/new-research/ukrainskiy-sled-i-otkrytaya-dezinformaciya; for a discussion of its content and other actions by pro-Moscow forces inside Belarus, see Dmitry Galko’s survey on the BelarusPartisan portal at belaruspartisan.org/politic/373563/.)

According to Galko, one can conclude on the basis of the center’s report that Lukashenka “is ready to make some wise steps and concessions in the existing situation to lower social tension. But there exists a certain force which is leading him in the opposite direction by suggesting the fake danger in the form of ‘a Ukrainian scenario.’”

Some of these people are located in the Belarusian force structures. Others are involved at the edges of the protests. But the fundamental message is the same as it was in December 2010 when pro-Moscow groups told Lukashenka that he had no choice but to crack down given when Moscow would do if he didn’t.

This message, the center suggests and Galko confirms, is “direct disinformation” intended to push Lukashenka toward the abyss because a crackdown of the kind the pro-Moscow forces want would lead to one of several disasters ranging from violence inside the country to Russian intervention.

Avoiding those outcomes, Galko says, is in the interest not only of Lukashenka but also of the opposition because “an attempt to repeat the scenario of December 2010 this time can grow into a Romanian scenario” and then to “hybrid aggression” by Russia of the kind it has been using in Ukraine’s Donbass. “This scenario is being prepared,” he says.

Galko makes an additional contribution by analyzing posts on the Tuneyadets.by social group (ok.ru/group/53457858920638). That is a pro-Moscow group consisting largely or exclusively of Russians from Russia that is pushing Moscow’s line at the expense of Belarus and adding to the pressures on Lukashenka.

But the far greater threat comes from Russian agents inside the Belarusian government, he and the center’s report suggest. “If one considers that in the leadership of the Belarusian special services are certain overt or covert agents of the Kremlin, the situation is becoming extremely explosive.”

“It is possible,” Galko says, “that we are standing at the brink of attempts to carry out hybrid aggression against our country.” And he ends by concluding with the words of Maksim Filipovich, the opposition figure who was arrested in full view of the television audience: “Aleksandr Grigoryevich [Lukashenka] what are you creating?”


Prospects Of US–German Relations Under Trump – Analysis

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By Gautam Sen*

Chancellor Angela Merkel will be engaging in her first substantive summit discussions with President Donald Trump shortly. Both countries are at a sensitive stage in their bilateral relationship. Merkel, a popular, liberal-minded and detail-oriented leader of a cautious and controlled demeanour, has had skirmishes in the recent past with Trump who has a contrasting disposition in the public domain on policy issues and values. It will be noteworthy to observe whether the outcome of the Trump-Merkel summit leads to a realistic appraisal of the prospects and limitations of the US-German relationship, and a modicum of parallelism if not convergence can be achieved as during the Bush and Obama years. Except for the dissonance in US-German relations consequent on Chancellor Schroeder criticizing America’s intervention in Iraq, bilateral relations have been on a balanced and mutually sustaining path. And historically, US-German relations have been a significant factor in the trans-Atlantic partnership both in the economic and security realms.

Trump’s posture during the campaign and even thereafter has struck discordant notes to an extent, especially his demand for higher financial commitment from European partners and concomitantly lesser US involvement in European defence and security matters. But his Defence Secretary George Mattis has provided a corrective by stating that NATO remains the cornerstone of the West’s defence vis-à-vis Russia and in the international strategic milieu. In respect of trade and commerce, however, some uncertainties are looming over both US-German relations as well as US-EU relations.

As far as reducing the US financial contribution to NATO and consequently pressing for an increase in German and other NATO members’ contribution to the trans-Atlantic alliance is concerned, the matter may not be susceptible to an easy resolution. Merkel is likely to resist US pressures in this regard. The fact of the matter is that, the respective shares of USA and Germany to NATO`s budget are 22 and 15 per cent, respectively. At Euro 36 billion in 2015, the German share has not been unreasonably low. According to NATO Secretary General’s report of 2015, the per capita contribution of USA and Germany stood at USD 1865 and 521, respectively. While Merkel may be willing to increase Germany`s financial contribution to NATO, and perhaps augment its commitment on personnel (as on 7 January 2017, Germany fielded 180,000 troops vis-à-vis 1,311,000 by USA, 201,700 by France and 182,000 by Italy), she and the leaders of other major alliance partners may not accept a reduction in US commitment on finances and personnel.

It is to be seen how Trump balances out USA`s global interests and commitments to European security through NATO with Germany playing a more dominant part strategically. A greater German role may be inevitable given the strength of the German economy and Britain`s prospective exit from the European Union and the possibility of a reduction in London`s financial support to NATO. Trump may be realistic enough to appreciate the force multiplier effect of NATO assets and their dispositions vis-à-vis USA`s strategic interests in unstable regions like the Middle East and even in the Balkans.

Trump and Merkel hold substantively differing views on immigration, protection of refugees, deportation of Muslims from USA, and their rehabilitation under special circumstances in Europe, etc. Without directly criticising the latest ban imposed by the Trump administration on the entry of Muslims from select countries, Merkel has continued to express her views espousing support for providing succour and rehabilitation to Muslims fleeing conflict zones such as Syria. While Trump had observed that Merkel`s decision is a catastrophic mistake, Merkel had called for adherence to the UN Convention on Refugees.

In the economic realm, reckoning the fundamentals of their relationship, Trump may find it difficult to alter its present content. His `make America great again` slogan, if implemented to the extent of restricting German investments and exports to USA, with the objective of promoting American domestic industry and employment, may only be counterproductive. German investment in USA is significant amounting to USD 255 billion, and generates nearly 700,000 jobs through US affiliates of German firms. Any disincentive by way of additional fiscal measures by USA on repatriation of profits, higher taxation on German investments, etc. will attract countervailing action by Germany and may adversely impact US exports to Germany valued at approximately USD 50 billion as well as the US domestic industry and the employment scenario. Impediments on German investments in USA may also induce diversion in the flow of German capital and enterprises to Latin America and Africa where Berlin may have long-term economic interests and compete with US interests.

Notwithstanding the above, Trump will try to redress the continuing adverse US-German trade balance on commodities, which reached nearly USD 50 billion by January 2017. Trump has been able to drum up domestic support on the premise that the trade deficit is a threat to US security and prosperity. It is to be seen how Trump manages to increase the prospects of USA`s domestic manufacturing industry and enhance exports to Germany within the framework of an open and expanding world economy. He may also not be naïve to forego the benefits such as the provision of national treatment to US investors in Germany under the existing USA-Germany Treaty of Friendship, Commerce and Navigation by forcing its modification and resorting to restrictive fiscal and trade measures. An accusation levelled by Trump and his business associates to the effect that manipulation of the value of the Euro has boosted German exports may be strongly rebutted by Merkel. German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble has already attributed the changes in the value of the Euro to economic factors outside Berlin’s control. A prudent alternative for Trump would be to work to make major US exports such as civilian aircraft and their engines as well as automobiles more competitive instead of distorting or altering the existing framework of cooperation pertaining to US-German investment and trade.

Merkel has been more true to her liberal democratic credentials than many European leaders. These have been borne out by her stance on issues like countering political extremism at home and abroad, offering protection to refugees fleeing from terror, and opposing Russia’s annexation of Crimea. The exception has been the Greek financial liquidity crises since 2010, in regard to which Merkel`s government has been insisting on the implementation of a stiff International Monetary Fund (IMF) imposed economic bailout package which has only served to undermine various progressive socio-economic measures.

It is unlikely that Trump and Merkel would have a complete convergence of views and postures particularly over refugee rehabilitation in Europe, international efforts to regulate environmental pollution, and reform of the United Nations and especially the Security Council, to flag a few such issues. While agreement may be achieved on countering the sources of extremism such as ISIS in the Middle-East, it is likely that differences would remain on promoting Palestinian statehood. It has been reported that Trump is likely to probe Merkel on the most effective policy for dealing with Putin over a range of issues without entailing a higher economic burden on USA or extended military force deployments. Shades of differences may persist in their respective approaches to dealing with Putin, the Crimea issue and appraisal of sanctions on Russia imposed after the latter`s annexation of Crimea. Nonetheless, the bilateral dialogue may initiate the process of a better understanding of Trump`s inclinations and German compulsions at the strategic level in relation to central and eastern Europe and Russia. Trump may also appreciate the benefit of incremental changes to the existing USA-Germany bilateral trade and commerce-related institutions for mutual benefit.

A realistic dialogue process may also ensue on a reappraisal of the sharing mechanism for financial support to NATO including a cost-effective implementation of the force Readiness Action Plan formulated after the NATO Wales summit in 2015. It is also possible that Germany`s geostrategic position in Europe apropos Russia, its economic growth and resilience, as well as diverse and accommodative relations with an array of middle powers like India, Japan and some of the African and western hemispheric countries will influence Trump to give due weightage to Merkel, particularly when she is expected to lead her Christian Democratic Union and Christian Socialist Party coalition to victory in the September 2017 national elections.

*The author, a retired IDAS officer, has served in senior positions in the Governments of India and a State Government. The views expressed are the author’s own.

Originally published by Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (www.idsa.in) at http://idsa.in/idsacomments/prospects-of-us-german-relations-under-trump_gsen_150317

Looming Threat Of Asian Tobacco Companies To Global Health

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The globalization of Asian tobacco companies should be of increasing international concern, according to a new study by researchers at the University of York and Simon Fraser University, Canada.

Analyzing the global business strategies of Asian tobacco companies in Japan, South Korea, China, Taiwan and Thailand, researchers found that these companies have started to export their brands to rapidly growing markets in Asia, Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

Published in Global Public Health, key methods in their shift from a domestic focus to aspiring transnational companies include:

  • Government supported consolidation and restructuring of domestic operations including shutting down facilities deemed inefficient, merging smaller concerns into larger ones, and upgrading production capacity
  • Increased manufacturing specifically for export to foreign markets
  • New product development to create brands that have global appeal
  • Product innovation including specially designed filters, use of flavourings, super slim cigarettes and electronic cigarettes
  • Foreign direct investment in the form of joint ventures, overseas manufacturing and leaf growing operations

Researchers say their success in global expansion will mean a further increase to the already six million deaths caused by tobacco use each year.

Dr Jappe Eckhardt, Lecturer in Politics and International Relations in York’s Department of Politics and co-author of the study, said: “There are already one billion tobacco smokers worldwide, and this number is likely to rise further with Asian tobacco companies poised to enter the global market. It is very likely that this will lead to more smokers worldwide.

“Most attention of national and global tobacco control efforts is targeted at companies like British American Tobacco and Philip Morris, often referred to as Big Tobacco. However, our research shows this new group of Asian tobacco companies aims to gain market share across the globe through increased marketing, the development of new products and lowering prices.

“For example, the China National Tobacco Company (CNTC) is by far the world’s largest tobacco company but to date has been largely domestically focused. Consolidation has been followed by a strong commitment by the state-owned monopoly to “go global” over the next decade through exports, overseas manufacturing and leaf production.

“Rather than supporting the expansion of these companies, as sources of profit, Asian governments need to recognize that far greater economic, environmental and social costs are being caused by this deadly industry.

“Collective action by all countries, focused on the WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, is needed more than ever.”

Switzerland: Rifle Association Up In Arms About EU Gun Law

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By Urs Geiser

The gun lobbying groups in Switzerland have protested against a regulation by the European Union parliament to tighten gun ownership rules.

On Tuesday, the EU parliament approved proposals to restrict gun ownership, notably by introducing tighter controls, reducing the number of cartridges for semi-automatic rifles to ten, and setting up an arms register.

Switzerland is not a member of the EU, but it is subject to these new rules as a member of the 26 single-border Schengen group countriesexternal link.

The Swiss rifle association (Swiss Shooting) said it would force a referendum – collecting at least 50,000 signatures – if parliament approved a government proposal to adopt the European rules.

The new regulations couldn’t prevent terrorist attacks and existing laws in Switzerland were sufficient to combat the illegal arms trade, the association said. “It is making citizens believe they are safe,” criticised Dora Andres, president of Swiss Shooting.

She added that Switzerland had a long tradition of gun ownership with its hunters, marksmen and arms collectors.

In the same vein, Werner Salzmann, a parliamentarian for the rightwing Swiss People’s Party urged to reject the EU regulation.

However, Chantal Galladé, a parliamentarian for the leftwing Social Democratic Party, told SRF public radio, said sports marksmen, or police, could continue to use their guns as before.

The number of Swiss keeping their army-issue rifle or pistol after military service has dropped by three quarters in ten years

The number of Swiss keeping their army-issue rifle or pistol after military service has dropped by three quarters in ten years. Source: Swiss defence ministry

Swiss exemptions

Last March, Justice Minister Simonetta Sommaruga said EU plans for tighter gun control would likely not affect the Swiss tradition of keeping militia army rifles at home.

There had been great controversy in Switzerland surrounding the proposal concerning semi-automatic rifles, as it would have affected all those in the Swiss militia army who opt to take their army issue guns home after official duty – just over 10% of all conscripts.

Opponents to the proposed law changes argue that Swiss voters in 2011 rejected a national arms register.

They also complained that the use of standard issue rifles would be complicated for former members of the Swiss army, making gun ownership dependent on joining a rifle club.

South Korea Keen To Invest In Sri Lanka

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South Korea’s Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se expressed his government’s keenness to invest in Sri Lanka, specifically in the fields of Research and Development, Information Technology, Health, and Education.

Meeting with Sri Lanka’s Prime Minister Ranil Wickremesinghe on Wednesday at Temple Trees the Korean Foreign Minister also expressed that his government is interested in investing in the Megapolis project.

He further said that the Korean government, while improving the cooperation between two countries, will take steps to increase the Cooperation for Development from USD 300 million to USD 500 million and provide water bowsers and other facilities for the drought -affected people.

Referring to the recent brave act by a Sri Lankan young boy working in Korea, who rescued an old woman who was caught in a fire, the foreign minister said that Sri Lankans are considered as national heroes by the Korean people. He also praised the Sri Lankans working in Korea.

Sri Lanka’s PM Wickremesinghe in response to the visiting Korean minister said that it is expected to further strengthen the bilateral relation between the two countries, which is celebrating the 40th anniversary. He also requested the Korean minister to support the renovation of the National Institute of Education, and to further extend the vocational education and the e-library service.

Addressing Cyberspace Vulnerability: ASEAN And The Philippines – Analysis

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By RJ Marco Lorenzo C. Parcon*

As early as the 1990s, the increasing risk and vulnerability of cyberspace was highlighted when a group of hackers known as L0pht issued a warning that computers’ software and hardware and the connection that link computers together were not safe to use and were vulnerable to hacks. The group also stated that these problems would persist if governments and tech corporations do nothing to minimize and protect citizens from being exploited in cyberspace. More than ten years after L0pht’s warning, internet security remains to be a problem.

The advent of the worldwide web has not only eased social connectivity, but has also lowered transaction costs in various ways. The internet has fostered globalization, with 40.7 per 100 people in 2014 having access to the internet worldwide.1 The continued increase in internet usage, however, also increased the social and political vulnerabilities of people and the state, a serious problem that transcends borders.

The extent of vulnerabilities

Symantec, a cybersecurity company, stated in its 2016 Internet Security Report that it discovered more than 430 million new unique pieces of malware.2 This is an increase of 36 percent from the 2014 data.3 Moreover, there were a total of 318 network breaches in 2015 and the average identities exposed per breach increased to 1.3 million from 1.1 million in 2014.4 More alarmingly, terror and non-state organizations’ hacking of government and private websites have also increased. Allegedly, even states deviously utilize cyberspace for their own personal gain.

Crimes committed in cyberspace against women are also increasing worldwide. A report cited by UN Women in its 2015 publication on cyber-violence against women and girls stated that 73 percent of women worldwide have already been exposed or have experienced some form of online violence.5

The international community cannot stand idly by while the cyberspace continues to teem with vulnerabilities. The United Nations Office of Drugs and Crime (UNODC) Cybercrime study reminded the international community that “In the future hyper-connected society, it is hard to imagine a ‘computer crime’, and perhaps any crime, that does not involve electronic evidence linked with internet protocol (IP) connectivity.”6

The ASEAN Response

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) echoed the same as the ASEAN Blueprint for the Political-Security Community 2025 called for the strengthening of cooperation between member states in combating cybercrimes, and developing and improving relevant laws and capabilities to address cybercrime issues and enhance cybersecurity. An important component of the Blueprint is the creation of a secure and connected information infrastructure to sustain regional economic growth and competitiveness. A key goal of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC), in particular, is to develop electronic transactions through e-ASEAN to further facilitate ICT trade and services between member states.7

Issues related to cybersecurity have also been embedded in various ASEAN institutional meetings. The Senior Officials Meeting on Transnational Crimes (SOMTC), for example, focuses on eight types of transnational crimes, one being the commission of cybercrimes. At the 7th SOMTC in Vientiane, senior officials adopted a common framework for ASEAN cybercrime capacity-building to further enhance the cybersecurity capabilities of the Member States. Last May 2016, during the ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting–Plus (ADMM-Plus) in Vientiane, the defense ministers adopted the proposal of then-Philippine Defense Minister Voltaire Gazmin to create a cybersecurity working group that could facilitate the sharing of knowledge and expertise, and would also foster practical cooperation among all parties in addressing cybersecurity issues.

The Philippine response

While recognizing the important role played by the internet and the world wide web, especially with regard to the overall social and economic development plan of the country, the Philippines has also recognized the importance of instituting mechanisms aimed at providing an environment conducive to the development of its people in the field of ICT. The Philippines cannot take cyber-threats lightly as 37 percent of Filipinos use the internet and more than 102 million have mobile cellular subscriptions as of 2013. Thus, in 2012, the Philippines instituted Republic Act 10175, otherwise known as the Cybercrime Prevention Act, with the aim of preventing cybercrimes from being committed, protecting and safeguarding computers and other communication systems and networks from being exploited, abused and illegally accessed.

However, even with RA10175 and other relevant laws in place, the 2016 Symantec Internet Threat Report still ranked the Philippines 6th in the world when it comes to web attack origins. This is even a notch higher than the 2014 ranking that placed the country in 7th place. According to the Philippine National Police Anti-Cybercrime Group (PNP-ACG), the Philippines experienced a total of 1,809 cybercrimes in 2015, around 800 more than the previous year. Just last year, around US$ 81 million were stolen from a Bangladesh bank and were funneled to a Philippine bank by cybercriminals.

The Philippines must ensure the full implementation of cybercrime laws and continue to mainstream the cybersecurity discussion in its National Security Agenda. It must also include cybersecurity management mechanisms in the discussions. Moreover, effective communication between concerned agencies is imperative.

But a critical issue is human resources: the need for Information Technology Security (ITS) professionals that can further boost the country’s cybersecurity. According to a press report, the Philippines has only a total of 84 Certified Information Systems Security Professionals. This pales in comparison with other countries’ certified professionals, with Singapore having more than 1,000, Indonesia with 107, Thailand with 189, and Malaysia with 275.8 The government, in partnership with the private sector, must advocate the development and certification of the IT human resource in the country. In this regard, opportunities must be given to both qualified men and women. Women’s participation in the field of ICT and ITS in the Philippines and around the world must also be expanded and enhanced. This is due to the fact that although there is a huge demand for ITS professionals, women’s representation is disturbingly low worldwide.

A more secure cyberspace benefits everyone

When technological discoveries are made on a daily basis, threats also abound. Where there is a chance to gain confidential information, money and other items of interest through the internet, there is also a huge chance that hackers and other cyber-threats will try to undermine cybersecurity and gain confidential information. In 2015, Kaspersky Lab alone blocked almost two billion attempts to steal money using online banking.9

A more secure cyberspace is beneficial not just for the government, but for the whole country. A more secure cyberspace will also mean a better economy; investors will not hesitate to pour investments into the country because the IT infrastructure is more secure. An unsecure cyberspace will leave the people to be more vulnerable than before as more malwares are being developed every day.

About the author:
*RJ Marco Lorenzo C. Parcon
is a Foreign Affairs Research Specialist with the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies of the Foreign Service Institute. Mr. Parcon can be reached at rjcparcon@fsi.gov.ph

Source:
This article was published by FSI. The views expressed in this publication are of the authors alone and do not reflect the official position of the Foreign Service Institute, the Department of Foreign Affairs and the Government of the Philippines. CIRSS Commentaries is a regular short publication of the Center for International Relations and Strategic Studies (CIRSS) of the Foreign Service Institute (FSI) focusing on the latest regional and global developments and issues.

Endnotes:
1 “Internet Users (per 100 peple) .” World Bank. 2016. Accessed November 15, 2016. http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/IT.NET.USER.P2

2 “2016 Internet Security Report” Symantec Corporation. April 2016. Accessed November 16, 2016. https://www.symantec.com/content/dam/symantec/docs/reports/istr-21-2016-en.pdf

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 “Cyber Violence Against Women and Girls: A World-wide Wake-Up Call.” UNWomen. 2015. http://www.unwomen.org/~/media/headquarters/attachments/sections/library/publications/2015/cyber_violence_gender%20report.pdf

6 “The use of Internet for terrorist purposes.” UNODC (September 2012). Accessed November 17 2016. https://www.unodc.org/documents/frontpage/Use_of_Internet_for_Terrorist_Purposes.pdf

7 “e-ASEAN FRAMEWORK AGREEMENT” November 24, 2000. Accessed, January 2017. http://asean.org/?static_post=e-asean-framework-agreement

8 Ted P. Torres. “Lack of IT security professionals makes Philippines prone to cyber crime.” April 11 2016. Accessed November 17 2016. http://beta.philstar.com/business/banking/2016/04/11/1571843/lack-it-security-professionals-makes-philippines-prone-cyber-crime

9 “Kaspersky Lab Security Bulletin for 2015 shows mobile banking threats among the leading malicious financial programs for the first time” Kasperky Lab. December 15, 2015. Accessed November 18, 2016. http://usa.kaspersky.com/about-us/press-center/press-releases/2015/kaspersky-lab-security-bulletin-2015-shows-mobile-banking-threa

India-Canada Ties: Waiting For Trudeau – Analysis

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One is an advanced economy, the other an emerging one, and yet they share a striking complementarity of interests—from democracy and liberal values to a history of cordial relations. But two important economic agreements remain as chasms to be bridged.

By Rajiv Bhatia*

With a population of 35 million, Canada contributes 2.1% to the global GDP of $74 trillion. India, a nation of 1.3 billion, accounts for a little more: 2.8%. Therein lies vast scope for economic cooperation. A striking complementarity of needs and capabilities exists, linking an advanced economy with an emerging one. What is also of help are political bonds, democracy and liberal values, the Commonwealth connection, and a history of cordial relations.

Yet, despite a flurry of high-level visits in the past six months, there is no indication yet of dates for the much awaited visit of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. It is not certain if the visit will even take place in 2017. The claim that coordinating the calendars of two busy prime ministers is difficult evokes some skepticism..

The big moment in India-Canada relations came with Prime Minister Modi’s visit in April 2015 that took him to Ottawa, Toronto and Vancouver. Stephen Harper, the then PM, travelled with Modi on the Air India aircraft; the two leaders seemed to share a special chemistry. In the national election, held a few months later, Harper lost and cleared the way for Trudeau. A relationship has been developing between the 66-year old Indian PM and the 45-year old Canadian head of state, but not yet to the level where Trudeau has found time to visit India.

This delay could partially be due to the considerable gap that negotiators need to bridge before they succeed in finalising drafts of two important agreements: the Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) and Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA). Both sides would want the Trudeau visit to culminate in a substantive outcome. Modi’s decisive political triumph in the recent state elections should help convince the Canadians that they should move forward quickly to deepen cooperation with India, now set more than before on a stable path, helmed by a strong leader.

There are ticklish issues that need to be resolved creatively. Of the two draft agreements, BIPPA negotiations are easier to close. Investments have been flowing in both directions, and showing a steady increase. Indian companies are investing three times more in Canada than Canadian companies are in India. Canadian pension funds are expanding their footprint in a receptive Indian market. But Canadian investors are looking for greater certainty and predictability that a formal BIPPA alone could provide. Issues like Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) and Most-Favoured Nation (MFN) status need resolution. The Indian side views them as “peripheral issues”,[1] suggesting that negotiations should “focus on bringing in promotion and protection elements, which provide stability and predictability to investments in each other’s country.”[2]

Further, lack of labour mobility seems to be a major irritant for India. On the other hand, CEPA may prove to be a tougher nut to crack. The two sides have been engaged in negotiations since 2010. Canada has recently signed a trade agreement with the EU that has “progressive elements” on environment, labour, right of states to regulate health and safety areas and other such concerns. The Canadians have termed it “the gold standard”,[3] hoping that India will accept it. New Delhi may not be inclined to oblige. Besides, India is concerned about reforms in the Temporary Foreign Workers Programme (TWFP) that have become more stringent, thus adversely affecting services export from India.

The driver for finalising the CEPA is that bilateral trade has been developing very well. Valued at $8 billion in 2016, its trajectory fuels a shared belief that it could head quickly towards the target set: $15 billion. The two governments have apparently agreed to work towards a common timetable to develop an agreed draft.

Canada-India relations, of course, encompass many other significant sectors that found mention in the joint statement entitled “New Vigour – New Steps”, issued during Modi’s historic visit to Canada. It not only confirmed elevation of the relationship to “strategic partnership”, but also delineated an ambitious agenda covering civil-nuclear cooperation, partnerships for urban transportation and energy, education and skills development, agriculture, defence and security, science and technology, innovation and space cooperation as well as closer coordination on regional and global issues. This agenda, now two years old, needs review and updating, which only a prime ministerial visit can ensure.

At a time when officials, corporates and political leaders are engaged in strengthening ties, a larger contribution by people-to-people exchanges can make a big difference. Two suggestions merit consideration. First, the 1.2 million-strong Indian diaspora in Canada should leverage its close links with the ruling Liberal Party to urge a stronger relationship with India. Second, think tanks should develop new channels for regular dialogue, factoring in the global and regional perspectives that impact both nations.

A unique meeting last month between a Canadian team of officials, led by Ian Shugart, deputy minister of foreign affairs, and a select group of Gateway House experts, led by this author, demonstrated the enormous value of widening communications and conversations. This could open the way for a quantum jump to broaden mutual understanding and cooperation.

In order to strengthen the relationship further, there is a pressing need for people in both countries to change their mindsets and get to know each other better. Prem Budhwar, a distinguished former high commissioner to Canada, asserted, “If the two countries have to get closer and provide more flesh to this partnership, then mutual awareness must increase manifold.”[4]

About the author:
*Rajiv Bhatia
is Distinguished Fellow, Foreign Policy Studies Programme, Gateway House and a former ambassador. He served as Consul General in Toronto during 1994-98.

Source:
This feature was written for Gateway House: Indian Council on Global Relations.

References:
[1] Ministry of Commerce and Industry, Government of India, Press Information Bureau, India-Canada Trade and Investment Relations, 2017, <http://pib.nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=158835> accessed on March 15, 2017

[2] Ibid.

[3] Base, Nayanima, and Amiti, Sen, ‘Absence of FIPPA curbing investments from Canada’, Business Line, 5 March, 2017. <http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/economy/policy/absence-of-fippa-curbing-investments-from-canada/article9571540.ece>

[4] Budhwar, K. Prem, Canada-India: Partners in Progress, New Delhi: Vij Books India Pvt. Ltd./ICWA, 2016, p. 157

Making NATO Less ‘Obsolete’– Analysis

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By Frank G. Hoffman*

(FPRI) — The German Chancellor, Mrs. Angela Merkel, is coming to Washington this week to visit the White House and gain a better understanding of U.S. foreign policy under the new administration. President Donald Trump had startled our alliance partners in Europe when he described NATO as “obsolete.” He really unnerved them by suggesting that future U.S. commitments to defend members of that alliance might be conditional, depending whether they had met their obligation to adequately fund their own defenses. These statements rattled the china in the capitals of our allies, but it also highlighted the longstanding charade of European security spending.

Nonetheless, several senior U.S. policymakers travelled to Europe in February 2017 to reassure NATO members that America would stand by its commitments. Secretary of Defense James Mattis was firm and reassuring. At the annual Munich Security Conference, he noted, “President Trump came into office and has thrown now his full support to NATO.” But he also repeated a concern about the shared obligations of NATO members, observing bluntly, “It is a fair demand that all who benefit from the best alliance in the world carry their proportionate share of the necessary costs to defend our freedoms.”

European contributions to NATO’s overall readiness have been a concern for the past few years. NATO’s anemic military budgets after 1991 were entirely understandable given the demonstrably reduced threat to European security. Between 1991 and 2007, NATO defense spending declined somewhat, but NATO offset that with new members including Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania, and the Baltic states. But impelled by the financial crisis, between 2007 and 2014, security spending dropped 14 percent.

That said, the tides of history have washed back in, as seen by Russia’s assertive behavior in almost every dimension of conflict (military aggression, economic threats, nuclear saber rattling, massive disinformation programs, and political interference). Accordingly, Europe’s has stopped, and a modest funding increase has begun, consistent with the agreements announced at the NATO Summit in Wales in 2014. That announcement articulated a general commitment to move towards a common goal of investing 2 percent of GDP by 2024. Despite its flaws as a crude input, the 2 percent GDP metric is a transparent goal and a reflection of commitment. As such, it is likely to remain the standard in the debate over shared obligations in NATO. It should be clear that this standard only applies to our allies; our own defense spending is closer to 3.6 percent.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis meets with Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s defence minister, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 2017.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis meets with Ursula von der Leyen, Germany’s defence minister, at the Pentagon in Washington, D.C., Feb. 10, 2017.

Progress towards that aim is slow but evident. This situation is what pushed Mattis to suggest the following to his European audience: “Americans cannot care more for your children’s future security than you do.” The German defense minister, Ursala von der Leyen, notes that sharing the burden is much more than what can be expressed in euros and in dollars. She claimed that “To share a burden is to first of all share the principle to stand up for one another without exception.” I disagree with von der Leyen on this point. The first rule of partnership is shared and reciprocal risks and benefits. The German defense minister insists on the benefit of the partnership, but fails to see the necessity of reciprocal sharing of the costs and risks of the partnership. Such a relationship is politically unsustainable as former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates stressed years ago. The “dim future” he warned of back then is perilously closer. The German military is considered overstretched and underfunded, and the government’s own reports indicate a series of embarrassing shortfalls. Germany’s defense minister wants to deflect attention from that and has worked to gain approval for sizable increases (roughly 8 percent) in security spending. At this rate, Germany would eventually bring its spending in line with NATO goals by 2024. I am not sure we can count on Russia to give us ten years to better defend Europe.

Moderated Commitment

In his recent speech at Brussels, Mattis gave a vague warning: “If your nations do not want to see America moderate its commitment to this alliance, each of your capitals needs to show support for our common defense.” It is time to flesh this idea out. A formal partnership like NATO should have clear lines about pooled resources and risk. Furthermore, instead of the United States determining what level of “moderated commitment” means, a more explicit standard should be set that each country makes for itself by its own defense funding commitment.

The Trump administration might want to consider asking Brussels to alter the NATO Charter to align the defense budget commitment of each ally to their position and membership privileges at NATO’s principal decision making body, the North Atlantic Council. Presently, it is a body that includes all members, and it operates by consensus, not by voting. Hence, one reluctant country, perhaps one that is unable or unwilling to fulfill its defense promises, still has full privileges and can block any meaningful action.

As a proposal, the following scale is offered for consideration and to spark a debate:

  • 1.75% to 2.0% of GDP: At this level, a NATO member has full membership at the North Atlantic Council and Military Committee.
  • Below 1.75%: A NATO member has full membership status at North Atlantic Council, but only an observer seat on the Military Committee. The member may still nominate issues for consideration at the two bodies.
  • Below 1.4%: A NATO member at this level has only observer status in both the North Atlantic Council and Military Committee.
  • Below 1.0%: A NATO member at this level has no seats on either committee. Members receive an Article V Commitment warning if they remain below this threshold for three years. No nationals from these countries may serve at NATO headquarters or hold command positions.

At today’s level of commitment, most of the 28 NATO members fall in the lower two categories. Only six countries would be in the upper tier and have full membership standing. Germany, even with a vibrant economy, currently allocates just over 1.2 percent of its economic output to military requirements. This commitment is roughly one third of the U.S. investment level, but that also accounts for a country with more global responsibilities. So do not expect this proposal to be taken seriously by our NATO allies, and attempting to force it upon them will probably only result in a fractured coalition with fewer members. But a president who is accustomed to business partnerships surely finds the current risk/reward formulation at NATO headquarters to be both obsolete and discouraging. He should be uncomfortable asking the American taxpayer to borrow nearly $4 billion to help fund a European Reassurance Initiative for NATO members that are not meeting their minimum defense budgets, while domestically, the government is unable to find the resources to provide for border security or update depleted infrastructure.

Measuring Deployable Combat Power

A more practical proposal would be to stop measuring what countries budget and actually evaluate contributions in terms of outputs. One measure may be to build a scale based on combat units, such as armor/infantry/artillery battalions, logistics units, and flying squadrons. This NATO Deployable Combat Index would allocate desired deployed unit totals towards each member. Major Powers (UK, Germany, and France) may be responsible for three brigades of combined arms and a certain number of fighter and mobility squadrons. Smaller countries might strive to generate and sustain a Combat Index of only one brigade or smaller units. A similar objective could be assigned to naval capabilities and to requisite combat support needs. The end result would be a more accurate measure of commitment and capability, and a far greater deterrent to Moscow’s ambitions for a post-Western Order in which Russia can dominate its bordering neighbors.

The Next Summit

NATO remains the world’s great alliance and is capable of adapting itself to the 21st century. In fact, in this case, the needed adaptation is merely a return to the basis for the creation of NATO in the first place. Instead of “out of area” missions, the territorial integrity of Europe’s borders and the political independence of its members now faces its greatest challenge since the Cold War. That should be NATO’s focus for now, and it should remain the primary agenda item for the upcoming summit scheduled for May 2017.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis speaks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 15, 2017.

Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis speaks with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at the NATO Headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, Feb. 15, 2017.

Measuring progress on enhanced deterrence should also be on the agenda. NATO claims a 3.8 percent increase in NATO European defense expenditures, which equates to a $10 billion boost in spending. This plan is the first aggregate increase since 2008’s financial crisis, with notable increases from both Germany and Italy. But $4.5 billion of that increase comes not from the Continent, but from Canada and the United Kingdom. Even the latter’s increase was noted in London as the product of creatively changing accounting practices. I would not call this cooking the books, but it does not constitute a real increase in fighting capacity, either. Using constant 2010 prices and NATO Headquarters’ own numbers, the actual increase in European NATO countries is actually $5.8 billion or just 2.3 percent. Overlooked by arguments over the accounting is the major point that the defense decline has been stopped and turned around but that more progress is needed, just as the Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has inveighed at the Munich Security Conference. The disarmament of Europe took well over two decades and will not be overcome in just two or three years. American leaders will have to be more patient, but also just as persistent.

The first steps were taken in Wales and need to be pursued with resolute political leadership and a common understanding of the dangers we seek to prevent. Different members have different ideas about the priority to assign to Russia, immigration, and terrorism. In his recent address to Congress, Trump expressed his support for NATO in general, but did not mention Russia, which is its greatest problem. At the mini-summit, there also should be a discussion about threat perceptions to ensure everyone is on the same page.

Additionally, the administration should continue to make our Article V commitment to allies unambiguous, but we should make additive commitments of funding more conditional on NATO sustaining its progress. We should also pursue mechanisms that both credit our allies with all that they contribute to real war-fighting capability rather than economic figures and budget announcements that do not produce any deterrent. Such a change would begin to put teeth into NATO as a deterrent force and ensure it contributes to what one author rightfully calls the Defense of the West. At the end of the day, NATO underwrites a free and prosperous West able to secure its borders against aggression. Having a free and stable Europe is not just a priority for our European friends, but it also a vital interest of the United States.

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

Source:
This article was published by FPRI


EU Launches Education Program For 230,000 Refugee Children To Attend School In Turkey

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The European Commission launched Thursday its largest ever humanitarian program for education in emergencies to encourage some 230,000 refugee children to attend school in Turkey.

Turkey is currently host to more than three million refugees, almost half of whom are children. Education for school-age children is a key challenge, with 500,000 children enrolled in formal education across the country (in Turkish schools and Temporary Education Centres), while an estimated 370,000 remain out of school.

The €34 million ‘Conditional Cash Transfer for Education’ (CCTE) project will provide bimonthly cash-transfers as of May 2017 to vulnerable refugee families whose children regularly attend school. The project will be implemented in partnership with UNICEF and its partner, the Turkish Red Crescent in support of the Government of Turkey.

“The EU is committed to supporting refugee children in Turkey and beyond. Education in emergency situations is a top EU priority. Our moral duty is to save this generation of refugees children and invest in their future. We have teamed up with experienced humanitarian organizations to make this program a real success,” said Commissioner for Humanitarian Aid and Crisis Management, Christos Stylianides.

The new education project builds upon the Emergency Social Safety Net (ESSN) program, which was launched by the European Commission in September 2016 to provide a debit card to the most vulnerable refugees so they can pay for essential needs like food and shelter.

“Children do not need education even in emergencies, they need education especially in emergencies so they can someday rebuild their lives – and their countries,” said UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake. “Thanks to the EU’s generosity and Turkey’s leadership, UNICEF and our partners are already helping thousands of children to go to school and learn. The CCTE will help us reach 230,000 children – a major step in preventing a lost generation.”

“I am very glad that the Turkish Red Crescent (Kizilai) Card is changing the lives of Syrian children who are our guests.” The President of the Turkish Red Crescent, Kerem Kinik, stated. “I thank the European Union and UNICEF for their joint effort for Syrian students in Turkey. In order not to have a lost generation in our region, the whole world should do whatever it can. In this respect, I consider this project as a very important one.”

The contract with UNICEF comes on top of €517 million already contracted for humanitarian aid and increases the total amount contracted for humanitarian and non-humanitarian actions under the EU Facility for Refugees in Turkey to €1.5 billion. Out of this, €777 million has been disbursed to date.

Lawsuit Seeks Documents In Tarmac Meeting Between Lynch And Bill Clinton

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A conservative watchdog group is suing the US Justice Department over records related to the private meeting of former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and former President Bill Clinton as Hillary Clinton was under investigation during the 2016 campaign.

On Wednesday, Judicial Watch announced they had filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Justice (DOJ) for records and transcripts connected to the meeting between Lynch and Bill Clinton on June 29, 2016.

Judicial Watch filed their lawsuit after the DOJ failed to respond to their FOIA request

The lawsuit alleges that the agency received the request on July 5 and assigned FOIA request numbers in December. However, they say the agency failed to produce any records or notified them if they would accept or deny the request within the allotted time required.

The watchdog group’s original request asked the DOJ’s inspector general to investigate the meeting and requested any transcripts or records. They also requested any records of communication sent to or from the Office of the Attorney General and the Office of the Deputy Attorney General regarding the encounter and any references from day planners, calendars, and schedules from the Office of the Attorney General.

Judicial Watch says they made the inquiry because the secretive talk between Lynch and Clinton created “the appearance of a violation of law, ethical standards and good judgment.”

On June 28, Lynch met with Clinton aboard her private jet while it was parked at the Sky Harbor International Airport in Phoenix. The 30-minute meeting occurred during the then investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server during her tenure as the US’s top diplomat.

At the time, Lynch’s office was in charge of overseeing the investigation. The private meeting occurred only days before she was interview by the FBI, and hours before the public release of the Benghazi report.

Lynch claims that her meeting with Clinton did not involve these issues, but focused on their grandchildren and golf.
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“Our conversation was a great deal about grandchildren, it was primarily social about our travels and he mentioned golf he played in Phoenix,” Lynch told the Phoenix Police Department according to KNXV.

Lynch later said that she regretted the meeting, saying it “cast a cloud” over the investigation.

“I do regret sitting down and having a conversation with him, because it did give people concern. And as I said, my greatest concern has always been making sure that people understand that the Department of Justice works in a way that is independent and looks at everybody equally,” Lynch told Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union.

The meeting caused many to call for Lynch to step aside, and while she said she would defer to the recommendations of her staff and the FBI, she never officially recused herself from the case.

In a recent announcement, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton called the meeting “a vivid example of why many Americans believe the Obama administration’s criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton was rigged,” according to a recent press release.

“Now it will be up to Attorney General Sessions at the Trump Justice Department to finally shed some light on this subversion of justice,” Fitton said.

Has Striking Become A Habit For Government Employees In India? – OpEd

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On March 16, 2017 employees belonging to government of India, including the postal department, went on All India strike, with the public losing count as to how many times the government employees have gone on strike on various pretexts in the last few years.

In any case, when the government employees went on strike this time, most of the segment of the Indian population who face the brunt of the problems caused due to the strike, do not know as to what is the purpose of this latest strike. While strikes by government employees do not any more make news in India, as it has become too routine, in the case of the strike on March 16, most segments of the public were shocked, since the government of India revised the salaries and perks of the government employees steeply only recently, by accepting almost in toto the recommendations of the seventh pay commission.

While the employees are entitled to have some grievance or the other (which section of the society do not have grievance), the question is as to whether they should go on strike so frequently and on flimsy grounds, paralyzing the entire administration, with least care and consideration for the sufferings inflicted on the people, loss of national time and for the national exchequer.

It is a fact that striking is recognized as legitimate tool and appropriate way of registering protest by trade unions. But when this tool was given to the trade unions, it was with the objective of safeguarding the interest of the oppressed and suppressed people.

Can government employees in India consider themselves as belonging to this class by any stretch of imagination? Are not the salaries and perks enjoyed by the government employees much higher than the income of the very large section of the country men, particularly considering the fact that around 30% of Indians still live below poverty line? Is it not a fact that public perception of government employees is that they are the privileged class, enjoying considerable benefits even after retirement and the benefits for their families even after their lives?

Employees in private sector organizations would think hundred times before going on strike, since such a strike would inevitably affect the progress of the organization and cause economic loss to it which would destabilize the organization and consequently may affect the employees themselves in variety of ways. However, in the case of government employees, they do not think on these lines, since any loss to the exchequer is of no consequence to them and their jobs will not be threatened.

The unfortunate fact is that the leadership of the unions of the government employees are now under the control of coterie, who are full fledged politicians or those with definite political leanings. Most of the strike calls are given at the behest of the political parties and many times for reasons relating to government policies and programmes , which have to be discussed and decided in parliament and not by government employees.

In several developed countries, the strike decisions are taken by the employees based on secret voting by the employees. In India, this has never been done. In all probability, most government employees may not like this practice of going on strike for flimsy reasons but have to submit themselves to the dictates of the leadership of the unions, fearing threat and coercion.

The common man has started thinking that there is increasing evidence that government employees are taking the people for granted and strike has become a matter of habit for them and consequently a need at frequent intervals. In the process, the interests of the country have gone for a toss.

Imran Khan’s PTI: The New Face Of Liberal Nationalism – OpEd

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Although people often conflate democracy and liberalism, but there is a fine distinction between politics and culture; a democratic system of governance falls in the category of politics while liberalism, as a value system, falls in the category of culture. When we say that Islam and democracy are inconsistent, we make a category mistake as serious as the Islamists’ misconception that democracy is somehow un-Islamic. They too mix up democracy with liberalism.

I do concede, however, that there is some friction between liberalism as a cultural temperament and Islam as a conservative religion. But democracy isn’t about religion or culture. It is simply a multi-party, representative political system that confers legitimacy upon a government which comes to power through an election process which is a contest between more than one political parties in order to ensure that it is voluntary.

Thus democracy and politics are mostly about matters of governance and economics, while culture is mostly about social and moral values and the kind of social matrix that we, as individuals and families, would like to construct around us. There is some overlapping between politics and culture but as a heuristic principle this distinction holds true.

When I will discuss the political pragmatism of Imran Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf (PTI), the reader will further appreciate the fact that realpolitik is mostly about power and rarely about cultural matters.

Let us admit at the outset that Imran Khan is an educated, well-informed, articulate and charismatic leader. Being an Oxford graduate, he is better informed than most of our domestic politicians. And he is a liberal at heart. Most readers would not agree due to his fierce anti-imperialism and West-bashing demagoguery, but I’ll try to explain.

Like I have argued earlier that there is a difference between politics and culture; anti-imperialism is a political stance and liberalism is a cultural temperament. The renowned American political philosopher, John Rawls, introduced the theory of “Reflective Equilibrium” to political science. It states that our minds try to create harmony between different sets of beliefs and actions. If there is divergence between our beliefs and actions, it leads to cognitive dissonance. In order to avoid this reflective disequilibrium, we try to attune our beliefs and ideology to bring them in conformity with our actions and vice versa.

Now if Imran Khan is supposedly a conservative Islamist, then his mind must be a psychological singularity. A playboy, cricketer-turned-politician who spent most of his youth in the West chasing famous celebrities all over the world, how could he be an Islamist or a conservative? How would his mind create reflective equilibrium between his beliefs and his licentious actions? It is simply inconceivable for him to be an Islamist or a conservative. The only ideology that suits his temperament and lifestyle is freewheeling liberalism.

A clarification is needed here: when I say that he is not an Islamist, I mean that he is not a political Islamist; I am not questioning his personal faith as a Muslim. He seems like a liberal and secular Muslim.

Although the phrase “secular Muslim” might sound oxymoronic to perceptive readers, but it’s a fact that culture plays a much more substantial role in forming our mindsets than religion, as such. A Muslim living in a developed Western society would generally adopt a liberal interpretation of scriptures; a Muslim who has been brought up in the urban middle class of the Muslim-majority countries would adopt a moderately conservative interpretation of sacred texts; and a rural and tribal Muslim who has been indoctrinated in a religious seminary would adopt extreme interpretation of the same scriptures.

More to the point, it’s not just Imran Khan’s playboy nature that makes him a liberal. He also derives his intellectual inspiration from the Western tradition. The ideal role model in his mind is the Scandinavian social democratic model which he has mentioned on numerous occasions, especially in his speech at Karachi before a massive rally of singing and cheering crowd in December 2012.

His relentless anti-imperialism as a political stance may have partly to do with his personal experience of encountering racism in the West and partly because it is based on facts. What neocolonialists have done in Afghanistan and the Middle East evokes strong feelings of resentment among Muslims all over the world. Moreover, Imran Khan also uses anti-America rhetoric as electoral strategy to attract conservative masses, particularly the impressionable youth.

Notwithstanding, if Imran Khan is a liberal at heart, what is PTI then? Some of its stalwarts like Assad Umar, Shireen Mazari, Jahangir Tareen, Khursheed Mehmood Qasuri and Shah Mehmood Qureshi also have liberal credentials. Additionally, we need to keep in mind the fact that PTI derives most of its support from women and youth. Both these segments of society, especially the women, are drawn more towards egalitarian liberalism than patriarchal conservatism, because liberalism promotes women’s rights and its biggest plus point is its emphasis on equality, emancipation and empowerment of women who constitute more than 50% of population in every society.

Regardless, I think that a better way to determine PTI’s position in the Pakistani political spectrum would be to break it down in various components and then analyze them. The Punjab and Karachi chapters (urban centers) of PTI are quite liberal in their outlook; some right-wing politicians even accused the PTI rallies in Lahore, Karachi and Islamabad as obscene in the Pakistani social milieu. Those rallies weren’t obscene by any stretch of imagination but in a segregated, patriarchal culture, the mere intermixing of men and women at public places is also frowned upon.

The Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa (KP) chapter of PTI, however, casts some aspersions on the liberal credentials of PTI, where it swept the elections from NA-1 to NA-20 and formed a coalition government with the religious hardliners. But the elections in KP were fought on a single issue: Pakistan’s stance on the war on terror and its partnership with the US.

The KP province is the war on terror’s worst affected province of Pakistan; in the 2013 parliamentary elections, PTI stood for dialogue and political settlement with the militants, while the Pashtun nationalist, Awami National Party (ANP), favored military operations in KP and tribal areas. But since the residents of KP have witnessed firsthand the sufferings of internally displaced people of Swat and tribal areas, therefore they overwhelmingly chose pro-peace PTI over pro-war ANP.

Finally, it appears that the PTI’s supporters in Punjab, Karachi and even KP’s urban areas have a more liberal outlook while the PTI’s supporters in the rural areas of KP are comparatively conservative. Therefore my conclusion would be that Imran Khan himself is a liberal but PTI is a hotchpotch of electable politicians from diverse political backgrounds; though it has the potential to emerge as a liberal political party on the Pakistani political scene.

In a nutshell, compared to the certified liberal political party, Pakistan People’s Party (PPP), I would place PTI as right-of-center; but in relation to the right-wing, Pakistan Muslim League, I would categorize PTI as left-of-center political party in the Pakistani political spectrum. Unlike the elitist PPP, however, which is led by the Westernized Sindhi feudals and represents the traditional and rural masses of Sindh province, the broad-based and urban middle class vote bank of Imran Khan’s PTI is genuinely representative and liberal.

Salute To St. Patrick – OpEd

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The heroics of St. Patrick are not appreciated as much as they should be. He is the first person in history to publicly condemn slavery, and one of the first leaders to champion the cause of equal rights.

There is much to celebrate on March 17. Fortunately, his writings, though slim, are eye-opening accounts of his life: Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus and Confession reveal much about the man. Along with other sources, they paint a picture of his saintliness.

Patrick was born in Britain in the 4th century to wealthy parents. It is likely that he was baptized, though growing up he did not share his family’s faith. He was an atheist.

When he was 15, he committed what he said was a grave sin, never saying exactly what it was; it appears it was a sexual encounter with a young girl. No matter, it would haunt him throughout his life.

At age 15 or 16 (the accounts vary), Patrick was kidnapped and enslaved by Irish barbarians. They had come to plunder his family’s estate, and took him away in chains to Ireland. While a slave, he converted to Christianity, praying incessantly at all hours of the day. After six years, he escaped, and made his way back home.

His family thought he was dead, and with good reason: no one taken by Irish raiders had managed to escape and return. St. Patrick biographer Philip Freeman describes how his family received him, stating “it was as if a ghost had returned from the dead.”

After he returned home, he had a vision while sleeping. He felt called to return to Ireland. This seemed bizarre: this is where he was brutalized as a slave. But he knew what Jesus had commanded us to do, “Love thy enemy.” He was convinced that God was calling him to become a missionary to Ireland. So he acted on it, despite the reservations of family and friends.

Patrick became a priest, practiced celibacy, and was eventually named a bishop. Contrary to what many believe, he did not introduce Christianity to Ireland, nor was he Ireland’s first bishop. But he did more to bring the
Gospel to Ireland than anyone, converting legions of pagans, especially in the northern parts of the island.

His missionary work in Ireland has been duly noted, but his strong defense of human rights has not been given its due.

No public person before him had denounced slavery, widespread though it was. Jesus was agnostic on the subject, Aristotle thought it was a natural way of life, and neither master nor slave saw anything fundamentally wrong with it. Patrick did.

Though he did not invoke natural law specifically, he was instinctively drawn to it. He taught that all men were created equal in the eyes of God, and that the inherent dignity of everyone must be respected.

Patrick did more than preach—he lashed out at the British dictator, Coroticus, harshly rebuking him for his mistreatment of the Irish. In fact, Patrick found his Irish converts to be more civilized than Coroticus and his band of thugs.

Patrick was way ahead of his time in the pursuit of human rights. Not only were men of every social status entitled to equal rights, so were women. In his Letter to the Soldiers of Coroticus, he scolds “the tyrant Coroticus—a man who has no respect for God or his priests.” More important, he made a startling plea: “They must also free Christian women and captives.” His reasoning showed the power of his faith when he said, “Remember, Christ died and was crucified for these people.”

He did not mince words. “So, Coroticus, you and your wicked servants, where do you think you will end up? You have treated baptized Christian women like prizes to be handed out, all for the sake of the here and now—this brief, fleeting world.”

What makes this all the more dramatic is the way the pagan world thought about women: the idea that women were equal to men was totally foreign to them. But the women understood what Patrick was saying, and gravitated to him in large numbers. The Christian tenet that all humans possess equal dignity had taken root.

Did the Irish save civilization, as Thomas Cahill maintains? Freeman thinks not—”it had never been lost.” But everyone agrees that had it not been for St. Patrick, and the monasteries that followed, much of what we know about the ancient world would not exist.

Indeed, it is difficult to fathom how classical Greek and Roman literature would have survived had it not been for the Irish monks who attracted students from many parts of Europe. They are responsible for preserving the great works of antiquity. And all of them are indebted to St. Patrick.

It is believed that he died on March 17, sometime during the second half of the fifth century. That is his feast day, the source of many celebrations in his honor. His impact extends beyond the Irish and the Catholic Church—human rights are a global issue—making him a very special person in world history.

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