India’s potential sale of Brahmos missiles to Vietnam is not in violation of any MTCR rules or any commitments that India made when it became an MTCR member in June 2016.
By Rajeswari Pillai Rajagopalan
India expressed interest in selling Brahmos anti-ship cruise missiles to Vietnam in 2011 and six years later, it is possible that New Delhi has finally done it. A few days ago, a Vietnamese news report suggested that Vietnam had taken possession of Brahmos missiles from India. The Vietnam foreign ministry spokesperson Le Thi Thu Hang, when asked on the purchase, said it was “in line with Vietnam’s peaceful national defense policies aimed at protecting the country.” However, a day later the Indian Ministry of External Affairs spokesperson Raveesh Kumar said, “it is not correct” and that the Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry had rejected the report. It is somewhat strange that Vietnam makes claims of taking possession of the missiles and on the other hand, the Indian Ministry of External Affairs denies them.
Brahmos is a ramjet supersonic cruise missile, developed by Russia’s NPO Mashinostroeyenia and India’s Defense Research and Development Organisation (DRDO). With a flight range of up to 290 km, and at supersonic speed all through the flight (and thus shorter flight time), it is considered as the world’s fastest anti-ship cruise missile. Brahmos carries a conventional warhead of 200-300 kg and can be launched from multiple platforms including submarines, ships, aircraft and land.
India and Russia are now considering joint development of the next generation of Brahmos missiles with a longer range of around 600 km in addition to improving the accuracy of the missile. The existing stock of missiles will also be upgraded. An upgraded missile with the extended range was successfully tested in March 2017. Former President and scientific adviser to Defence Minister Dr. APJ Abdul Kalam argued in 2011 for developing “a hypersonic version of BrahMos which can be reused…meaning that the missile should be able to deliver its payload and return to base.”
While the discrepancy in the public statements of Indian and Vietnamese officials needs to be addressed, a more important misperception has to be dispelled. There are some questions if India’s sale of Brahmos missiles to Vietnam will be violation of MTCR commitments. The answer would appear to be no.
The Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), an informal group of like-minded countries, seeks to control the proliferation of missiles and missile technology, specifically those that are relevant as delivery vehicles for weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD).
MTCR Chairs have reiterated this point as well on multiple occasions . The MTCR Chair’s statement at the induction of India into the MTCR in 2016 is a good example, stating that Indian membership “will strengthen the international efforts to prevent proliferation of delivery systems (ballistic missiles or unmanned aircraft) capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction.”
Ambassador Piet de Klerk, the MTCR Chair, while speaking at the 23rd Asian Export Control Seminar, Tokyo, in 2016, stated that “The MTCR aims to prevent proliferation of unmanned delivery systems (missiles or unmanned aircraft) capable of delivering weapons of mass destruction, by seeking to coordinate national export licensing efforts.”
Similarly, speaking at the 22nd Asian Export Control Seminar in Tokyo a year earlier, Ambassador Roald Næss, then MTCR Chair, said, “it has been the mission of the MTCR from its origin in 1987 to coordinate national export licensing efforts aimed at ‘preventing proliferation of unmanned delivery systems capable of delivering nuclear weapons.’ In 1992, the scope of the regime was extended to include delivery means for all WMD.” Explaining the expansion of the scope of the MTCR in 1992, Ambassador Klerk said, “Initially the MTCR looked only at missiles as delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons. This is also where threshold of a 500 kg payload over a range of 300 km stems from.. In 1992 it was decided to enlarge the scope to not only missiles but all unmanned delivery vehicles, for all weapons of mass destruction, including chemical and biological weapons.” He added that the MTCR was one of the four export control regimes with the Australia Group and the Nuclear Suppliers Group focusing on controlling the flow of WMD itself and the MTCR is meant specifically for “non-proliferation of their means of delivery.” Amb. Klerk makes it abundantly clear that the MTCR is not concerned about unmanned delivery vehicles in general, “but such vehicles in relation to weapons of mass destruction.” Thus it is clear that the MTCR only prohibits transfer of delivery vehicles if they could contribute to WMD proliferation.
India’s potential sale of Brahmos missiles to Vietnam is thus not in violation of any MTCR rules or any commitments that India made when it became an MTCR member in June 2016. For one, Vietnam is not a country of concern from a WMD perspective. Vietnam does not have and is not thought to have had at any time any WMD programs. Therefore, there is no reason why the transfer of Brahmos to Vietnam would violate the MTCR rules. Secondly, the fact that Vietnam is not an MTCR member is also irrelevant. The MTCR Guidelines make no distinction between exports to member states and to non-member states. In addition, MTCR does not make a decision as a group on any sale/transfers — it is up to the individual member states to make decisions whether a particular transfer or sale will contribute to WMD proliferation cause. Preventing WMD proliferation is the key guidepost for any of these transactions. The only activity that is strictly prohibited by the MTCR Guidelines “is the export of production facilities for Category I MTCR Annex items.” There may be political and strategic (or other) reasons to object to India supplying Brahmos, but it is difficult to see any legal obligations to the MTCR being a problem.
The murder of a Turkish policeman by an Islamic State terrorist on August 13, 2017 illustrates the mental mistake of the entire Turkish Ministry of Interior in the war against this terrorist organization.
An ISIS suicide bomber was arrested and detained, but not thoroughly searched by police or handcuffed, which is required of all arrestees. The terrorist had a knife which he used to stab and murder the officer before he was shot to death by a fellow officer. The incident was not simply sloppy police work but an indication that the officers did not consider the detainee a serious threat. Under the ever-growing cloud of radical Islamist propaganda emanating from the Turkish President Recep Erdogan, Turkish authorities continue to see ISIS terrorists as a minor threat.
While the U.S. military is distracted by the conventional hot war against ISIS in Syria and the ISIS-controlled cities of Iraq, Turkey is becoming a command center and logistical hub for ISIS next door.
The wakeup call for Western intelligence agencies came August 3, when they disrupted at the last minute an operation to bring down a passenger jet by an improvised explosive device (IED) shipped via air cargo from Turkey. The bomb was produced with military-grade plastic explosives and electronics.
Brett McGurk, the U.S. special envoy in the fight against ISIS recently stated at the Middle East Institute on July 29 that Ankara has been turning a blind eye to the Salafist Jihadist terrorist organizations and claimed there was a direct link between the heavy presence of al-Qaeda affiliated terrorists in Idlib, Syria and Turkey.
Turkish authorities are undermining the U.S. military’s fight against ISIS in Syria. Turkey’s state-run Anadolu news agency exposed the locations of 10 American special forces bases in Northern Syria putting the lives of coalition forces in jeopardy. Major Adrian J.T. Rankine-Galloway, a Defense Department spokesman, said: “The release of sensitive military information exposes Coalition forces to unnecessary risk and has the potential to disrupt ongoing operations to defeat ISIS.”
The evidence against Turkey as a bad actor is threefold.
First, the supply chain for military-grade explosives for ISIS originated in Turkey. Turkish manufacturers have been the main supplier of arms and explosive materials for the Islamic State, as documented last December by Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a research organization funded by the European Union. “CAR’s findings continuously reinforce evidence that the Islamic State operates a major acquisition network in Turkey and has a direct line of supply from Turkey, through Syria, to the Mosul area,” the report concluded.
Second, a new report from Iraqi news media sources claims that the money supply chain also runs through Turkey. ISIS facilitates three different routes for sending money to its territories, according to Daesh Daily, an ISIS-focused news platform.
One route is through Baghdad money exchange offices to Zakho in the Kurdish region of Iraq, then to Erbil, then to Turkey, back to Erbil, and then to Mosul. A second route is through money exchange offices in Gaziantep a border city in Turkey, close to Syria. The third route is between Baghdad and Erbil, then to Gaziantep, then to Zakho, to Erbil, then to Mosul. ISIS used to transfer 3-4 million dollars a day during its peak of affluence in 2015. ISIS even sent around $100,000 a day during the eight-month campaign to reclaim Mosul.
The gold markets are sometimes linked to slave markets. A Yezidi slave woman was sold in a secret market in Gaziantep in late December 2015 and the cash for the equivalent of $15,000 was turned over to the ISIS agent, as filmed secretly and broadcast on North German Broadcasting (NDB).
In my role as chief of counter-terrorism in the Interior Ministry of Turkey until 2013, I monitored money exchange offices and gold shops in Gaziantep, Turkey and the Grand Bazaar in Istanbul due to the fact that they sent and transferred cash assets between Turkey and the Islamic State and from Turkey to the rest of the World.
Third, terrorists in Turkey are taking the lead in projecting terror propaganda and training tips to the ISIS cells in other nations. A Turkish ISIS telegram application chat room released on July 3 a 66-page manual titled “the Lone Wolf Handbook” for beginner terrorists aiming to multiply attacks against civilian targets in the United States and Europe. The manual was reposted 16 times over a three-week period, at least 16 times promoting an attack campaign with the hashtag of “lone wolves to the fields.”
Add to these three reasons, the fact that least 2,000 trained ISIS fighters are sheltering inside Turkey, according to the Sentinel, a publication of the Combating Terrorism Center at West Point. Those ISIS fighters are backed by a larger dedicated support base of no less than 50,000 people. Approximately 12 million people in Turkey view suicide bombings in defense of Islam as justified, Dr. Alex P. Schmid, a counter-terrorism scholar has written. Turkey is the destination point for radicalized ISIS recruits in the Turkic-speaking states of the Russian Federation and the nations of Central Asia, altogether a population of 90 million.
The fact is, President Erdogan does not consider the Islamic State threat as a priority and often overlooks the ISIS activities inside Turkey’s borders. His regime has never been shy of its hidden and open support to the Islamic State until the middle of 2016.
According to my sources, the decision-makers on Middle East policy, particularly in regards to Turkey, Washington is shifting from Department of State to Department of Defense, which in view of the emerging threat in Asia Minor, is probably a good thing.
About the author:
*Ahmet S. Yayla, Ph.D., is an adjunct professor of criminology, law, and society at George Mason University. He is also senior research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE). He formerly served as a professor and the chair of the sociology department at Harran University in Turkey. He also served as the chief of counterterrorism and operations department of the Turkish National Police in Sanliurfa between 2010 and 2013. He is the co-author of the newly released book ISIS Defectors: Inside Stories of the Terrorist Caliphate. Follow @ahmetsyayla
A Catholic priest kidnapped in Yemen last year is alive and could be released soon, a Salesian information service reported India’s foreign minister as saying.
Sushma Swaraj made the comment during recent talks with a delegation from the Salesians of Don Bosco congregation, which asked her to ensure the swift release of fellow Salesian Father Tom Uzhunnalil, who was kidnapped in Yemen more than a year ago.
The minister also reportedly told the group that securing his freedom was among the highest priorities of the government.
According to Indian Salesians’ news portal, Bosco Information Service, the minister said she felt for the “unimaginable trauma and suffering” Father Uzhunnalil has endured.
Father Uzhunnalil was kidnapped March 4, 2016, after suspected Islamic terrorists attacked a home for the elderly run by Missionaries of Charity nuns in Yemen city of Aden.
Sixteen people, including four nuns, were shot dead and the priest, who was serving as the house chaplain, kidnapped.
The priest belongs to Salesians of Don Bosco’s Bangalore province.
No group has claimed responsibility for kidnapping the priest, but Islamic militants are believed to be behind it.
Swaraj told the Salesians that the Indian government has made Father Uzhunnalil’s release one of its highest priorities. She did not say what the government was doing to secure the priest’s freedom.
In May, a video message was released in which a thin-looking Father Uzhunnalil begged Pope Francis to personally intervene and expressed frustration that the church had not done more to secure his freedom.
China is building a new embassy in Yerevan that, once completed, will be Beijing’s second biggest in the former Soviet Union. The project is a sign of China’s growing economic and diplomatic roles in Armenia.
The groundbreaking ceremony on August 9 was attended by Armenian Foreign Minister Edward Nalbandian and Chinese Assistant Foreign Minister Li Huilai. The building is projected to be completed in 2019 and measure 40,000 square meters. “Relationships are developing quickly, and, naturally, more efforts and employees are needed, and also a larger building,” Tian Erlong, China’s ambassador to Yerevan, said at the ceremony.
“It is obviously the desire of this country [China] to further intensify its policy in the region,” Armenia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan told journalists.
While China is expanding its influence around the world, Armenian officials contend that their relatively multi-vector foreign policy gives Yerevan an advantage in gaining Beijing’s attention. “Armenia is attractive to China because not only is it a strategic partner of Russia, but it also has a very good relationship with the European Union, with which we will soon sign a new agreement,” said Karen Bekaryan, an MP from the governing Republican Party of Armenia. “Armenia has traditionally warm relations with the United States, has traditionally good relations with the Arab world.”
Armenia is angling to become China’s favored diplomatic partner in the region. “China is attracted to Armenia for developing its diplomacy … which is impossible for China in Georgia” because of the latter’s strongly pro-Western orientation, claimed Gor Sarkisyan, country director of the Chinese government-run Confucius Institute, in an interview with EurasiaNet.org. “China has huge business interests in Georgia, but Tbilisi isn’t as attractive as a political partner.”
If Armenia is making a turn to China, it began with the 2015 visit of President Serzh Sargsyan to Beijing, where the two sides signed a declaration of “friendly cooperation,” as well as agreements on economic, political, and military ties.
China has invested heavily in iron mining in Armenia, and trade between the two countries is growing rapidly, although turnover is still less than with neighboring Azerbaijan and Georgia. For Armenia, China in 2015 ranked behind only Russia on the list of the country’s top import/export partners.
In 2016, Armenia became a “dialogue partner” with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Officials in Yerevan hope this status can enhance the chances of Armenia becoming a node in China’s ambitious One Belt, One Road infrastructure program. A Chinese company is currently conducting a feasibility study for the construction of the Armenian section of the long-planned Tehran-Yerevan railroad. The project has an estimated price tag of up to $5 billion, said Sergey Manasaryan, Armenia’s ambassador to China, in an interview with website EADaily.
The lion’s share of Armenia’s exports to China is copper concentrate, and so “there is practically no real trade,” Manasaryan said. But another Chinese company is conducting a feasibility study to build a $500-million copper smelting plant in Armenia, he said: “God willing, it will be finished this year.”
One factor currently hindering the development of closer relations with China is a lack of Chinese speakers in Armenia. But that is starting to change.
At the Confucius Institute, the number of students in Chinese language courses jumped from about 120 in 2014 to more than 300 last year, Sarkisyan said. Meanwhile, Yerevan State University’s Department of International Relations started offering Chinese language courses three years ago and the school now has 45 prospective diplomats who are learning Chinese, said Arthur Israelyan, the head of the university’s Chinese Department.
In addition, the Chinese and Armenian governments are jointly building a school for Chinese language studies: construction started in 2014 and the facility is scheduled to open next year. It will accommodate up to 650 students and will be the largest training center for teaching Chinese in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. It would educate Armenian students starting from the fifth grade, as well as hold summer programs for students from neighboring countries.
“Learning Chinese has become a matter of prestige now in Armenia,” Izabella Muradyan, director of Yerevan’s Chinese Center for Science and Culture told EurasiaNet.org. “The growing number of Armenian people, and especially young people, learning Chinese is pragmatic: the Armenian political and economic elite understands that it is beneficial for them to cooperate with China.”
Charlie Hebdo… the Madrid attacks… van attacks in Berlin and London … Paris 2015 … Brussels 2016 … Barcelona 2017…
Why?
The real answer is very intricate, but we can grasp part of it if by knowing more about Arab communities and their educational systems in non-Arabic countries.
“Unlicensed institutions, centers and imams in Europe ruin the future of the immigrants. They teach in isolation. Bodies grow in Romania and minds grow in strange lands! Unlicensed institutions become social and religious extremism-generating environments,” says Mazen Rifai, a Syrian journalist naturalized in Romania in 1990. Rifai also serves as secretary of the League of Syrians in Romania, and is generally very well informed about the situation of immigrants across Europe.
He believes he has found the essence of a failed approach to integration in non-Arab countries. His basic idea is that part of the immigrants’ failure to find their place in Europe is the educational system implemented by Arabs in non-Arabic countries. A schizoid manner of teaching them about their identity and purpose in life results into breaking their personality, instead of making them strong and genuinely proud to live in their new country.
Mazen Rifai performs a critical X-ray of this Arabic educational system in non-Arabic countries: “The Arabic educational system is isolated from the surrounding community. It happens also in Romania, schools with Arabic educational curricula!”
Mr Rifai explains that students in those schools mentally belong to socially, politically, and economically underdeveloped countries and intellectually, they are forced to understand the mindset of other countries, so they learn curricula that are unrelated to the society which they actually live in, and unrelated to science. Their brains are stuffed with information that doesn’t interest them and they won’t use.
“Unlicensed institutions, centers, and imams in Romania build walls separating their students from the society in which they live and develop a schizophrenia inside their students, forcing them to live in two different and contradictory societies,” says Mr Rifai. “To compensate for the emptiness caused by these discrepancies between two societies and two cultures, Arabic schools educate on a nervous tendency and imaginary superiority over their community. Their thoughts and beliefs contribute in building hatred and seclusion tendencies and a sense of injustice and oppression among their students, so that their loyalty is aimed at a state outside their state, and a community outside their community. They look with a contemptuous eye and sometimes with hatred at their surroundings.”
This educational curricula and method leads to loneliness, isolation, fear, anxiety, and social contradictions, fostering negative values and encouraging extremism. And “parents are involved in this crime,” believes Mazen Rifai, “without being aware, [they are] depriving their children of education and excellence, and leading them to isolation and seclusion when they put them in institutions that appear to their charity, marketing themselves as educational institutions that maintain customs and traditions through religious teaching. However, they teach children submissiveness and surrender, and prepare them to enter the courts of dictatorship-like obedience to one person: the manager of the school, the father at home, and the religious leader elsewhere. So, it kills everything in them! Declaring that home-based education protects children against negative aspects of the Romanian society in terms of sexual freedom, drug problems, and bad companionship is a false statement. Arabic schools don’t limit or eliminate the problems of students and the problems of adolescence, neither in Romania nor in Arab countries. This is an illusion.”
There are no schools that teach full-time Arabic curriculum and grant Arab baccalaureate degrees in Europe. There are official and non-official Arab schools that teach Arabic only on weekends or after official school hours, while formal education is exclusively in the native language of the country in question.
The situation of the Arabic schools in Romania looks inappropriate for preparing Arabs to cope with the society they live in, according to Mr Rifai. If the student educated in Romania returns to live and work in an Arab country (Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, Egypt, Syria), his affiliation with these Arab schools would be helpful. However, if the student wants to complete his life and future in Romania, he should study in the Romanian language in Romanian schools to ensure oneself equal opportunities with one’s Romanian colleagues. Because of the lack of recognition of studies, graduates of Arabic schools cannot complete their studies in other forms of official education. The history of these schools shows that they have not been able to provide a healthy model for the new Arab generation and have not been able to help their graduates to obtain scholarships, or get jobs. Even Arab embassies and Arab schools have not employed any graduates of these schools.
Legally, there is not yet an Arab school in Romania that has an educational license as a school officially accredited by the Romanian Ministry of Education, like the Turkish, French, and British private schools. Arabic Schools in Romania are institutions and cultural centers licensed as non-profit educational institutions (cultural centers), entitled to licensed cultural activity such as any Romanian private non-government organization (NGO), and are granted the necessary approvals from the competent authorities, such as any restaurant, shop, language institute, or institute of vocational education, not as regular schools.
“In Germany, for example, most of the Arab and Muslim community learn in German governmental schools and there are classes for Arabic and Islamic religion. Although these classes are optional, even Islamic religion is taught in German language,”says Mr Rifai.
Mr. Rifai goes on to suggest a solution: “Don’t close these institutions, but work to give them their useful and true dimension in society. Convert these schools into formal vocational schools, in order to become religious schools that are committed to the school curriculum developed by the Ministry of Education, and focused on religious education and language. Grant valid certificates of education to facilitate access to the labor market, scholarships, and educational trips and exchanges.”
A lack of integration between Arabic education and the educational system of the country where students live appears to lead to reduced ability for social integration and mental isolation. Hence, less economic privilege and more hatred, extremism, and eventually crime. The dictatorial administration of the Arabic schools satisfies the arrogance of some parents and brings false reassurances regarding the future of their children. But in actual fact, they only build walls…
The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com, where this article was published
The military junta in Pakistan – the de facto rulers of the country – always harbored a nightmare and along with it an achievement, a victory of sorts, that they never tired of boasting. The nightmare was an increased and acknowledged role of India in Afghanistan, which would mean Indian presence on the east and the west of the country that could clamp the Pakistani military down from the front and back.
The ‘achievement’ they always boasted was by maintaining an influence on Taliban, Pakistan, according to the military minds, has a strategic depth that would be a decisive and a vital factor in case of all-out attack from India from the east.
On the night of August 21, the junta saw the possibility of their nightmare becoming a reality and their remarkable ‘achievement’ turning into a remarkable disaster.
As the Afghan review completed and President Trump unfurled its key recommendation, the military and the media in Pakistan stood embarrassed searching for reaction and response to the most damning indictment of Pakistani support to militants on both sides of the border.
One, it not only promised India an enhanced role in Afghanistan, but it kind of asked India to act like a stabilizing force and broker the peace. Two, it bluntly asked Pakistan to desist from aiding the terrorists in Pakistan and Afghanistan otherwise not only risk losing $850 million annual Coalition Support Fund but also the American support and goodwill that the country uses to borrow from international donors.
The Trump speech also contained a veiled threat that if Pakistan continue to harbor safe havens and sanctuaries for terrorists on its land, they ‘ll be taken out regardless of which side of the border they live on.
Short of a hostile military action, this was probably the most stark warning Washington could have issued. Pakistan military can afford and perhaps was looking forward to the loss of $850 million annual fund but it can not watch the Afghan account being transferred to their arch enemy right under their nose.
This so called ‘asset’ was watered and nurtured by Pakistani military and intelligence agencies ever since 1979 when Soviet forces entered Afghanistan and now here they are not only being shunted out of the country but they will have to bear its handing over to India. It will be naïve for Pentagon or Langley to think that Pakistan would let it happen without a fight but what are the option.
One, it reverts back to backing the insurgents with men and material like in the past and keep it boiling for India to a point that it becomes impossible for Delhi to sustain its role in Afghanistan. Pakistanis are veterans of this trade and they can do it but not without a huge cost and risk-taking.
The cost of this strategy would be to feel the heat in Balochistan and possibly urban Sindh. Because it would invite all kinds of players and actors to the arena and Pakistani territory would become a gian free zone where everyone would ply its trade. Ultimately, it could lead to extension of Afghan war that would be fought on Pakistani soil. This situation would become too hot to handle for Pakistani military.
Two, it severs all contacts with US military and intelligence agencies and start orbiting not only China but Russia as well. In this case China’s commitment for Pakistan would not be unlimited and its support will not be a blank cheque. To realize its dream of One Belt, One Road where Pakistan is a vital piece, China needs a trouble-free and peaceful access to Persian Gulf and Pakistani port of Gwadar. Beijing is spending billions of dollars to gain this land access to the mouth of Gulf and world’s energy route. Another spell of Pakistani support to militants in Afghanistan would seriously jeopardise China’s ambition and would keep attracting US and Western attention.
So at this point China would also ask Pakistan to break clean with the militants, leaving Islamabad hardly the choice of entangling in Afghanistan. Remotely it may pit Beijing against Washington on Pakistani soil and in this case Pakistan would find it hard to save its territorial integrity.
Third, Islamabad would extend a hand of friendship towards Iran and Russia to complete an axis against the US and Indian interests in the region. Here too competing interests in Afghanistan where Tehran and Moscow would not be interested in supporting Taliban and Pashtuns will render this effort to weave a so called grand alliance against the US and India. The eviction of the US troops from Afghanistan would certainly spark a short-term interest in both countries but both the countries are no friends of Taliban and no enemies to India.
In nutshell, Pakistan has no long-term applicable strategy in Afghanistan. It has now several bad choices to pick from.
In a long telephone conversation on Wednesday – after Belgrade withdrew its diplomats from Skopje – Serbian and Macedonian leaders agreed to try to improve recently tense relations through more dialogue.
In a joint press release issued after a “lengthy and open” telephone conversation, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic and Macedonian Prime Minister Zoran Zaev agreed to solve all their recent disagreements through dialogue.
“Regardless of all political differences in certain important political and regional issues, Serbia and Macedonia will jointly fight not only to preserve, but also to promote, friendly relations between the Serbian and Macedonian people and the citizens of Serbia and Macedonia,” it said.
The press release added that Serbia and Macedonia would make greater efforts also to further improve economic relations and increase trade between the two countries.
The conciliatory wording of the joint statement follows diplomatic turmoil, after Serbia abruptly withdrew all its embassy staff from Macedonia on Sunday.
On Monday, Vucic said Belgrade had pulled out its staff after it obtained “evidence of very offensive intelligence against the institutions of Serbia” adding that unnamed “foreign powers” were also involved.
Meanwhile, Serbian media reports speculated that Macedonia had been tapping the Serbian officials’ communications, which Skopje has denied.
After the phone call, the Serbian President and Macedonian Prime Minister also agreed to protect the rights and interests of the embassies in both countries.
“Serbia and Macedonia will intensify mutual communications at the highest level, support each other on the European path and strengthen good neighbourly relations to contribute to the stability of the region,” it said.
Following the phone call, the Serbian Foreign Ministry announced that it will return Serbian staff to its embassy in Skopje on August 24, while the ambassador will be returned on August 31.
According to Beta news agency, the ambassador will request a meeting with Macedonia’s Prime Minister on 1 September.
EU spokesperson Maja Kocijancic said after the telephone conversation between Vucic and Zaev that the EU welcomes the fact the issue is being addressed through a constructive approach.
“Mutual respect, good neighbourly relations and strengthening of regional cooperation remain essential for the European path of the entire region,” Kocijancic told BIRN.
Before the telephone conversation with Vucic, Zaev told the Serbian daily Blic on Wednesday that allegations in the Serbian media that he or his government had ordered wiretapping, or other intelligence measures, against the Serbian embassy in Skopje, were false.
“I hope that during our talk with President Vucic today, we will clear out any possible misunderstandings,” Zaev said.
Commenting on Serbia’s warnings against Macedonia not to support Kosovo’s membership of UNESCO, Zaev denied claims that his government was conspiring with Albanian factors in the region to bring this about.
“There is no strategy aimed to damage Serbia in our country … Our foreign policy approach is based on open doors, direct dialogue and on good will to resolve problems instead of creating new ones,” Zaev said.
Serbian Prime Minister Ana Brnabic on Wednesday repeated that “intelligence was the concrete reason for withdrawing of the embassy staff” from Skopje.
According to the Serbian state news agency Tanjug, Brnabic added that Zaev had recently assured her that Macedonia would refrain from any vote about Kosovo’s UNESCO membership.
“At this moment, this is most important to me, for the presidents in the region to keep their word,” Brnabic said.
Serbia does not recognize the independence of its former province of Kosovo and opposes all its attempts to join international organizations as a sovereign country.
Generally good relations between the two neighbouring countries worsened since the year started, and worsened further after Belgrade stepped up its criticism of Zaev’s new government, led by the Social Democrats, SDSM.
Sri Lankan farmers whose crops were destroyed due to the drought will be given compensation, said State Minister of Agriculture Vasantha Aluvihare in parliament on Tuesday.
Minister Aluvihare said that a maximum of Rs 10,000 per hectare will be given for applicants.
During this Maha season 612, 223.57 hectares of paddy was cultivated of which 50,615.05 hectares was damaged due to the drought and it amounts to a loss of 4,053,395.37 bushels of paddy.
(Civil.Ge) — Georgia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement on August 22, expressing protest over the recent visit of the representatives of the Russian-backed Abkhaz authorities to Syria.
The Ministry called the visit “a continuation of the policy of provocation towards Georgia by Russia and its occupation regimes,” adding that with such actions “Russia is unsuccessfully trying to legitimize the occupation regimes and legalize forceful changes of a sovereign nation’s borders.”
“We call on all sovereign states to respect the territorial integrity of Georgia and its sovereign rights, and to avoid participating in [such pre-]planned provocative actions,” reads the statement.
The Ministry also noted that it had already communicated regarding this issue with “diplomatic representatives of Syria,” as well as Georgia’s foreign partners.
The Abkhaz authorities travelled to Syria on August 16-22, meeting several high-level officials, including Syrian Prime Minister Imad Khamis, Foreign Minister Walid Muallem, Economy Minister Samer al-Khalil and Chairman of the People’ Council (parliament) Najdat Anzour.
Sokhumi representatives reported in their press releases of the meetings that the region’s Moscow-backed authorities expressed their wish for further development of relations with Damascus and invited Syrians to send a delegation of their own to Abkhazia.
In Syria, the Abkhaz visitors also attended the Damascus International Fair, where the materials demonstrating the region’s culture and economy were presented in a separate booth.
Mark Wahlberg is the highest-paid male actor in Hollywood, taking home $68million (£53million) in one year, Aol. reports.
The Boston-native’s huge salary for 2016/2017 was revealed in Forbes’ magazine’s annual rich list.
The Transformers star’s position highlights the shocking pay gap between men and women with his female equivalent Emma Stone, only receiving $26million (£20million).
A few million behind Wahlberg is Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson with $65million (£50million) and Vin Diesel is at No.3 with $54.5million (£42.million).
Iggy Pop’s song, ‘I am a passenger’ has already been used for car adverts and yet can seem out of tune when cars are sold as enablers of freedom, won through agency and control. Until now that is. With the coming era of autonomous vehicles, it will surely be the go-to song, aptly representing a new kind of freedom on the roads.
In the future, our commute could entail first hailing an autonomous vehicle (AV) through our smartphones. While being transported noiselessly through streets free of pollution and congestion, we could start our working day from the car seat’s comfort; alongside our fellow ride-sharing commuters of course.
With numerous high-tech and engineering companies including Ford, Google, Tesla, and Apple embroiled in a race to bring AVs to our roads, the above scenario might be fast approaching. Yet the introduction of AVs is likely to happen incrementally, in tandem with enabling technologies such as electric vehicles (EVs).
Navigating the road ahead
The last few weeks have seen momentum building for EVs. For example, fuelling the demand side, last month the UK government announced plans that after 2040 no new petrol or diesel cars would be available to buy. On the supply side, also in July, Tesla announced that its all-electric Model 3 had passed regulatory requirements and cars have already started rolling off the production line.
While autonomous and electric vehicles are not synonymous, their fate is inextricably linked, as most AVs are likely to be electric. It’s easier for computers to control EVs and to connect them to wider infrastructure data and analytic systems. Establishing the EV infrastructure, such as charging points, will obviously also greatly enhance later public acceptance of AVs. Crucially EVs are also less polluting than current fossil fuel alternatives and so offer an attractive contribution to environmental targets.
The rough with the smooth
The Society of Automotive Engineers has actually developed a series of autonomy levels (SAE standard J3016™). Starting at Level 1 which requires driver assistance, the standard climbs through partial autonomy, up to level 5 of full autonomy. Indeed, a number of the lower level features already exist such as Autonomous Emergency Braking (AEB) systems and lane departure technology. The autonomous cars that Ford has committed to put on the road by 2021 are considered to be level 4 high autonomy vehicles, described as ‘ride-sharing platforms’.
As well as helping authorities to meet environmental commitments to CO2 and NOx reductions, AVs are also explicitly designed to address current safety concerns. Currently, over 90 % of vehicle accidents are caused by human error, resulting in well over one million deaths globally per year. AVs employ a range of road positioning satellites, cameras and radars, alongside massive computing power, to build a picture of the road environment and react safely. If this wasn’t enough to tip the balance, advocates also point to the opportunity that less vehicles on roads, either parked or driving, will open up our public spaces.
And yet significant hurdles remain, with the most cited being the legal framework. Alongside the need to rework some road rules and licensing arrangements, come issues around liability. In the case of an AV-caused accident who would be responsible; the passenger, the software designer, the manufacturer? Indeed, there have already been AV accidents in test environments, resulting in a fatality for Tesla last year.
Shaken but not stirred?
Yet it is perhaps within the argument that a mix of AVs and ‘normal’ vehicles, with differing priorities will cause problems, that we identify what is often missing in the debate – actual human agency. For many people driving is in itself a pleasurable activity, reflecting personality and status. So how readily will drivers relinquish this aspect?
The answer seems to be mixed. One recent survey by a UK insurer Direct Line, finds that 39% look forward to AVs, with 35 % ‘skeptical’ and 26% unsure. The same survey showed that 53% said they enjoyed driving, viewing AV as a ‘dull’ replacement. On the other hand, another survey conducted internationally by KPMG found that half of today’s car owners will not want to own a vehicle and demand for self-driving and electric cars will continue to grow.
Perhaps we will know the balance has finally been tipped towards AV acceptance when James Bond is seen sipping a Martini as a passenger, during his first autonomous car chase.
The European Commission, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the European Medicines Agency (EMA) have signed a new confidentiality commitment that allows the US regulator to share non-public and commercially confidential information, including trade secret information relating to medicine inspections with EU regulators.
According to the organizations this confidentiality commitment is a milestone in the ongoing implementation of the mutual recognition of inspections of medicine manufacturers and it aims to strengthen the EU-US relationship. Ultimately it will contribute to a more efficient use of inspection resources by regulators for the protection of human and animal health.
The EU and the US have had confidentiality arrangements in place since 2003, allowing for the exchange of confidential information as part of their regulatory and scientific processes. However, complete exchange of information was not possible under these arrangements.
The new confidentiality commitment formally recognizes that FDA’s EU counterparts have the authority and demonstrated ability to protect the relevant information. This step now allows the sharing of full inspection reports, allowing regulators to make decisions based on findings in each other’s inspection reports and to make better use of their inspection resources to focus on manufacturing sites of higher risk.
(EurActiv) — Electricity produced from natural gas has matched power generated from coal in OECD countries. But Europe’s gas self-sufficiency dropped below 50% for the very first time as well.
Electricity production in OECD countries increased 0.4% to 10,964TWh in 2016, according to provisional figures put together by the International Energy Agency (IEA).
In the same period, electricity from fossil fuels fell for the fourth year in a row. Coal decreased by 7.1% and oil by 7%.
But electricity from natural gas posted growth of 5.8%, meaning that gross production matched and is now set to overtake electricity generated from coal power.
Marco Alverà, president of association group GasNaturally, said that gas’s growing share is “good news for the climate and for air quality as these are the most pressing issues these days”.
He added that the OECD countries “have to lead the way and push forward with the shift from coal to gas. In the UK and US, this has proven to be the largest driver of carbon emissions reduction in power generation since 2016.”
Nuclear’s share of the energy mix has stabilised over the last five years at around 18% but took a slight hit last year as many facilities underwent maintenance. Wind and solar grew 7.7% and 19.2% last year, respectively, meaning renewable energies now total 8.2% of OECD gross electricity production.
In non-OECD countries, comprehensive data was only available for 2015, when coal retained its dominant market share with 47.1% of electricity being produced from the fossil fuel. Natural gas and renewables posted slight growth on the previous year, while oil continued its sharp decline.
GasNaturally’s Alverà commented that “as the share of variable renewables increases in the future, cleaner, more energy efficient and flexible gas power plants will play an increasingly important role in balancing the power system to ensure a stable supply of affordable electricity”.
But it was not all good news for natural gas. IEA also reported that lower production and increased demand saw Europe’s OECD countries, which comprise all but six EU member states, fall below 50% self-sufficiency for the very first time in 2016.
In a trend that has been fairly constant since the mid-1990s, net imports grew sufficiently against domestic production to force the self-sufficiency figure below the halfway mark.
The International Association of Oil and Gas Producers’ Nareg Terzian welcomed the increased switch to natural gas but also warned that “the IEA’s figures show how important it is to encourage exploration and production in Europe and meet this demand by using the resources at our disposal”.
Europe’s reliance on gas imports was highlighted on 17 August, when Russian gas giant Gazprom announced that deliveries to prospective consumers of the Turkish Stream pipeline project were scaled up in the first eight months of the year.
Its exports surged 22.4% to Turkey, 13.2% to Greece and 24.4% to Hungary, which are all OECD members. To EU member Bulgaria and candidate country Serbia, gas sales increased 11.1% and 40.8%, respectively.
OECD Europe actually consolidated its status as the world’s largest importer, after its members pumped in an additional 17.7 Bcm, about 50% of the globe’s pipeline trade.
Natural gas production rose 0.4% in the OECD as a whole last year but in the United States and OECD Europe, output fell by 17.3 Bcm and 3.1 Bcm, respectively.
US President Donald Trump has clearly said that he expects a greater role by India in Afghanistan, even as the USA continues to be involved in a protracted war in Afghanistan. Many American soldiers have lost their lives in Afghanistan, even as the end of war in Afghanistan is nowhere in sight.
Obviously, Trump and US citizens want the USA to dominate the world by waging war in other countries, if necessary, to assert its position, but not to lose its soldiers in the process.
Even as Trump has tried to please India by openly condemning Pakistan for harboring t terrorists and issuing a veiled threat to Pakistan about cutting US aid, it appears that Trump wants India to fight America’s war in Afghanistan as a quid pro quo for its support to India’s war against terrorists operating from Pakistan soil.
Obviously, Trump clearly knows that US citizens are not with him in committing US troops endlessly in Afghanistan, as US citizens grimly remember the huge loss of American lives in the past war in Vietnam and Korea. Trump’s approach appears to be to continue its war in Afghanistan and at the same time reducing gradually the number of US soldiers involved in Afghan war. He can achieve this objective only if India becomes militarily involved in the Afghan war against the Taliban.
It remains to be seen whether the Narendra Modi government, which is desperately needing the full support from the USA in combating the military threat from Pakistan and China, will submit to President Trump’s wish (expressed discreetly) that India should enter the Afghan war.
The Modi government cannot be unaware of the fact that India getting involved in Afghan war will prove costly for India, in view of the Afghan ground conditions and the guerilla type of war carried out by the Taliban.
India had an unpleasant experience earlier when it got itself militarily involved in the conflicts in Sri Lanka to fight the LTTE terrorists on the request of the Sri Lankan government. India paid a heavy price losing hundreds of Indian soldiers in a fruitless war that benefited neither India nor Sri Lanka in any significant manner.
Public opinion in India is unlikely to favor Indian military involvement in Afghanistan to help the USA, even though India shares a common interest with the USA in defeating the terrorists in Afghanistan who are supporting terrorism in Kashmir in some way or other.
The confrontation that India is having with Pakistan and China, and the fact that several countries in Asia and India’s traditional ally Russia are remaining silent so far, without openly appreciating India’s stand, is certainly forcing the Indian government to think that it would be in India’s interest to forge a strong alliance with the USA, which would be a deterrent for Pakistan and China, But, what price India has to pay for gaining US support appears to be a moot question.
The Narendra Modi government clearly knows the expectations of President Trump and has a difficult choice to make.
India may try to get out of this predicament by stating that it has already invested considerably in the economic and industrial cooperation with Afghan government.
The problem is, President Trump knows this, and he wants much more.
The H.L. Hunley, the first combat submarine to sink an enemy ship, also instantly killed its own eight-man crew with the powerful explosive torpedo it carried, according to new research from a Duke University Ph.D. in biomedical engineering.
The Hunley’s first and last combat mission occurred during the Civil War on Feb. 17, 1864, when it sank a 1,200-ton Union warship, the USS Housatonic, outside Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. The Hunley delivered a blast from 135 pounds of black powder below the waterline at the stern of the Housatonic, sinking the Union ship in less than five minutes. Housatonic lost five seamen, but came to rest upright in 30 feet of water, which allowed the remaining crew to be rescued after climbing the rigging and deploying lifeboats.
The fate of the crew of the 40-foot Hunley, however, remained a mystery until 1995, when the submarine was discovered about 300 meters away from the Housatonic’s resting place. Raised in 2000, the submarine is currently undergoing study and conservation in Charleston by a team of Clemson University scientists.
Initially, the discovery of the submarine only seemed to deepen the mystery. The crewmen’s skeletons were found still at their stations along a hand-crank that drove the cigar-shaped craft. They suffered no broken bones, the bilge pumps hadn’t been used and the air hatches were closed. Except for a hole in one conning tower and a small window that may have been broken, the sub was remarkably intact.
Speculation about their deaths has included suffocation and drowning.
But after an exhaustive three-year Duke study that involved repeatedly setting blasts near a scale model, shooting authentic weapons at historically accurate iron plate and doing a lot of math on human respiration and the transmission of blast energy, researcher Rachel Lance, a 2016 Ph.D. graduate of Duke Engineering, says it was a powerful shockwave from the Hunley’s weapon that killed the crew.
In a paper appearing Aug. 23 PLOS ONE, Lance calculates the likelihood of immediately fatal lung trauma to be at least 85 percent for each member of the Hunley crew.
The Hunley’s torpedo was not a self-propelled bomb, as we think of them now. Rather, it was a copper keg of gunpowder held ahead and slightly below the Hunley’s bow on a 16-foot pole called a spar. The sub rammed this spar into the enemy ship’s hull and the bomb exploded. The furthest any of the crew was from the blast was about 42 feet.
Lance says the crew died instantly from the force of the explosion travelling through the soft tissues of their bodies, especially their lungs and brains. She says the crippled sub then drifted out on a falling tide and slowly took on water before sinking.
“This is the characteristic trauma of blast victims, they call it ‘blast lung,'” said Lance, who worked as a biomechanist at the U.S. Navy’s base in Panama City, Florida for three years before entering graduate school at Duke. “You have an instant fatality that leaves no marks on the skeletal remains. Unfortunately, the soft tissues that would show us what happened have decomposed in the past hundred years.”
Blast-lung is a phenomenon of something Lance calls “the hot chocolate effect.” The shockwave of the blast would travel about 1500 meters per second in water, and 340 m/sec in air. “When you mix these speeds together in a frothy combination like the human lungs, or hot chocolate, it combines and it ends up making the energy go slower than it would in either one,” thus amplifying the tissue damage. Lance said that when it crossed the lungs of the crewmen, the shockwave was slowed to about 30 m/s.
While a normal blast shockwave travelling in air should last less than 10 milliseconds, Lance calculated that the Hunley crew’s lungs were subjected to 60 milliseconds or more of trauma.
“That creates kind of a worst case scenario for the lungs,” Lance said. Shear forces would tear apart the delicate structures where the blood supply meets the air supply, filling the lungs with blood and killing the crew instantly. It’s likely they also suffered traumatic brain injuries from being so close to such a large blast, Lance added.
Traumatic blast injuries have unfortunately become a familiar part of recent U.S. military history, but “the injuries experienced by soldiers in a Humvee who hit an IED are different because they are injured mostly by shrapnel and the destruction of the vehicle,” Lance said. “In that case, there are shrapnel effects and effects from the damage to the vehicle that cause broken bones and other injuries. But the crew of the Hunley were protected by the hull. It was just the blast wave itself that propagated into the vessel, so their injuries would have been purely in the soft tissues, in the lungs and in the brain.”
The sub’s design was known to be precarious. During development and testing, the Hunley had sunk twice, drowning 13 crewmen including its namesake, Horace L. Hunley, a privateer who had the submarine built from an old ship’s boiler in Alabama in 1863.
Lance says the designers of the powderkeg weapon also may have recognized the dangers of being too close to a blast in water. Her historical research found that they stayed hundreds of yards away from test blasts of devices that were significantly smaller than the bomb that sank the Housatonic.
“Blast travels really far underwater,” Lance said. “If you’re practicing 200 yards away, and then you triple the size of your bomb and put it 16 feet away, you have to be at least aware that there’s a possibility of injury.”
Lance’s calculations are based on tests she did with a 6-1/2 foot mild steel scale model of the Hunley she had built for her experiments. Fitted with interior sensors and floated in water, the model sub was subjected to a series of pressurized-air blasts and scaled black powder explosions. For several reasons, her scale-model blasts ended up being somewhat weaker than what the Hunley crew experienced.
Lance’s dissertation research included searching the National Archives in Washington, testing historically accurate sheets of iron, a dive-certified ATF agent expert in explosives, a Civil War reenactor with a working, period-accurate rifle, and a visit to a museum at DuPont’s original black powder mill.
Scholars at Clemson who have been painstakingly removing concretions from the sub’s cramped interior to learn more about its fate have been evaluating several possible explanations: among them, the crew suffocated, they drowned, a ‘lucky shot’ from Housatonic’s small arms fire breached the hull, or shear forces broke a valve and the sub flooded rapidly.
But Lance has tested and ruled out all of those ideas. “All the physical evidence points to the crew taking absolutely no action in response to a flood or loss of air,” she said.
Lance says her evidence points to a very sudden, soft-tissue injury, rather than drowning or suffocation. “If anyone had survived, they may have tried to release the keel ballast weights, set the bilge pumps to pump water, or tried to get out the hatches, but none of these actions were taken,” she writes in her paper, which is part of her dissertation research.
Iran is not rejecting visa applications by American nationals and there has been no change in the number of inbound tourists from the US, according to the head of Iranian Tour Operators’ Association.
Last week, the US State Department issued a travel warning advising Americans against visiting Iran, claiming that dual Iranian-American nationals are persecuted.
It added that it had “received reports” that Iran is denying visas to Americans in response to an executive order by US President Donald Trump restricting travel to the US for Iranians and five other Muslim-majority countries.
However, according to the head of Iranian Tour Operators’ Association Ebrahim Pourfaraj, the US State Department’s claims are false.
“Despite the US threatening us and taking steps that are in breach of the spirit of JCPOA, Iran has not and will never respond by targeting American tourists,” he said, referring to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, the official name of the landmark nuclear deal Iran signed with six major world powers two years ago.
“Visa requests submitted by American travel companies have not been denied. Every application is thoroughly reviewed by the foreign ministry and so far this year every application has been approved,” Pourfaraj added.
Iran has relaxed its visa rules and issues visa on arrival to citizens of more than 180 countries in 10 of its international airports. The length of the airport visa is 30 days, but can be extended for an additional 60 days.
Citizens of the United States, Britain, Canada, Colombia, Somalia, Bangladesh, Jordan, Afghanistan and Pakistan have to get a visa before traveling to Iran.
On August 22, former President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle helped their daughter, Malia, move into a dorm at Harvard University. One of the twelve undergraduate dorms is Mather House, named after Increase Mather. He was president of Harvard between 1692 and 1701.
Mather was a slaveowner while he was president of Harvard. In fact, he used his slave to help run the business of Harvard, running errands for the trustees. Mather wrote in his diary that he sent his “Negro” to do various jobs for the institution.
Is Malia living in Mather House?
Whether Malia is living in Mather House or not, it is not fair to pressure her—she is not an activist—to lobby Harvard administrators to change the name of the slaveowner’s dorm. But it would be instructive to learn if Barack Obama wants to take up this campaign.
Global Times, a leading Chinese daily, hogged the headlines with an outcry that “Japan can’t replace products from China in India’s low income consumer market” in the wake of upcoming visit of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to India in September.
In a paradox, incidentally last year while Japanese investment in India rocketed, 110 Japanese firms in China went bankrupt and overall Japanese investment in China dipped.
The Chinese rant on Abe’s upcoming visit that “sweet words won’t bring real money” is dissipated with the rise of the Modi-Abe hobnob in the recent past.
In 2015, Toshiba and Panasonic announced that they would stop producing television sets in China. These are some of the examples that reflect the Japanese frustration with China and underscore the trend of Japan’s exit from the country. The paramount reason for China losing the hub for Japanese investment has been the ebbing of low cost competitiveness due to wage hikes and heightened political tensions. The majority of these 110 firms were Japanese apparel manufacturing companies in China.
“Any loss to China is a gain to India”. The catchphrase is widely spread among the foreign investors. Against this backdrop, India poses potential to emerge as an alternative as a low cost manufacturing destination. The report noted that to offset the high cost manufacturing in China, the Japanese apparel companies shifted to Vietnam and Myanmar, implying these two nations are most cost effective manufacturing destinations for Japanese investors. Nevertheless, these shifts do not epitomize these two nations having an edge over India in low cost manufacturing competitiveness in all sectors
According to a Delloit survey in 2016, India will be the “New China” in low cost manufacturing countries in the next five years. India will rise to 5th rank in the global manufacturing competitiveness index in 2020 from the 11th position in 2016, the survey said. Besides low cost manufacturing, the other favorable parameters, which highlight India in manufacturing competitiveness, are a vast number of English speaking scientists, researchers and engineers.
With China losing the powerhouse of low cost manufacturing competitiveness, five Asia Pacific nations will emerge as the choice for low cost manufacturing destinations in place of China, the survey said. They were Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Vietnam and India. India will be the frontrunner, with the other four nations chasing, according to the same survey.
Given the global accreditation for the upside in India’s manufacturing strength, will Japan ponder India as a New China for investment? Presumably yes, if the current trend of Japan investment in Asia Pacific is a case in point. While the Japanese investment in all the major Asia Pacific nations witnessed a downturn flow, investment in India sparked. In between 2014 and 2016, Japanese overseas investment (according to Japanese sources) in China dropped by 21 percent. In Hong Kong , it plunged to 36 percent. In Thailand – known for being a Japanese automobile Detroit –it fell by 27 percent.
On the contrary, Japanese investment jumped in India and increased moderately in Vietnam during the two years period of 2014 t0 2016. Japan’s overall overseas investment witnessed a much faster growth and more in value terms in India than in Vietnam. During the two year period of 2014 and 2016, Japanese investment in India rose by 53 percent against the moderate growth of 12 percent in Vietnam. In 2016, Japanese investment in India was double of that in Vietnam (US $ 3.7 Billion in India against US $ 1.9 Billion in Vietnam).
Besides foreign direct investment, Japanese deployed a huge amount of investment in private equity and venture capital in India. During the first half of 2017, Japanese firms invested at least US $1.43 Billion in Indian private equity and venture capital. This was three times more than US $459 million in 2016, according to a Japanese media, Japan Times.
In fact, the dynamism of India-Japan relations took a new dimension after China enforced its assertiveness for Asian hegemony through OBOR.
Low cost manufacturing competitiveness should not be the sole reason for Japanese attraction in India. The truth of the matter is that Mr Modi tried to re-write a new chapter on India-Japan relations. He emphasized a shift from bilateral strategic economic relations to a global partnership, with an eye on two countries’ global role in world economy and world geopolitics. Modi reiterated that India and Japan were the two oldest democracies in Asia and were among the three biggest economies, and he asserted that the 21st Century is to be decided by Asian countries — and a India and Japan global partnership should be the engine for 21st Century growth.
Modi’s shift to woo Japanese investment from automobile to infrastructure and defense and development of smart cities are the new directions of India-Japan relations. Presumably, these will create a new vista for Japanese investment in India. India has liberalized its FDI policy in railway infrastructure and defense, which hitherto were restricted for the foreign investors. It permitted 100 percent FDI in railway infrastructure, including high speed train projects, railway rolling stocks, railway electrification e.t.c and FDI cap in defense was raided from 26 percent to 49 percent.
In pursuance to these policy changes, Modi’s yearning for the Japanese bullet train and technical cooperation in making US-2 amphibious aircraft in India, besides importing the aircraft from Japan, are all pointers to allure the Japanese investors in infrastructure and defense.
Toeing Modi’s initiative and in a bid to vie for his heart, Japan’s Prime Minster Shinzo Abe made an ambitious target for doubling Japanese investment within five years. Abe committed US $35 billion in Japanese investment for different infrastructure projects for five years to bolster the “Make in India’ project. Setting up India’s first high speed rail from Ahmedabad to Mumbai and institutional framework for transfer of technology, such as setting up task force, are some of the examples to spearhead “Make in India: initiatives, which will usher in wider dimension of closer relations between India and Japan.
Japan has always been playing a true partner’s role for India. Even in bad days, Japan extended its full cooperation to rescue India. During the drought in 1967-68, Japan was the biggest donor to India.
Japan is the third biggest investor in India. Japan’s ODA was the backbone of India’s infrastructure development, such as power, transport and environment related projects. Delhi Metro – a marked breakthrough in India’s transport – was largely financed by Japanese ODA.
Nevertheless, the Chinese nudge has evoked a new chapter in India-Japan relations.
Considerable importance is granted by Muslim scholars to the issues of renewal and ijtihad, particularly the renewal of Islamic intellectual heritage. This renewal is the constructive process that continues the action of ancestors and benefits from the ijtihad of contemporary scholars in rebuilding cultural identity and entrenching its principles and lofty references as well as the divine revelation which guides man onto the straight path.
This revelation is the referential framework and knowledge regulator in the Islamic civilization’s view of all concepts and matters. It is the factor most likely to propel it towards shedding the manifestations of backwardness which emerged during past historical phases, spread the culture of ijtihad that promotes complementarities and the unity that defies conflict, and reposition the Islamic Ummah on the scene of cultural action and human contribution.
For Asʿad AbuKhalil, Mahmoud Haddad writing in The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Islamic World, Islamic revival or renewal is:i
“The Arabic terms iḥyāʿ (revival) and tajdīd (renewal) are often used concurrently, but renewal is more akin to iṣlāḥ (reform) than revival, which is more concerned with re-awakening of certain Islamic practices or ideas. Both terms are also used in the context of modern Islamic movements, but they also have important premodern roots. Premodern renewal was usually associated with a specifically designated purifier who, according to the ḥadīths (Prophetic traditions), would come at the “head of each century” to renew the faith and practice of Muslims. Many puritanical reformers were, as a result, identified by their followers as the designated renewer or mujaddid of the era. Revival had a stronger sense of a strengthening of the spiritual dimensions of faith and practice, as seen in the writings of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī (d. 1111CE). In the modern era the terms refer to the attempts by Islamic modernizers and Salafīyah advocates to introduce more Islamic influences into the lives of Muslims who have been subject to Western currents of thought and practice, particularly in the wake of the Napoleonic invasion of Egypt. Shaykh Ḥasan al-ʿAṭṭār (d. 1834/35), an Egyptian cleric who worked closely with the French experts who accompanied Napoleon, may have been one of the first reformists/revivalists when he said: “Our countries should be changed and renewed [tatajaddadah] through knowledge and sciences that they do not possess.””
At this age of globalization where challenges are growing in size and number, revitalizing Islamic intellectual heritage, renewing it and shedding light on the riches that contributed to the march of human civilization seem to be of utmost importance if we are to counter the standardization and alienation attempts and centralist cultural tendencies that negate the multiplicity of historical courses in shaping human civilization.
Islamic thought needs new blood and a reformist boost to be given by the Ummah’s scholars in a wise approach free from the logic of exclusive bipolarity, where the sources of knowledge are integrated. Thus can be edified the civilization of the Ummah of the middle way, known in Arabic culture as wasatiyya, which stands witness to all mankind and carries the universal message of Islam.ii
Cultural Diversity
Inequality in the consumption of cultural products and inequality in creativity are an intolerable injustice. For individuals and companies, exercising cultural rights is often hampered by inequality in economic development between individuals and States.
However, amid serious globalization challenges threatening to undermine the principles of plurality and sustainable development, each individual and each community must be able to contribute to the building of the present and the making of the future. For this reason, at the international level, the action of Islamic peoples ought to be in line with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the New Partnership for Africa’s Development (NEPAD) and the principles of the International Convention on Cultural Diversity. Such international instruments provide a common framework for alleviating world poverty and reducing disparities with regard to cultural rights, towards achieving sustainable development.
To ensure a better implementation of this process, Muslim thinkers will have to accentuate their efforts to ensure access to culture for all, with particular attention paid to special needs groups (children, young people, women, disabled people, exiled, refugees, prisoners, special groups etc.,) who often are on the sidelines of the cultural action. In addition, there could not be any acceptable, harmonious, and equitable sustainable development unless the cultural dimension is integrated in the process, and unless it is taken into consideration in the political, economic and social plans and programs. Therefore, more focus should be given to the field of culture so that it will be able to attain the place it deserves as a decoder and interpreter of sustainable development. Thanks to culture, sustainable development will be perceived as a new societal project, and as the engine of a new phase for the organisation of human activities. iii
In this regard, previous actions undertaken by Muslim thinkers underlined the importance of including the cultural dimension in every sustainable development approach, especially the protection of cultural diversity — which is the equivalent of nature’s biodiversity — , as well as the reassertion of the value of artistic and cultural practices and, generally, the intangible heritage which is the basis of indigenous knowledge and cultures. This is about addressing the problem of sustainable development with its cultural dimension, especially the environment, health and genetic resources.
By having “culture” and “sustainable development” articulated around a common challenge, thinkers will pursue their efforts for consolidating the place of culture in the relations of the human being with his immediate surroundings. Their action will highlight the cultural dimension that is necessary to be integrated in the management of the environment and health, in order to better adapt them to the expectations of populations. The safeguard of genetic resources, which are essential elements for the preservation of knowledge and traditional expertise, will undergo a similar action.
Therefore, sustainable development requires a deep change in our means for understanding the world. It cannot be conceived in isolation from the relations that exist between Man and Nature. It is inherent to the acceptance of the values of cultural diversity which themselves are intrinsic in the culture of peace. In fact, accepting differences means that other cultures are seen as a source of enrichment, and as a driving force for development. It, also, means ensuring harmonious relations between them. Accordingly, thinkers will continue their action for the dissemination of the values of cultural diversity within the different components of the society.
Empowering Women
Linking sustainable development to indigenous cultures reflects understanding of the importance of traditional knowledge and know-how in the wellbeing of society, of putting a halt to the increased poverty rates among women and of empowering them economically, socially and culturally. Action ought to be continued to reach the goals laid out in this field on the role of women in sustainable development. The objective is to overcome the obstacles hindering women’s development within society by fighting all forms of economic and social discrimination and highlighting the Islamic perspective on this issue.
For Raheel Raza, President of the Council of Muslim Facing Tomorrow, the Islamic revival has to concern itself with the following issues:iv
“There are some key issues that are imperative to bring about change in the Muslim world.
Gender equality is one of them. In parts of the Muslim world, 50 percent of their citizens – i.e. women – are treated as second-class citizens. They are denied basic human rights to education, employment and freedom of movement. Islamic reform must address this gender parity, so that with education, enlightenment and equal rights, Muslim women will be among the leaders of the movement.
Pluralism and respect for those following a different path are also essential components of reform. This is especially important for Muslims living in the West where they interact with people from all faiths, races, and sexual orientations.
Another key aspect of Islamic reform is to learn from other faiths. How have they reformed by putting aside some notions from centuries ago, that are no longer compatible with the 21st century? In Islam, there is the idea of “armed jihad,” which was valid in seventh-century Arabia because there were no nation states, borders or the United Nations. Tribes only knew how to deal with other through armed warfare (which is essentially the meaning of armed jihad). The reform movement asks for Islamic leaders to delete the notion of armed jihad from the understanding of Islam today.”
With regard to indigenous cultures, delays in the adoption of a universal convention on the protection of popular arts, traditional know-how and genetic resources confirm the economic and cultural challenges inherent to this issue. With this in mind, emphasis must be laid in this sensitization process on the role of traditional know-how in sustainable development.
Indeed, it is not enough to guarantee the right of linguistic minorities to cultural expression but also their right to monitor the exploitation of their intellectual heritage. Furthermore, and considering the major role the civil society plays in this regard as the link between national policies and the strategies of sustainable development international organizations, the scope of partnerships with civil society organizations and institutions will be broadened to achieve the desired objectives.
Today, it is axiomatic that the development of education, science, culture and communication hinges on security and peace, within or between countries both at the regional and international levels. No development will be conceivable under a climate filled with ethnic, sectarian and religious tensions. The same is true for the lack of justice and mutual respect, which are key elements for creating international relations that could promote prosperity and human development.
Also, it is internationally recognized that the alliance of civilizations represents the sole means that can restore balance to the world and establish peace, respect for diversity and the acknowledgment of the legitimate cultural rights and cultural specificities of the different peoples and nations.
Alliance Of Cultures And Cultural Dialogue
The cultural strategy of the Islamic World must underline that no one culture can survive by its own, and that cultural diversity and interaction between civilizations, cultures and peoples are realities that could not be circumvented. This approach will contribute to promote the level of dialogue, both inside and outside the Muslim world, and extend the scope of participation and consultation necessary for its implementation, as well as combating all forms of fanaticism and withdrawn attitudes.
Muslim countries will have to focus their action on programs and activities aimed at entrenching the culture of dialogue and the respect of cultural specificities and cultural diversity in consolidating human rights, understanding and concord between cultures; encouraging governments to ratify and publicize the International Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions; disseminating its contents as widely as possible, especially among young generations and civil society organizations; and working towards ensuring a democratic governance and the respect for cultural rights of ethnic and linguistic minorities.
These actions must, also, seek to enhance the sense of citizenship and active participation of foreign nationals and immigrants, as well as educating them on the values of tolerance and the rejection of all forms of discrimination, racism and hatred.
Similarly, these actions will strive to reactivate the concept of international cultural Takaful in order to firmly establish the culture of human rights and the rights of peoples; consolidate cultural relations and cultural exchange; facilitate cultural mobility and the freedom of movement of people and ideas by encouraging South-South and North-South programs for student exchange visits.
Furthermore, this approach is aimed at setting up consultation mechanisms on labor and immigration to ensure the respect of human dignity of immigrants and foreign nationals; devising tourism’s development policies within the respect of cultural and cultural identities; ensuring social harmony and combating poverty, violence, marginalisation and social vulnerability.
Fighting Islamophobia
In this age of globalization, information explosion and the multiplicity of audio-visual media and channels, the issue of image has acquired more weight and urgency in view of the impediments that may hinder the flow of information and its communication capacity. This has become even more relevant following the international changes to which Islam and Muslims were party, and in the aftermath the image of the Islamic civilization became the subject of a tremendous amount of premeditated and unpremeditated distortion.
There was talk of the phenomenon of Islamophobia that has taken many forms of which the most blatant is the discrimination against Muslim immigrants in employment, housing, education and other fields. Some Western parties have even gone further and began to flaunt their hostility towards Islam, desecrate and denigrate its sanctities and make racist statements that are punishable by law and condemned by international conventions. Some Muslim institutions were the victim of vandalism and desecration as were some mosques, graves and cultural centers in the West.
Faced by the escalation of this phenomenon and its progression from a state of dormancy to one of active notoriety, it is necessary for Muslim intellectuals to take charge of the mission of countering this phenomenon and addressing it following a two-tiered and tightly devised plan.
The first part consists of the emergency measure of monitoring and compiling what is written and said about Islam, condemning it and engaging legal action against it in cooperation and coordination with regional and international partners. The second part is presenting the truthful image of Islam on the ruins of the erroneous misconceptions and stereotypes circulating either in the media or school curricula, history books or biased literary works, which action represents a long-winded and strenuous road.
The United State Institute for Peace, an official American think tank, Islamic renewal/revival is seen in the following light and logic:v
“In general, the Islamic renewal movement comprises four broad groups. Proponents of “civic Islam” include civil society organizations that advocate women’s equality, human rights, social responsibility, environmental protection, and similar social issues but make no overt claim to political power. Referring to the progressive teachings of Islam, they call on regimes to enact reforms and respect basic rights. Proponents of “Islam and democracy” include parties and movements that see no incompatibility between Islamic values and teachings and modern democratic principles. This group advocates participation in the political process with the goal of achieving power and applying political reforms on the basis of Islamic principles. Proponents of “reforms within Islam” include leading religious figures, scholars, and academic institutions that call for reinterpretation of Islamic laws, a historical reading of Islam and the Qur’an, and the modernization of Islamic knowledge. “Culturally modern Islam” developed mainly among Muslim communities living in the West. These diaspora groups and organizations, which try to articulate a “western Islamic identity,” see no tension between being a Muslim and a citizen of a western democracy. Tying these diverse actors together is their commitment to modernize Islamic institutions, traditions, and practices.”
One of the major objectives that Muslim thinkers must seek to fulfill is to modify this erroneous image. Their action in this regard consists of many joint programs that they must begin to implement with international partners to cleanse school curricula from these stereotypes, and produce an Islamic Encyclopaedia which will present an alternative and full image on the Islamic world and its civilization, penned by Muslim and fair-minded Western authors. Universities in the Muslim world must monitor seriously the Islamophobia phenomenon and draw up a database on all the manifestations of animosity towards Muslims and Islam, thus enabling researchers to study them or engage legal action against them, in addition to helping countries build up their cultural policies.
End notes:
i. http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/article/opr/t236/e0682
ii. Brinton J. G. 2015. Preaching Islamic Renewa: lReligious Authority and Media in Contemporary Egypt.University of California Press.
Preaching Islamic Renewal examines the life and work of Muhammad Mitwalli Sha‘rawi, one of Egypt’s most beloved and successful Islamic preachers. His wildly popular TV program aired every Friday for years until his death in 1998. At the height of his career, it was estimated that up to 30 million people tuned in to his show each week. Yet despite his pervasive and continued influence in Egypt and the wider Muslim world, Sha‘rawi was for a long time neglected by academics. While much of the academic literature that focuses on Islam in modern Egypt repeats the claim that traditionally trained Muslim scholars suffered the loss of religious authority, Sha‘rawi is instead an example of a well-trained Sunni scholar who became a national media sensation. As an advisor to the rulers of Egypt as well as the first Arab television preacher, he was one of the most important and controversial religious figures in late-twentieth-century Egypt. Thanks to the repurposing of his videos on television and on the Internet, Sha‘rawi’s performances are still regularly viewed. Jacquelene Brinton uses Sha‘rawi and his work as a lens to explore how traditional Muslim authorities have used various media to put forth a unique vision of how Islam can be renewed and revived in the contemporary world. Through his weekly television appearances he popularized long held theological and ethical beliefs and became a scholar-celebrity who impacted social and political life in Egypt.
iii. Hofmann M. W. “A Plea for Islamic Renewal” in Islamic Studies. Vol. 40, No. 2 (Summer 2001), pp. 297-304. Published by: Islamic Research Institute, International Islamic University, Islamabad Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20837099
iv. http://www.themarknews.com/2016/07/11/islamic-renewal/
v. https://www.usip.org/sites/default/files/sr164.pdf
Bibliography:
Baldauf, Ingeborg. “Jadidism in Central Asia within Reformism and Modernism in the Muslim World,”Die Welt des Islams41, no. 1 (2001): 72–88. A study of the thinking of the Islamic reformers in Central Asia.
Dallal, Ahmad. “The Origins and Objectives of Islamic Revivalist Thought, 1750–1850.”Journal of American Oriental Society113, no. 3 (1993): 341–359. A novel study that challenges the view that most Muslim revivalist movements stemmed from the one ideological root of the Wahhābīyah in Arabia.
Dessouki, Ali E. Hillal, ed.Islamic Resurgence in the Arab World. New York, 1982. Different short studies on Islamic movements in the Arab world in the 1970s.
Esposito, John L, Islamic Revivalism. Washington, D.C., 1985 Looks at the general reasons behind Islamic revivalism in the second half of the twentieth century.
Esposito, John L, Islam and Politics. 3d ed. Syracuse, N.Y., 1991. Discusses the relationship between modern Islamic movements and their perception of political activity
Keddie, Nikki. “The Revolt of Islam, 1700 to 1993: Comparative Considerations and Relations to Imperialism.”Comparative Studies in Society and History36, no. 3 (1994): 463–487. A historical and contextual framework about the clash between Islamic societies and imperialism since the eighteenth century.
Kerr, Malcolm H.Islamic Reform: The Political and Legal Theories of Muḥammad ʿAbduh and Rashīd Riḍā. Berkeley, 1966. A textual analysis of the ideas of two prominent Arab Muslim reformers.
Lapidus, Ira. “Islamic Revival and Modernity: The Contemporary Movements and the Historical Reading.”Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient40, no. 4 (1997): 444–460. A study that directs our attention to the context of the rise of the Islamic movements in relation to the problems of modernity.
Levtzion, Nehemia, and John Obert Voll, eds.Eighteenth-Century Renewal and Reform in Islam. Syracuse, N.Y., 1987. Sundry articles that take the Islamic renewal and reform movements back to the eighteenth century instead of looking at the nineteenth century as their starting point.
Livingstone, John. “Muḥammad ʿAbduh on Science,”The Muslim World85, no. 3–4 (1995): 215–234. The positive ideas of a major Muslim reformer on modern science and its sanction by Islam.
Mutalib, Hussin. “Islamic Revivalism in ASEAN States: Political Implications.”Asian Survey30, no.9 (1990): 877–891. The phenomenon of Islamic revivalism in a region where different cultural currents intersect.
Voll, John Obert. “Renewal and Reform in Islamic History: Tajdīd and Iṣlāh”. In Voices of Resurgent Islam, edited by John L. Esposito, pp. 32–47. New York and Oxford, 1983. A short study on the ideologies of different reform movements in different parts of the Muslim world
US policy towards Russia has received a great deal of media coverage during the past couple of months ; however, the administration has not delineated its policy very clearly. Moving beyond campaign rhetoric, US strategy towards Russia faces an uphill battle, the main reason for this is the interplay between internal and external factors.
During the Obama administration, strides were made to ‘reset’ relations between the two global powers, though there was only a sliver of improvement in the ties, especially at the culmination of the new START treaty, which suffered from serious limitations.
Primarily, after the failure of this reset, Obama relied on policy based on maintaining peace while upholding the status quo so as to avoid tipping the balance. However, this American policy faced challenges with the change in leadership in Russia from Medvedev to Putin which altered Russian foreign policy; a policy which now focused on strategies that were and are more aggressive. The nation simultaneously became less willing to work with members of the international community. This dramatic shift also altered the strategy on missile defence.
While Medvedev was willing to allow Obama some leeway given institutional limitations, the hardnosed Putin was unrelenting. It was only towards the end of his term that Obama was pushed to set up the missile defence shield in Eastern Europe.
Additionally, change in Congressional leadership in the US, which shifted partisan lines further complicated US-Russian relations. In America’s legislative branch, there was a great deal support for rapprochement. So long as Obama had partisan control of Congress, the Republicans were far more critical of Obama’s strategy. Partisan allegiance became responsible for thwarting attempts at rapprochement.
The current policy/strategy towards Russia will be determined mostly as a result of the changing domestic scenario. The current internal situation – such as the alleged Russian involvement in the US election, the ties between the administration and Russia, the firing and resignation of Flynn and Comey, will have a bearing on the way in which US-Russian relations will be shaped.
As a result of the current confusion concerning Russia’s role in US politics, Congress has began to reassert itself over the Executive Branch on this issue. A newly introduced bill, which imposes additional sanctions on Russia, passed in the Senate in a near unanimous vote 97-2.
The overwhelming response is quite telling of the current political climate within the US. The imposition of sanctions was not without reason. Any Congressional action regarding Russia serves to appease the hostile domestic political environment. Cleverly, Democrats co-opted Russian Sanctions with the Iranian sanctions thus, effectively tying the President and his party’s hands. If Trump were to veto such sanctions it would look as though he was going soft on Iran as well.
However on a global scale, not everyone approves of this approach, members of the international community have also weighed in on this imposition of sanctions, specifically France and Germany. Some have condemned the sanctions as it could lead to a further degradation of the relations, possibly overflowing to other areas including the Syrian civil war and ISIS. US allies have weighed in on the current status of the relationship for instance, Israel, has expressed concern over deplorable state to which US-Russian relations have sunk
In framing a coherent foreign policy towards Russia, the Trump Administration will have to balance the foreign and domestic environment prudently through cohesive policy across the board.
The current political scenario, wherein in the balance in Congress is not completely in Trump’s favor has created roadblocks (in spite of Republican control). Though Trump has his partisan support, there are factions within the Republican party that are opposed to his dealing with Russia.
Of the Republican Senators who oppose Trump’s policies, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) are the two Republican representatives who vehemently criticize Trump’s policy towards Russia, which includes any kind of rapprochement as well as the alleged Russian interference in the election which lead to the need for a special prosecutor.
Democrats on the other hand, have cohesively opposed Trump’s handling of Russia. They also remain wary of Trump’s version of US commitment to NATO specifically, Eastern allies. Nevertheless, the imposition of new sanctions, to some extent, will require an alteration in Trump’s strategy towards Russia. Therefore, The President’s attempts to improve relations with Russia will be put on the back burner for the time being.
Secondly, along with his lack of domestic support, internationally, especially among US allies, skepticism has increased. Trump’s statements concerning NATO and Asian countries under the US nuclear umbrella during his campaign and thereafter at the NATO Summit have done little to mitigate these concerns. German Chancellor Angela Merkel in the aftermath of the Summit stated bluntly that reliance on the US was no longer dependable. During the Summit , the President in fact was playing a dual game of pulling up countries for their lack of burden sharing while simultaneously reaffirming US commitment to collective defence. This has led NATO allies to question US sincerity in its commitments to the alliance
In the NATO-Russia-US puzzle, Trump faces a conundrum of making concessions towards Russia, which could at least partially bolster relations, but on the other hand this would be next to impossible under current circumstances. Therefore Trump, has resorted to other tactics to portray his dismay with NATO. NATO and more specifically its Eastern flank, has been the bone of contention between the US and Russia. Towards the end of the Obama administration together with NATO, launched the missile defence in system in Romania, increased presence of NATO forces (which is considered the largest build since the Cold War) in Bulgaria, Romania, Poland, Estonia , Latvia and Lithuania, this has definitely contributed to the Russian apprehension.
The visit by President Trump to Poland, was a way to mend fences between the US and Eastern Europe, the visit was much awaited and was to a great extent warmly received. However this is not to sugar coat the problems that already exist between the two. The visit though may to some extent quelled the problem of mistrust in Poland, nevertheless there is a long way back one that the US may not want to take.
However though there is a great deal of ambiguity at this point in time, the US is committed to its NATO allies. However Russia has become problem for the US at home and abroad. Trump’s Russian problem can also be seen in terms of diverting attention away from the day to day functioning of government.
Conclusion
Therefore Trump’s policy towards Russia, is ‘ no policy’. This may not be such a bad idea, given that no policy is better than taking wrong turn , which could easily happen given the current situation. With regard to the reset this seems as a distant possibility for the time being, that is to say at least during this first term.
In fact the Comey hearings to a great extent have diverted attention from the actual policy. This could be a good thing in some respects given Trump himself is uncertain how to navigate the murky waters. To make matters worse US international, as well as domestic, allies have created more trouble than they are worth. For now, Trump faces the age old paradox of “dammed if doesn’t or dammed if he does”. His domestic environment is not conducive for rapprochement and in the international community, specifically the Baltic states, could further complicate the situation. Therefore, Trump’s policy towards Russia (during his first term) will be tied in with a polarised domestic environment.
**The title refers to a quote by Speaker of the House Thomas ‘Tip’ O’Neil
*The author is a Fulbright-Nehru Doctoral Fellow at the American University, Washington DC. She is also associated with the Centre for Canadian, US & Latin American Studies, JNU and the Institute of Peace and Conflict Studies (IPCS), New Delhi .