Researchers are examining pre-colonial geometric earthworks in the southwestern Amazonia from the point of view of indigenous peoples and archaeology. The study shows that the earthworks were once important ritual communication spaces.

The geometric earthworks of southwestern Amazonia have raised the interest within the scientific community as well as the media and the general public, and they have been explored recently by several international research teams.

These unique archaeological sites have been labeled the Geoglyphs of Acre, as most of them are located in the Brazilian State of Acre. Nearly 500 sites have already been registered and have been included on the Brazilian State Party’s Tentative List for inscription on the UNESCO World Heritage List.

The construction period and use, span the time period of approximately 3000-1000 BP. The earthwork ditches form geometric patterns, such as squares, circles, U-forms, ellipses and octagons. They can be several meters deep and enclose areas of hundreds of square meters.

Members of the community interacted with the environment

Pirjo Kristiina Virtanen, Assistant Professor of Indigenous Studies at the University of Helsinki, Finland, has conducted research with indigenous peoples in the study area for a long time. Sanna Saunaluoma, Post Doctoral researcher at the São Paulo University, Brazil, is specialized in Amazonian archeology and made her doctoral dissertation on Acre’s earthwork sites. Their article published in the American Anthropologist (119[4], 2017), already in early view, examines pre-colonial geometric earthworks from the point of view of indigenous peoples and archaeology.

The study shows that the sites were once important ritual spaces where, through the geometric designs, certain members of the community communicated with various beings of the environment, such as ancestor spirits, animals, and celestial bodies. Thus people were constantly reminded that human life was intertwined with the environment and previous generations. People did not distinguish themselves from nature, but nonhumans enabled and produced life.

The geometric earthwork sites were especially used by the experts of that era, who specialized in the interaction with the nonhuman beings. The sites were important for members of the community at certain stages of life, and the various geometric patterns acted as “doors” and “paths” to gain the knowledge and strength of the different beings of the environment. Visualization and active interactions with nonhuman beings were constructive for these communities.

Contemporary indigenous peoples of Acre still regard earthwork sites as sacred places

The geometric patterns inspired by characteristics and skin patterns of animals still materialize the thinking of indigenous people of Amazonia and are also present in their modern pottery, fabrics, jewelry, and arts. As the theories of Amerindian visual art also show, geometric patterns can provide people with desired qualities and abilities, such as fertility, resistance, knowledge, and power.

Contemporary indigenous peoples of Acre still protect earthwork sites as sacred places and, unlike other Brazilian residents in the area, avoid using the sites for mundane activities, such as housing or agriculture, and therefore protect these peculiar ancient remains in their own way.

The average age of newborns’ fathers in the United States has grown by 3.5 years over the past four decades, according to a new study from investigators at Stanford University School of Medicine.

Men over the age of 40 now account for about 9 percent of all U.S. births. Men over the age of 50 account for nearly 1 percent.

Those statistics come from the Stanford study, which is the first comprehensive analysis of all live births reported to a federal data depository in the United States from 1972-2015: to be precise, 168,867,480 births.

The Stanford researchers obtained the data from the National Vital Statistics System, an intergovernmental data-sharing program sponsored by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The study will be published online April 30 in Human Reproduction. Michael Eisenberg, MD, an assistant professor of urology, is the senior author. The lead author is Yash Khandwala, a medical student at the University of California-San Diego who was a research scholar in Eisenberg’s lab at Stanford when the analysis was done.

The National Vital Statistics System records births and deaths reported by all 50 states, as well as self-reported maternal and, where available, paternal ages, levels of education and race and ethnicity of the parents. While the CDC periodically produces reports on maternal statistics, little information about newborns’ dads has been available.

Older dads and college degrees

Between 1972 and 2015, the researchers found, the average paternal age at the time of an American child’s birth grew from 27.4 years to 30.9 years. Asian-American dads — and in particular, Japanese- and Vietnamese-American dads — at upwards of 36 years of age, on average — are the oldest. Paternal age rose with more years of education; the typical newborn’s father with a college degree is 33.3 years old.

Over the same time period, the share of newborns’ fathers who were older than 40 doubled from 4.1 percent to 8.9 percent, while the share who were over 50 rose from 0.5 percent to 0.9 percent.

Similar trends of increasing age have been reported in other industrialized countries.

The steadily advancing age of newborns’ fathers is likely to carry public-health implications, Eisenberg said. A rising paternal age can affect the total number of children a man will have, which can impact the demographics of the population. In addition, he said, “every potential dad acquires an average of two new mutations in his sperm each year. And there are associations between older fatherhood and higher rates of autism, schizophrenia, chromosomal abnormalities, some pediatric cancers and certain rare genetic conditions.”

On the flip side, he noted, older fathers are more likely to have better jobs and more resources, more likely to have reasonably stable lifestyles and more likely to live with their children and, thus, be more involved in child-rearing.

Ages of new moms increasing, too

“Maternal ages at birth have been increasing, too,” Eisenberg said. “In fact, they’ve advanced even more than paternal ages have in the same time frame. This may be a consequence of women waiting longer to get married or putting off childbearing as the years they spend in higher education increase and as careers become more central to their lives. The result is that the average age difference between moms and dads has been shrinking, from 2.7 years in 1972 to 2.3 years in 2015.”

This convergent pattern appears to apply to all racial, regional, age and education categories, he said. “We’ve seen a lot of changes in the last several decades. Contraception is more reliable and widespread. Women have become more integrated into the workforce. This seems to be reflected in an increasing parity in parental ages over the last four decades.”

Advancing parental age leaves fewer years for childbearing and is likely to exert a follow-on effect of reducing the average family size over the long haul, with potentially huge economic ramifications, Eisenberg said.

“Fewer people being born means fewer productive workers a generation down the road,” he said. “This can obviously have profound tax and economic implications.”

While parental-data reporting to the National Vital Statistics System by some states was spotty in the early years of the period under study, it’s been running at virtually 100 percent since 1985, at least for mothers, said Eisenberg. In 2015, the latest year available, information about newborns’ fathers was missing in one of every nine births. That could be because the father was unknown or because the mother didn’t wish to report his name or any details about him, Eisenberg said.

It matters. Evidence indicates that, on the whole, young children whose paternal data appears in their birth records have better health outcomes.

Paternal-data reporting rates vary according to mothers’ race, ethnicity, age, education and regional location, the analysis showed, with the reporting rate for African-American newborns consistently the lowest for all races. Over the past decade, African-American mothers under the age of 20 reported paternal data only half the time. However, the rate of paternal reporting for children born to African-American mothers has grown from its low of 63 percent in 1985 to a current rate of 70.9 percent, Eisenberg said.

Overall paternal reporting for U.S. births has risen to its current 88.4 percent since reaching a nadir of 85.5 percent in 1991.

The youngest dad recorded during the 44-year period covered in the study was 11 years old; the oldest was 88. But the world-record holder, Eisenberg said, is a gentleman from India who early in this decade fathered two children at the age of 94 and 96 with a wife who was in her late 50s. “Unfortunately, they wound up separating,” he said.

Just as drivers observe the rules of the road, most pedestrians follow certain social codes when navigating a hallway or a crowded thoroughfare: Keep to the right, pass on the left, maintain a respectable berth, and be ready to weave or change course to avoid oncoming obstacles while keeping up a steady walking pace.

Now engineers at MIT have designed an autonomous robot with “socially aware navigation,” that can keep pace with foot traffic while observing these general codes of pedestrian conduct.

In drive tests performed inside MIT’s Stata Center, the robot, which resembles a knee-high kiosk on wheels, successfully avoided collisions while keeping up with the average flow of pedestrians. The researchers have detailed their robotic design in a paper that they will present at the IEEE Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems in September.

“Socially aware navigation is a central capability for mobile robots operating in environments that require frequent interactions with pedestrians,” says Yu Fan “Steven” Chen, who led the work as a former MIT graduate student and is the lead author of the study. “For instance, small robots could operate on sidewalks for package and food delivery. Similarly, personal mobility devices could transport people in large, crowded spaces, such as shopping malls, airports, and hospitals.”

Chen’s co-authors are graduate student Michael Everett, former postdoc Miao Liu, and Jonathan How, the Richard Cockburn Maclaurin Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics at MIT.

Social drive

In order for a robot to make its way autonomously through a heavily trafficked environment, it must solve four main challenges: localization (knowing where it is in the world), perception (recognizing its surroundings), motion planning (identifying the optimal path to a given destination), and control (physically executing its desired path).

Chen and his colleagues used standard approaches to solve the problems of localization and perception. For the latter, they outfitted the robot with off-the-shelf sensors, such as webcams, a depth sensor, and a high-resolution lidar sensor. For the problem of localization, they used open-source algorithms to map the robot’s environment and determine its position. To control the robot, they employed standard methods used to drive autonomous ground vehicles.

“The part of the field that we thought we needed to innovate on was motion planning,” Everett says. “Once you figure out where you are in the world, and know how to follow trajectories, which trajectories should you be following?”

That’s a tricky problem, particularly in pedestrian-heavy environments, where individual paths are often difficult to predict. As a solution, roboticists sometimes take a trajectory-based approach, in which they program a robot to compute an optimal path that accounts for everyone’s desired trajectories. These trajectories must be inferred from sensor data, because people don’t explicitly tell the robot where they are trying to go.

“But this takes forever to compute. Your robot is just going to be parked, figuring out what to do next, and meanwhile the person’s already moved way past it before it decides ‘I should probably go to the right,'” Everett says. “So that approach is not very realistic, especially if you want to drive faster.”

Others have used faster, “reactive-based” approaches, in which a robot is programmed with a simple model, using geometry or physics, to quickly compute a path that avoids collisions. The problem with reactive-based approaches, Everett says, is the unpredictability of human nature — people rarely stick to a straight, geometric path, but rather weave and wander, veering off to greet a friend or grab a coffee. In such an unpredictable environment, such robots tend to collide with people or look like they are being pushed around by avoiding people excessively.

“The knock on robots in real situations is that they might be too cautious or aggressive,” Everett says. “People don’t find them to fit into the socially accepted rules, like giving people enough space or driving at acceptable speeds, and they get more in the way than they help.”

Training days

The team found a way around such limitations, enabling the robot to adapt to unpredictable pedestrian behavior while continuously moving with the flow and following typical social codes of pedestrian conduct.

They used reinforcement learning, a type of machine learning approach, in which they performed computer simulations to train a robot to take certain paths, given the speed and trajectory of other objects in the environment. The team also incorporated social norms into this offline training phase, in which they encouraged the robot in simulations to pass on the right, and penalized the robot when it passed on the left.

“We want it to be traveling naturally among people and not be intrusive,” Everett says. “We want it to be following the same rules as everyone else.”

The advantage to reinforcement learning is that the researchers can perform these training scenarios, which take extensive time and computing power, offline. Once the robot is trained in simulation, the researchers can program it to carry out the optimal paths, identified in the simulations, when the robot recognizes a similar scenario in the real world.

The researchers enabled the robot to assess its environment and adjust its path, every one-tenth of a second. In this way, the robot can continue rolling through a hallway at a typical walking speed of 1.2 meters per second, without pausing to reprogram its route.

“We’re not planning an entire path to the goal — it doesn’t make sense to do that anymore, especially if you’re assuming the world is changing,” Everett says. “We just look at what we see, choose a velocity, do that for a tenth of a second, then look at the world again, choose another velocity, and go again. This way, we think our robot looks more natural, and is anticipating what people are doing.”

Crowd control

Everett and his colleagues test-drove the robot in the busy, winding halls of MIT’s Stata Building, where the robot was able to drive autonomously for 20 minutes at a time. It rolled smoothly with the pedestrian flow, generally keeping to the right of hallways, occasionally passing people on the left, and avoiding any collisions.

“We wanted to bring it somewhere where people were doing their everyday things, going to class, getting food, and we showed we were pretty robust to all that,” Everett says. “One time there was even a tour group, and it perfectly avoided them.”

Everett says going forward, he plans to explore how robots might handle crowds in a pedestrian environment.

“Crowds have a different dynamic than individual people, and you may have to learn something totally different if you see five people walking together,” Everett says. “There may be a social rule of, ‘Don’t move through people, don’t split people up, treat them as one mass.’ That’s something we’re looking at in the future.”

By Jim Garamone

U.S. and South Korean defense leaders are today discussing ways to make the alliance stronger in face of continued outrageous acts by North Korea.

US Defense Secretary Jim Mattis hosted South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo at the Pentagon today, the day after North Korea shot an intermediate-range ballistic missile over Japan.

The visit is Song’s first in his position. “It says a great deal about the priority you and your president [Moon Jae-in] place on the relationship,” Mattis said in opening remarks at the meeting.

Mattis said the world will continue to seek diplomatic solutions to the problem posed by North Korea. “We are never out of diplomatic solutions,” he said. “The minister and I share a responsibility to provide for the protection of our nations, our populations and our interests, which is what we are here to discuss.”

The secretary noted the U.S.-South Korea alliance has been a cornerstone of peace in the region since the armistice halted the Korean War in 1953. “We share a commitment to democratic values and work together to maintain a stable environment so all can prosper,” Mattis said.

“As we have seen, the threat to security in the Northwest Pacific has become more severe and our nations’ defense relationship becomes more important than ever and remains the bedrock for international efforts to temper North Korea’s aggressive actions,” he said.

Sanctions

Mattis pointed to recent United Nations actions to impose sanctions and the communique that the Association of Southeast Asian Nations released following its most recent meeting as proof that the international community is resolved to counter North Korea’s destabilizing actions.

“Here in Washington, we are keenly aware that South Korea is on the front line and we are not complacent,” Mattis told Song.

“Clearly, the world is paying close attention to the [South Korean]-U.S. alliance because of North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic missile strides,” Song said through a translator. “I have no doubt these issues will be resolved due to the strength of the U.S.-[South Korean] alliance.”

Bosnia’s State Agency for Investigation and Protection, SIPA, arrested a person on Wednesday, suspected of potential connections with Islamic fighters in Syria and Iraq.

On the request of the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina and the Bosnian prosecution office, officers of the State Agency for Investigation and Protection, SIPA, arrested one person in Sarajevo on Wednesday on suspicion of connection with foreign Islamic fighters in Syria and Iraq.

SIPA is also searching the home in Sarajevo of the person, who was deported to Bosnia from Austria, looking for illegal arms, ammunition or explosives.

Germany’s top diplomat has backed the suggestion of Social Democrat (SPD) leader and Chancellor hopeful Martin Schulz, who has pledged to rid his country of US nukes. Washington, meanwhile, is pressing ahead to modernize its nuclear stockpile.

Sigmar Gabriel’s remarks came at the end of his official visit to the US Wednesday.

“Certainly, I am convinced that it is important to finally talk again about the arms control and disarmament,” Gabriel told the DPA news agency, as quoted by the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung newspaper.

“That’s why I think that Martin Schulz’s words that in the end we need to get rid of the nuclear weapons in our country, are right.”

Last week, Schulz, the SDP candidate for Chancellor, pledged to get rid of the US nukes if elected.

“As German Chancellor… I will champion for the withdrawal of the nuclear weapons stationed in Germany,” Schulz said in Trier addressing a campaign rally. “Trump wants nuclear armament. We reject it.”

There are some 20 US B61 nukes stored at the Buechel Air Base in Germany, according to estimates by the Federation of American Scientists (FAS).

The issue of US nuclear weapons storage on German soil has been raised by top officials in the past. In 2009, then-German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said the B61 stockpile in Germany was a “military obsolete” and urged the US to remove the weapons.

Senior Russian officials have expressed similar attitudes toward the US’ “Cold War relics” still deployed in Germany.

“American nuclear weapons in Germany are relics of the Cold War, for a long time they do not serve the implementation of any practical tasks and are subject to being thrown down the dustbin of history,” Sergey Nechayev, chief of the Russian foreign ministry’s department responsible for relations with Germany said in December 2016.

The US, meanwhile, is upgrading its B61 bombs, some 200 of which are stored in Europe. The non-nuclear assembly of the new B61-12 modification was successfully tested for the second time earlier this month.

It is expected to have significantly expanded capabilities, which might raise the likelihood of it being unleashed, according to politicians and military experts. Earlier this year, President Donald Trump proposed a $1 trillion program to modernize America’s nuclear arsenal, claiming the US had “fallen behind on nuclear weapon capacity.”

Earlier in August, Gabriel attacked Chancellor Angela Merkel and her ruling party for following the “dictate” of Trump and wanting to “double Germany’s military spending.”

In March, the German Chancellor promised to do her best to increase spending on NATO, following Trump’s demand for member states to spend their “fair share” of 2 percent GDP on defense.

“As opposed to the times of the East-West confrontation, those conflicts and wars are far more difficult to foresee and manage,” Gabriel wrote in an op-ed for the Rheinische Post newspaper. “The question is: how do we respond? The answer by US President Donald Trump is to arm.”

“We have to spend more than €70 billion on arms per year upon Trump’s and Merkel’s will,” Gabriel wrote, adding that it would not improve the situation anywhere. “Every German soldier who is deployed overseas tells us that there’s no security and stability that can be reached through weapons or military force.”

Hovering Hurricane Harvey, loaded and reloading with trillions of gallons of water raining down on the greater Houston region—ironically the hub of the petroleum refining industry—is an unfolding, off the charts tragedy for millions of people. Many of those most affected are minorities and low-income families with no homes, health care or jobs to look forward to once the waters recede.

Will this tragedy teach us the lessons that so many politicians and impulsive voters have been denying for so long?

The first lesson is that America must come home: we must end the Empire of Militarism and of playing the role of policeman of the planet. Both of these habitual roles are backfiring and depleting trillions of taxpayer dollars that could be better used toward rebuilding our country’s infrastructure, strengthening our catastrophe-response networks and preparing for the coming megastorms like Hurricane Harvey. A projected trillion dollars being spent by Obama, and now Trump, just to upgrade nuclear weapons will only spur another arms race with Russia and China. This money could be more productively spent protecting Americans from immediate threats, such as natural disasters from man-made climate change.

Politicians must stop overstuffing a bloated military budget and leaving our country fiscally unprepared to handle mass epidemics and mass megastorms. In short, will they stop leaving our country defenseless against the prospects of huge levels of mortality and morbidity?

Second, Congressional and White House deniers of man-made climate disruption must renounce their dogmatic ignorance and confront the reality in the scientific warnings about the accelerating wrath of a provoked natural world.

Last month, I asked Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe—who has called climate change a “hoax”—what level of evidence would change his mind about climate change. He has not replied yet. But that is the question that should be asked of all Trumpsters, including the voters who share their disregard: Just what series of climate events  – what piles of scientific measurements and documentations now in the Arctic, the Andes, Antarctica, Greenland, the Maldives, etc. – could change their minds?

Third, our elected officials must accept that continuing to waste trillions of dollars on corporate subsidies, bailouts, giveaways and lack of enforcement of costly crime—crony capitalism—further weakens our country’s capacity to foresee and forestall omnicidal disasters.

Enough, also, of the Congressional Republicans starving the IRS budget so it cannot collect more of the many billions of dollars in uncollected global corporate taxes. These Republicans don’t seem to connect the size of deficits, which they detest, with uncollected tax revenue, now estimated by the IRS to exceed $350 billion a year.

Maybe someone should finally write a book entitled “Listen, Voters.” It could start by asking why enough voters keep electing politicians, who sweet talk them, only hook up with corporations and an ideology of corporatism that adversely affects the very voters who put them into office, along with many other Americans. If these voters, who so often vote against their own interests, do a little homework before Election Day, they can easily separate the fakers and the sell outs from the real candidates, who may not have silver tongues and corporate backing, but have a consistent record of being on the side of the people.

Voters need to be more demanding if they are to break the chains of a rigged electoral system that deprives them of choice, of voice and, most importantly, of the sovereign power they possess in our Constitution.

The August 29, 2017 Washington Post paused from its extensive coverage of the destruction in Houston to laud the “Flood of Courage” in its lead editorial. It wrote of the “massive – and inspiring – volunteer rescue response…With nothing more than their own courage, good people ventured into the rushing gullies and culverts, risking their lives to save others in the unrelenting rain.”

While Trump tweets and hopefully reconsiders his earlier cruel budget cuts for FEMA and other life-saving federal agencies – such as the Centers for Disease Control and the EPA – the people are swinging into action on the ground. May they swing into wise and just action in the next elections – both as new candidates and, high horizon, informed voters. For there is a much better America to be had.

Ruslan Gurzhiy, a journalist for a Russian émigré publication in Sacramento, California, says that Russian diplomats and oligarchs linked to them are actively promoting the organization of militarized pro-Moscow youth groups, including “boot camps” and biker organizations in the United States.

In a 3500-word article this week, he writes that “employees of Russian consulates … are involved in the creation of a network of pro-Russian militarized youth detachments on the territory of the United States” (nashdom.us/home/sootechestvenniki/compatriots/zachem-kremlju-voenizirovannye-otrjady-na-territorii-ssha).

On the one hand, of course, the involvement of Russian diplomatic personnel with émigré organizations is a normal part of their work, something the diplomats of other countries routinely do as well in other countries. And thus, it is difficult, perhaps intentionally so, to separate what the Russian diplomats are doing legitimately from what they are doing that isn’t.

But on the other, some of the stories that Gurzhiy offers suggest that the Russian diplomats on the west coast of the United States and oligarchs living in Florida cross lines that should not be crossed and suggest intentions on the part of Moscow that are worrisome in the extreme.

Many Russian social and youth groups in the US, the émigré journalist writes, “instantly fall under the direct influence and often are created and financed by employees of the Russian émigré, the consulate generals of the Russian Federation and other diplomatic agencies” that include on at least some occasions visits by Rosmolodezh staffers from Moscow.

Many émigré organizations are hostile to the Russian government but some are not, and this often leads to curious developments. In one Russian youth camp near Seattle, Washington, a Russian Orthodox priest delivered his message in front of a red banner with the Soviet symbols of the hammer and sickle.

In other cases, some Russian Cossack groups in California have organized what they call “boot camps” to provide sports and military training for young Russian emigres (slavicsac.com/2015/03/24/russian-orthodox-cossacks-in-california/ and compatriotsru.uanet.biz/russian/nashi-sootechestvenniki/nashi-sootechestvenniki-v-raznykh-stranakh-mira/mid-rossii-gotovit-voenizirovannye-molodezhnye-otrjady-na-territorii-ssha).

And some emigres who were opposed to Moscow while in Russia now are openly supportive. In one case, Russian Pentecostals who refused to serve in the Russian armed forces and received asylum in the US on the basis of the problems that caused them while in their homeland are engaged in the military training of their children now that they are in the US.

Gurzhiy points as well to the way some Russian groups have created charter schools to promote their ideas, simultaneously getting money from the state government and providing ideological training hostile to the US. Among such institutions in California are the Community Outreach Academy and the Futures High School, whose organizers officials at the Russian consulate general in San Francisco have praised.

The Sacramento journalist also points to an odd development in Florida. There Russian oligarchs have put money into a Russian bikers club known as Spetsnaz. This has attracted more attention because some of the oligarchs involved have invested in Trump properties (miamiherald.com/news/local/community/miami-dade/article157640179.html).

The bikers use a symbol resembling that of the FSB and have relations with both Putin’s Night Wolves in Russia and some US law enforcement agencies.

Gurzhiy ends his article with a truly provocative reference. He notes that newly appointed Russian ambassador to the US, Anatoly Antonov, was earlier awarded the Russian medal “For the Return of Crimea” given to those most directly involved in Putin’s Crimean Anschluss in 2014.

And he points out that in the Crimean city of Evpatoria, the Russian occupiers set up a monument which includes a call for future generations of Russians to act elsewhere as their ancestors have in Crimea. “We returned Crimea,” it says. “You must return Alaska!” Gurzhiy provides a picture of this (slavicsac.com/2016/11/29/russia-alaska/).

By Hunter Lewis*

Why are we fighting over confederate monuments?

Because people feel strongly about this issue? Because they are being removed? Because some groups are trying to exploit the situation to get attention?

Or is there another reason?

While we are fighting over Confederate monuments relating to events almost two centuries ago, we are not focusing on:

• The worsening plight of the poor;
• The destruction of the middle class ( many middle class people can no longer afford even a new car);
• The crony capitalists who make their money from government handouts or connections, and who are getting richer and richer;

Government employees who may have signed on for the most sincere reasons, but whose numbers have swelled, who are now making much more than they would in the private sector, who cannot be fired, and whose earnings are often diverted into campaign contributions favoring one party;

A government that is unsustainably financing itself through debt and money printing.

Is it a coincidence that while we are fighting about Confederate monuments, we are not focusing on any of these issues? Or is that someone’s political strategy? Perhaps the strategy of both Democrats and many Republicans, aided and abetted by their press allies.

It was once thought that the Democratic Party had nailed down issues relating to class, race, and gender. Paul Cantor noted, after the last presidential election, that Democrats had perhaps unwittingly allowed Trump to claim “class” for himself.

Perhaps as a result, Trump and his voters have been slammed with charges of racism, white supremacy, anti-semitism, homophobia, misogyny, xenophobia, fascism. Some of this seems completely detached from reality. Can a president whose daughter converted to orthodox Judaism when she married her husband and who has relied so heavily on that husband, who has brought in so many Jews into his administration in powerful positions, and who has moreover repaired relations with Israel, really be anti-semitic? Is the candidate who reached out to gays in his nomination acceptance speech, a daring act for a Republican, really homophobic? Is it any more likely that he is a white supremacist or racist? One can think of many unflattering adjectives that might accurately apply to Trump, but are these the right ones?

And does all of this, like the Confederate monuments, just distract us from the likely ruin the poor and middle class face if we continue to allow progressive elites to run our economy along the usual, Keynesian lines?

About the author:
*Hunter Lewis is author of nine books, including Where Keynes Went Wrong, Free Prices Now! and Crony Capitalism in America: 2008-2012. Lewis is co-founder of Against Crony Capitalism.org as well as co-founder and former CEO of Cambridge Associates, a global investment firm. He has served on boards and committees of fifteen not-for-profit organizations, including environmental, teaching, research, and cultural organizations, as well as the World Bank.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

The Indonesian government says it intends to re-educate members of a recently dissolved hard-line Muslim group that wants to turn the country into a caliphate.

Soedarmo, director-general of politics and public administration at the Ministry of Home Affairs, said something need to be done to de-radicalize the former members of the disbanded Hizbut Tahrir Indonesia (HTI), group.

“They will be coached into re-recognizing Pancasila as the ideology and the basis of the state,” he said.

The government wants to avoid the possibility that HTI members will form a similar organization.

“Without any supervision, they may form a new group. This should not happen,” Soedarmo said.

HTI has long courted controversy, especially with regard to their aim of making Indonesia an Islamic state.

The London-based group with an estimated 40,000 members was also at the forefront of sectarian rallies against the now jailed Jakarta Christian Governor Basuki Tjahaja Purnama that now in jail for blasphemy.

The government officially disbanded the group on July 19. The group has since lodged an appeal in the Supreme Court.

Soedarmo said the government would invite various experts including scholars, and religious leaders to take part in the reformation of the hard-line group’s members.

HTI spokesperson Ismail Yusanto refused to comment on the government move.

Ismail Hasani, a researcher at the Setara Institute for Democracy and Peace rights group warned the government against discriminating against HTI members.

“Although it [re-education] can be understood as a government effort to suppress the dissemination of sectarian ideologies, this could lead to discrimination and persecution,” he said.

By Giancarlo Elia Valori*

Moez al-Fezzani, a Tunisian citizen popularly known by his initial nom de guerre Abu Nassim, was arrested with other Daesh-Isis members in Sirte, between Rigdaleen and Al Jimail, Libya, on August 18, 2016. Already taken to trial in Italy for terrorist recruitment, Abu Nassim was obviously acquitted in Milan – a city which, since the time of the Mosque in Viale Jenner, is “the main centre of Al Qaeda in Europe”, as stated in a CIA report of ten years ago.

The Islamic Cultural Institute (ICI) in Milan was created in 1988, upon the initiative of some members of the Egyptian movement Jamaa al Islamiya. It immediately became a center to gather, train and fund the Islamists going to fight in Bosnia.

A stupid Western war enabling Alja Izetbegovic – the leader of the Bosnian Republic of Sarajevo, as well as author of a book prophetically entitled “Islamic fundamentalism” – to create an Islamist area in the Balkans serving the interests of Afghanistan, Chechnya, Al Qaeda (at the time, Bin Laden was often in Sarajevo) and Kosovars.

At the time, the cells and training camps of ICI – which enjoyed strange, but large amounts of money – were in Gallarate, Como, Varese and Cremona.

Considering Pareto’s theory of the persistence of aggregates, it would be nice to keep on following these groups, even though it results that ICI was dismantled.

Hence, at first, we must note the strange persistence of terrorist networks.

In Catalonia there was the Algerian citizen Bellil Belgacem, working for a halal butcher of Vilanova i la Geltrù, who organized the attack on our base at Nasiriyah. Later Belgacem was also in Milan – Viale Jenner, of course – before finally arriving in Syria from where he perpetrated the attack on our base in Iraq, by killing 19 Italian soldiers.

The “foreign” jihadists are those who usually organize terrorist attacks, as it is likely that their cover in the attack area is known to the local intelligence services.

Nevertheless the great cover and motivation networks – another key factor for assessing the jihad – remain, assuming that there are no serious threats of infiltration or dismantling.

Belkacem was identified because – as always happens – the Italian intelligence services had sent biological material of the attacker also to the Spanish Guardia Civil that unexpectedly solved the problem.

The house where the terrorists who organized the attack in Barcelona lived is another factor of the persistence of networks, owned by Mohamed Mrabet Fahsi, the Head of the cell held responsible for the terrorist attack in the Atocha station, Madrid, on March 11, 2004.

The “journalists” who killed Shah Massoud, also known as the Lion of Panjshir, one day before the 9/11 attack, by asking him as first question – a second before killing him – “Why are you so upset with Osama Bin Laden?” came from Moleenbeek, the municipality in the Brussels-Capital Region which was to become even more notorious years later.

Hence the first factor is the persistence of networks, but only if the network is wide, reliable and capable of mobilizing a sufficiently large cover area, made up of Islamists who never mobilize for the “infidels” or of smart manipulators, as is often the case with the members of the Muslim Brotherhood, who weaken and defuse the attacks and sometimes attribute them to “Islamophobia”.

But the history of jihadist threats to Italy is long and overlaps with the actions which have been carried out by Al Qaeda and Daesh-Isis in the rest of Europe for too many years.

The first major report in Italy’s recent history dates back to March 2014, when the Moroccan intelligence services alerted the Italian ones, thus avoiding three attacks by the skin of their teeth – in the Milan subway, in the Basilica of St. Anthony, Padua and in the Church of St. Petronius, Bologna.

The Church in Bologna is well-known for its fresco portraying Muhammad in Hell (Canto XXVIII of Dante’s Divine Comedy), as sower of discord, together with Ali, the first Shi’a Imam.

Another constant feature is the choice of highly symbolic or highly damaging targets for the “infidels” so as to spread the terror which blocks the opponents’ reactions and intimidates them.

The symbolism is for internal use and unites the jihadists in an apparently “high” purpose.

Then the jihad rank-and-file comes in to play down, hide and relativize.

Hence either mass – the maximum amount of victims – or symbol, namely the destruction of the true or alleged anti-Islamic image.

Moreover, in the Hell – Canto XXVIII, Muhammad tells Dante to warn the schismatic and heretic Frà Dolcino.

Hence should there be an alliance between the Islamists and the followers of the Piedmontese heretic of Valsesia?

Furthermore, at the time, the front cover of the official magazine of Al Baghdadi’s Caliphate, Dabiq, showed the black flag of the Syrian-Iraqi Caliphate flying atop the Egyptian obelisk at St Peter’s Square in the Vatican.

What is the symbol for? Simply for showing the policy line to the militants, i.e. to hit the Church and nothing else; to later terrorize the enemy, according to the warfare technique indicated by the Qur’an and the ahadit and finally to mislead the opponent’s operations.

War is deception, a Koranic theme that must be never forgotten.

In that phase, not long after the 2001 attack on the Jemaa el Fna square in Marrakesh, the Moroccan intelligence services that had warned Italy also neutralized 126 jihadist cells, arrested 2,676 Daesh-Isis militants and nipped 276 attacks in the bud.

Another constant feature of jihadist terrorism is that it is created and recreated at great speed, so as to confuse the opponents, direct them towards “old” networks and conceal networks while preparing the attacks.

Throughout 2015, Twitter and other social media published photos with Isis militants appearing in front of political, mass and historical-artistic sites in Italy with the hashtag “We_Are_Coming_O_Rome” or “Islamic State in Rome”.

We have never had doubts on the active presence of jihadist networks in Italy.

In fact, last May a network of illegal migrant traffickers between Bari, Catania and Salerno was dismantled – a network of Somalis who had contacts with groups of jihadists they probably funded thanks to the proceeds of their trafficking.

Apart from the small talk of “misguided idealists” or of incompetent politicians, it is obvious that illegal immigration covers up the creation of jihadist groups in Italy, initially divided by ethnicity and subsequently funded by international jihad networks.

“We are coming, o Rome” (“and we will slaughter you in your own houses”) is a technically easy-to-identify hashtag on Twitter and finally refers to the presence of the “Islamic State in Rome”.

A major identity (the struggle against the Catholic Church) linked to a minor identity: every militant knows what to do and what to do is indicated by the reality in which the jihad operates: attacks with knives, propane and methane gas cylinders or with mobiles to be used as remote trigger.

The jihad is camouflage, but it is the explicit goal that must be reached. There is no camouflage or deception here.

Therefore another permanent feature of European jihad is, at first, the great attack, mobilizing the Islamic masses and ensuring their loyalty, by exciting and inflaming them, and later the microphysics of power established by “do-it-yourself” terrorism.

Last February, the “Caliphate” published a text written in good Italian by a Mr. Mehdi, entitled “Lo Stato Islamico, una realtà che ti vorrebbe comunicare”, much focused on the “services to citizens”.

It was later discovered that said Mr. Mehdi was Elmahdi Alili, a 20-year-old Italian citizen of Moroccan origin.

In said text Alili also threatened to fire Caliphate’s missiles against Sicily.

We will see how the old Islamic conquest of Sicily is a myth equivalent to that of Al Andalus in Spain – a myth to which Osama Bin Laden was already referring in his first proclamations.

Therefore the first Daesh-Isis texts on Spain are of January 7, January 31 and May 30, 2016, respectively, with a very high climax of videos and messages in the networks managed by Daesh, just before the Barcelona attacks.

At first the people are motivated and given general orders; later the network is organized and finally the green light is given.

What about Italy? From June 3 to 7 last, Isis-Daesh produced three propaganda videos and a PDF file – two of those videos referred to Rome.

The images are very recent, shot in motion and at night. The videos have titles referring to Italy, such as “Deadline Rome”, while the PDF file is entitled “You want Raqqa, we want Rome”.

But Raqqa is now lost – hence the conquest of Rome seems to be a sort of revenge and reconstruction of the Caliphate among the “infidels”.

Hence the first video, translated from Arabic into English, is “Deadline Rome”, but the word “deadline” has also other meanings in English.

All these videos are produced by the Al Waad Foundation (“Commitment/Promise”), an unofficial structure linked to Daesh-Isis.

The analysis of the video makes us revert to the Libyan issue, the current key factor of the connection between the global jihad and Italy.

In fact, Isis fears a primary role played by Italy in supporting al-Sarraj’s Government of National Accord (GNA). Then the Caliphate calls the “brothers” to take up arms to spread the jihad in Libya and finally recalls Al Libi, the ”heir” to Bin Laden.

Another sign not to be overlooked is that – following the jihadist tradition – the “Caliphate” refers to a battle of the Prophet, namely Khandaq or the “Battle of the Trench”.

Meccans and infidels on the one side, Medinan Muslims and newly-converted on the other.

A battle to be studied symbolically, but also practically: the 3,000 followers of the Prophet defending Medina remained holed up without accepting the clash with the overwhelming forces of the “infidels”.

This is obviously the image of the current Syrian-Iraqi Caliphate.

After Muhammad’s order to dig a trench to avoid the Meccans’ cavalry, the siege continued.

But the Jewish tribe Banu Qurayza refused to collaborate with the Prophet, as it had previously promised.

Hence it was accused of betrayal.

The symbolism is clear.

The “Caliphate” propaganda on Rome continues with “we will conquer Rome, Constantinople and Jerusalem”.

The possible meaning is the following: we will start from Rome, home to the “Crusaders” and later we will continue with Byzantium and Judaism.

Finally the PDF file shows the Colosseum and the Theater of Marcellus and it has been put online by the Al Wafa Foundation, an official organization of Daesh-Isis.

Here again there is a reference to the Quraysh tribe, the Meccans rejecting Muhammad’s Prophecy.

Is this the sign of an internal debate, probably between militants of the Syrian-Iraqi “State” and the jihadists who want to operate in Europe?

Staying or going away – thus turning Daesh-Isis into a global terrorist agency, such as the old Al Qaeda – or calling all the jihadists already present in Europe to return to its territorial area, only after their carrying out an attack or at least a personal war action against the “infidels”?

Is it a simple indication of the “enemy” to be successful in some operations or is it a geopolitical project starting from resistance in Raqqa and in the rest of the Daesh region?

Or – as the second video entitled “Between two Migrations” shows – the jihadists are explicitly asked to return to the “Caliphate”, in addition to showing the images of Pope Francis’s visit to Lesbos while migrants seem to refuse and criticize the Holy Father’s visit.

Let us analyze data: the first regards migrants – hence the Caliphate works on the assumption that there is a share of migrants currently present in Italy who could reunite with the territorial jihad. The second is the rejection of Pope Francis’ “open hand policy”, which could be successful in some regions of the Muslim world.

This means that the jihadists are said: carry out the great attack you are already preparing and then come here.

The third video entitled “Ramadan, the Month of Conquest” explains with many historical data the Islamic conquest of Sicily. Then a boot appears on the image of Italy and finally the word Rome comes to the screen.

Last March a rather strange video was put online, subtitled in Arabic and English, in which one of the two jihadists spoke only the sign language.

I am not an expert of this language, but it is very likely that the signs say much more than expected.

This video for deaf-mutes is again a call to move to the Syrian-Iraqi Caliphate – possibly after perpetrating an attack – with unspecific threats to the United States, Great Britain, Italy and France, always repeating the usual slogan “we will come and kill you”.

Hence either the jihadists are rounded up and gathered to create critical mass at a time when – only thanks to Russia and its regional allies – the Caliphate is surrendering, or the jihadists who have remained in the Isis-Daesh region are said to go and destroy European countries.

The ambiguity is obviously desired.

However, it was in April 2015 (which makes us think that the attack was closer than expected, considering the time of the traditional connection between the threat on the web and the perpetration of the terrorist attack) that Al Baghdadi’s Caliphate put online a video in Arabic, but fully subtitled in Italian.

It was designed both for the Italian Arabs and for the young people not yet mastering the Koranic language.

In fact, it was produced as a good music video.

“Like a thunderbolt you will see the war in your countries”. “We will come to spread slaughter and death”.

These are the two poles of propaganda.

The sharp knives are mentioned, to which we have already got used.

There is the precise indication of a weapon.

The video subtitled in Italian refers to “balls of fire”, which may be bullets or bombs.

This is an indication movie – with the true indication of the end times.

Without eschatology we cannot understand the contemporary jihad, also in its aspects of McIslam which, in other contexts, could make us laugh.

With this specific propaganda the “Caliphate” wants to say that its militants must take action soon, as soon as possible.

Again in November 2015 a series of particularly cruel photos referring to Italy were spread via Twitter together with horrible threats.

In that case the jihadists who must arrive in Italy are said to act quickly, so as to prepare the attack and remain unknown to the police and the intelligence services (in fact, it is clearly said “we will come to kill you”) or the jihadists who are preparing a terror attack are told it must be extremely fierce.

What if the Caliphate – today floundering in a crisis between Syria and Iraq – wanted to create pockets of ongoing destabilization in Europe, to be connected from corridors or small control areas – as it did in its Middle East territory?

Europe is so weak and uncertain that not even this option can be ruled out.

Finally, in my opinion, little analytical value can be attributed to the interpretation of the current jihad – at least from the Nice to the Barcelona attacks – as an internal struggle between Qatar and Saudi Arabia and its allies, using the Islamist terrorist network.

Certainly, these two countries have huge real estate, hotel and industrial property in Italy and Europe.

But a terrorist operation in the Porta Nuova district, Milan – bought by Qatar – would bear a too clear signature.

And either of the two countries could really strike the final blow on the Caliphate they both have so much supported.

And yet both countries currently keep on helping the “Caliphate” – hence the structure of Al Baghdadi, now dead, has no interest in supporting one against the other.

I know that terrorists are always more informed about their targets than we may believe: I had a bad experience with the so-called “New Red Brigades”. I was first on the list, but the then National Police Chief, Vincenzo Parisi, informed me of everything our National Security Network came to know.

Moreover, strange events still occur, such as the fact of a journalist denying the Shoah who was found to be a friend of the founder of the above-mentioned New Red Brigades, namely Nadia Lioce.

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

Source:
This article was published at Modern Diplomacy

By Ja’far Haqpanah*

The present-day Afghanistan is still a center of instability and insecurity. Expansion of military operations by the Taliban and Daesh groups to western and northern parts of Afghanistan indicates the failure of the country’s reconstruction effort and state building project and proves vulnerability of security state of Afghanistan. It is also especially the sign of a grave human security crisis in the country. The results of this situation at domestic levels have been nothing but continuation of immigration crisis, persistent corruption and inefficiency of state institutions, in addition to unprecedented increase in plantation and production of illicit drugs.

However, this is not the whole story. Interconnection among domestic, regional and international aspects of the crisis in Afghanistan is such that it can rapidly jeopardize all security complexes in West Asia and even at international level on a large scale. This interconnection and negative impact of the situation in Afghanistan was for a short time overshadowed by the surge of extremist terrorism and emergence of Daesh in Iraq and Syria. As a result of that situation, Afghanistan was somehow drive out of the focus of attention of both politicians and analysts. However, now that the so-called Daesh caliphate is in decline in Iraq and Syria, the issue of Afghanistan has once again regained its determining importance in shaping regional and international security arrangements. Therefore, major questions that arise here are: What impact can the ongoing developments in Afghanistan have on periphery of the country and international security? Will Afghanistan move toward more stability in the post-Daesh era, or will it turn into a center for reproduction of new forms of sectarian terrorism? And finally, what should be the position and responsibility of other governments involved in the issue of Afghanistan?

Domestic and regional dimensions of insecurity in Afghanistan

According to reports released by the majority of analysts and international institutions, a sharp increase in activities of the Taliban and Daesh groups in 2017 has led to increased insecurity in Afghanistan in addition to soaring civilian casualties and reduced control of the central government on border provinces. As a result, in addition to southern provinces, the Taliban militants are now trying to expand their control over the northern parts of the country and, along with the Haqqani network, are considered as the main causes of insecurity in the country. Therefore, in spite of the fact that Hekmatyar’s group has already joined the peace process in the country, no clear prospect is currently on the horizon for improvement of the existing situation in Afghanistan. One reason for the current situation is the increased activities of Daesh in this South Asian country. Up to a year ago, no serious attention was paid to gradual infiltration of Daesh into Afghanistan, which has been called Wilayat Khurasan by this terrorist group. However, the power void in the country, on the one hand, and the long history of presence and communications among various groups of extremist terrorists on the two sides of the Durand Line, on the other hand, have made Afghanistan a totally attractive location for members of these extremist groups. We must especially bear in mind that a group of Daesh members come from extremists in Central Asia and China’s Xinjiang province, who have always used Afghanistan both as a passage and as a place for training and logistics.

Some analysts believe that given the background of Taliban’s presence in Afghanistan and the social status that the group enjoys in the country, chances for Daesh to be able to establish its standing in Afghanistan are infinitesimal, because the Taliban group has proved in the past that it is not willing to lose its territory even at the cost of bloody conflicts with rivals. However, we must not forget that sectarian terrorism in Iraq and Syria managed to thrive despite all primary expectations and predictions by taking advantage of the power void and existing discontent among people in those countries. Of course, hefty financial aid pouring in from outside of those countries was also a very effective factor in growth of such groups. In the meantime, the Taliban lacks its past power and consolidation as a result of which it is quite possible for some disgruntled members of the group to joint Daesh. Under these conditions, the two groups’ mutual need to each other in order to fight a common enemy may lay the ground for tactical and regional cooperation between them despite all their differences and internal rivalries. Reports released so far about the cooperation between Daesh and the Taliban for seizing the strategic district of Mirza Olang in Afghanistan’s Sar-e Pol province in August further corroborate this possibility.

As a result, the present circumstances in Afghanistan can be compared to the situation in Iraq during 2010-14, and under these circumstances, the Taliban and Daesh are expected to take the following steps separately or in cooperation with each other:

• Spreading terrorism through boisterous operations in provincial centers and other populous areas;
• Showing off their power by carrying out operations in important districts both in cities and out of cities against civilians, military bases as well as political and diplomatic centers, examples of which included operations in Wazir Akbar Khan district of Kabul, the attack on a military base in the city of Mazar-i-Sharif, and recent operations in Mirza Olang district;
• Fanning the flames of sectarian and religious war by conducting multiple operations against people holding religious rituals as well as against Iran’s offices in that country and Central Asia;
• Conquering land on the margins of cities and major provinces in order to establish their bases and leaders and also to mount pressure on the central government. Of course, they are currently not able to control big and populous cities and, therefore, conquering entire cities will not be on their agenda.

Responsibility of regional and international powers in Afghanistan

The Taliban and Daesh are expanding their activities at a time that the US-led international coalition’s forces have been proven inefficient and without initiative and, in practice, have no clear-cut strategy in the war-stricken country. This comes despite promises the coalition forces have given to maintain stability and security in Afghanistan and in spite of the fact that they have been paying material and human costs of their efforts.

On the other hand, existence of serious doubts and differences within Trump’s administration about the United States’ new strategy in Afghanistan and Pakistan has created new problems. This comes despite the fact that when Trump’s administration was inaugurated, officials in Afghanistan were highly optimistic because of the higher attention that the United States showed in their country’s problems. That optimism was further increased due to presence of such people as General Thomas F. Metz, Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Mike Pompeo, and General Herbert Raymond McMaster in Trump’s administration.

However, since Trump’s foreign policy is mostly mercantilist in nature, it is not likely that Afghanistan will have a very important position in that policy due to its high costs and low benefits for the United States. This is especially true under conditions when the United States lacks a grand strategy for West Asia region and, due to this reason, nobody can expect any special change to take place in Washington’s policies and actions in this regard.

Opportunities for international cooperation against the common threat posed by the Taliban and Daesh

Under these conditions, it seems that the country is in for seeing a new surge in instability and insecurity. The two main factors that make this very probable include the high possibility of a shift in position and deployment of some Takfiri terrorists from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan, on the one hand, and the weakness of the Afghan government combined with lack of serious determination to fight terrorists on the part of the US-led coalition and NATO forces, on the other hand. Of course, this issue can, per se, be considered as a serious threat at all three domestic, regional and international levels, but at the same time, it can be viewed as an opportunity as well because, like what happened in 2002, it can provide grounds for more cooperation and coordination among effective regional and international actors in Afghanistan.

In the meantime, the Islamic Republic of Iran enjoys remarkable capabilities and abilities for fighting against extremism and Daesh. Therefore, if big powers avoid taking a unilateral approach in this regard, Iran can play a very constructive and positive role. One of the main reasons behind inadequacy of efforts made in the past decade to build security in and reconstruct Afghanistan has been ignoring the role of regional powers. Therefore, a feeling of common threat from extremist terrorism in Afghanistan by all regional and global powers can be taken as a basis for new cooperation, which may be the last chance for this country and the entire region to come up with new security arrangements on the basis of consensus and maximum cooperation among influential actors.

*Ja’far Haqpanah
Visiting Professor of Regional Studies; University of Tehran

By Rahul Raj*

The North Korean nuclear programme has been the focus of international attention over the last two decades because Pyongyang’s development of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles cannot be separated from its bellicose behaviour, which has caused a great deal of tension in the region and the world.  Since revelations of North Korean nuclear weapons development surfaced, the US and South Korea have tried unsuccessfully to bring the programme to a halt.

Denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula has been central to the foreign policy of both countries for decades, yet one presidential administration after another has left office without deterring North Korea’s steady progress in becoming a nuclear-armed state. In fact, just the opposite has occurred, with North Korea currently developing even more sophisticated nuclear weapons and missile delivery systems.

US intelligence services have recently reported that North Korea has developed miniaturised nuclear weapons that can fit into the heads of a new class of ballistic missiles, which Pyongyang has successfully tested in the waters between Korea and Japan. These tests began a war of words between Washington and Pyongyang, with President Donald Trump promising “fire and fury” if North Korea attempts to threaten the US. North Korea retorted by threatening to conduct missile tests directed towards the US territory of Guam in the Pacific Ocean, edging both states to the brink.

Although President Trump tried to adopt a fresh approach soon after taking office, ignoring a North Korean missile launched in February 2017 and saying he “would be honoured” to meet with the North’s leader Kim Jong-un, he soon reverted to the rhetoric of previous administrations, vowing to resolve the crisis through harsh sanctions and tough talk.

Meanwhile, South Korean President Moon Jae-in, who took office this year, pledged to engage North Korea, although his pronouncement that a nuclear freeze would make possible the beginning of official talks, and that denuclearisation would be the final outcome of such talks, seems farfetched.

One of the problems in the approaches taken by South Korea and the US is that both countries want North Korea to accept their terms and conditions before they consider Pyongyang’s demands, which include a peace treaty, political normalisation, and a suspension of joint military exercises. They discount the fact that Pyongyang is pinning the survival of the regime on nuclear weapons as a deterrent against the advanced weaponry of the US and South Korea. Hence, North Korea is not likely to give up its nuclear weapons programme as long as it feels threatened and vulnerable to attack or invasion.

Ironically, North Korea had agreed in the past to drop its nuclear programme but backed away after a number of events which might have forced it to reconsider, including the 1994 Agreed Framework with the US that saw Washington fail to live up to its own pledges to deliver fuel oil to North Korea, build two light water nuclear reactors in the country, and other promises. Then, there was the pronouncement by President George Bush Jr calling North Korea part of an “axis of evil,” and the failure of the Six Party Talks. North Korea has also been witness to what happened in Iraq and Libya, where regimes that were in confrontation with the US were destroyed after they gave up their nuclear weapons. With Iran, too, President Trump has pushed for new sanctions despite Tehran’s adherence to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Consequently, North Korea has every reason to distrust the US and hold onto technology it sees as levelling the playing field between itself and the world’s superpower. Even the former US Director of National Intelligence, James R Clapper Jr, has said that “the notion of getting the North Koreans to denuclearise is probably a lost cause.” North Korea will likely continue to develop its nuclear weapons until it gets a second strike capability, which would be a credible deterrent against attack by a more powerful opponent.

Given the reckless rhetoric coming from the White House – including that the US has a military offensive for North Korea “locked and loaded” – the denuclearisation of the Korea peninsula may be an unrealistic goal for the foreseeable future. Perhaps it would be better to focus on a different goal, one of minimising the nuclear weapons North Korea is willing to possess, and sending tangible encouragement to get Pyongyang to observe a moratorium on launching more missiles in the region. Any proposals for talks that have pre-conditions of denuclearisation however, especially given the recent round of UN Security Council sanctions and the continuing joint South Korean-US military exercises, are likely to be a non-starter.

The time has come to accept the reality on the ground – North Korea is a nuclear-armed state – and find ways to dissuade Pyongyang from further nuclear and ballistic missile tests. More rhetoric of fire, fury, and war between the US and North Korea will only further escalate tensions and reinforces Pyongyang’s belief that it is only safe if it continues to develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them to countries within the region and eventually, the US.

* Rahul Raj
Assistant Professor, Sejong University, & Adjunct Professor, Korean Studies, Hanyang University, Seoul

By Samuel Gregg, D.Phil.*

President Trump’s outspoken defense of Western civilization in his July 2017 Warsaw speech was a pointed reminder that one troubling characteristic of our time is the ongoing assault on the very idea of the West. This is most vividly manifested in the relentless use of physical violence by jihadists determined to terrorize us first into acquiescence and, eventually, submission.

Nor, however, is there a shortage of efforts to dismantle Western culture from within. Sometimes this occurs through focusing on real evils committed by Westerners, such as slavery, while studiously ignoring or denigrating the West’s impressive achievements. On other occasions, the West’s deepest roots are condemned as inherently oppressive, burdensome legacies bequeathed by dead, white, logocentric men.

One effect of these attacks is that they force us to clarify what is central to Western culture. Clearly Western civilization isn’t primarily about geography. Would anyone suggest that a southern hemisphere country such as Australia or a Middle Eastern state like Israel is not part of the West because each exists outside North America and Europe?

We move onto firmer ground when we start listing accomplishments that can only be described as products of the West. No one would designate the Rule of Benedict, Magna Carta, Michelangelo’s “David,” Mozart’s “Coronation Mass,” Plato’s Gorgias, Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, Justinian’s Corpus Juris Civilis, Jefferson’s Monticello, or Shakespeare’s Richard III as representative of Japanese, Persian, or Tibetan culture. Likewise, would anyone seriously question that ideas such as the rule of law, limited government, and the distinction between the spiritual and temporal realms, have developed and received their fullest expression in Western societies rather than Javanese or Arab cultures?

These things, however, are essentially derivative. They proceed from specific philosophical and religious commitments without which the West as we know it could never have developed. When those foundations are shaken, we should not be surprised that all that is built on them starts to falter.

Reason as the Root of Freedom and Justice

Perhaps the first building block that comes to mind when considering the West’s roots is the commitment to reasoned inquiry in search of truth. Reason is operative in all societies, as it is one of man’s defining characteristics. Nonetheless, the emphasis on our minds’ ability to apprehend reality—and not just empirical potentialities and actualities but also philosophical and religious truths—is woven into the West’s very fabric.

Consider Socratic thought, Roman law’s careful clarification of various legal relationships, or the effort of specific Enlightenment thinkers to apply the scientific method. Each of these constituted an explicit attempt to comprehend and shape aspects of reality as well as to distinguish which choices are rational, good, and right from those that are not. They also helped facilitate wise intellectual and social habits: a wariness of superstition and a desire to avoid error, as well as a concern for just relationships, a suspicion of arbitrary power, and an attachment to liberty.

To be sure, traces of these ideas can be found in other cultures, though arguably not in as sophisticated and consistent ways. These characteristics also took centuries to develop as key ingredients of Western societies—and not without trial and error. Nevertheless, the proposition that reason itself is intrinsically connected to freedom, justice, and the doing of good has been easily detectable as long ago as Socrates’ refusal to obey the Athenian oligarchy and to participate in Leon of Salamis’s arrest and unjust execution.

Even European absolutist monarchs generally sought to avoid being seen to act arbitrarily. Arbitrary government, they understood, was widely regarded as infringing the demands of justice and reason and thus risked resistance, as Charles I of England discovered. The same criteria allow us to identify Communist or National Socialist regimes as antithetical to Western culture precisely because they subordinated liberty and justice to the whims of “the dictatorship of the proletariat” or “the master race.”

Yet neither freedom nor justice in the West has ever been reducible to eliminating unjust coercion. Reason itself allows us to know that we can transform not just the world around us but also ourselves in the direction of what reason identifies as good and right for humans. Western thinkers ranging from Aristotle to Alexander Hamilton have long held that there is a real difference between choosing to spend one’s life smoking marijuana in downtown Amsterdam and using one’s liberty to improve the political, legal, and economic order.

Put another way, it’s a civilization that emphasizes what the theologian Servais Pinckaers called freedom for excellence. The West’s fullest idea of liberty is thus what the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon, called “rational freedom”: a state in which our passions are ruled by reason.

Religion and the Reasonable God

While an attachment to this full-bodied conception of reason is integral to Western culture and has helped universalize its achievements, there is another dimension to that civilization without which the West cannot do if it wants to retain its distinct identity.

Put bluntly, without Judaism and Christianity, there is no Ambrose, Benedict, Aquinas, Maimonides, Hildegard of Bingen, Isaac Abravanel, Thomas More, Elizabeth of Hungary, John Calvin, Ignatius of Loyola, Hugo Grotius, John Witherspoon, William Wilberforce, Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, C.S. Lewis, Edith Stein, Elizabeth Anscombe, Joseph Ratzinger, Gregorian Revolution, Reformation, Oxford, Harvard, Caravaggio’s “Calling of Saint Matthew,” Bach’s “Saint John Passion,” Augustine’s City of God, Dante’s Divine Comedy, Pascal’s Pensées, Hagia Sophia, Mont Saint-Michel, London’s St Paul’s Cathedral, Florence’s Duomo, or Rome’s Great Synagogue. It’s also much harder to imagine the delegitimizing of slavery, the affirmation of the essential equality of men and women, or the de-deification of the state and the natural world without the vision of God articulated first by Judaism and then infused into the West’s marrow by Christianity.

In short, the answer to Tertullian’s famous question—“what has Athens to do with Jerusalem?” —is “everything.” This is not simply because these distinctly Western figures, architecture, music, and books are intimately associated with Judaism or Christianity. As the French philosopher and theologian Claude Tresmontant argued in Les origines de la philosophie chrétienne (1962):

When the prophets of Israel bitterly rebuke pagan idolatry, they are doing something strictly rational. When they refuse to sacrifice human children to idols or to myths, they carry their work of the use of reason into practical human conduct. … The inspiration which has led to this intellectual revolution … is not something dictated from without on a servile human instrument. It is a revolution that works from within, and which starts to create a new, holy, reasonable humanity ….

In this and other books, Tresmontant showed that the Hebrew Scriptures contain remarkably clear accounts of (1) human reason’s capacity to comprehend moral and material truth, (2) the reality of free will, and (3) the design and causality that permeates the world. Furthermore, as John Finnis has stressed, these biblical propositions were articulated centuries before some Greeks arrived at similar but less clear conclusions.

The notion that all humans are equal qua humans, and that there are consequently no sub-humans or super-humans, acquired unique force thanks to Judaism and Christianity’s emphasis on the creation of all humans as imago Dei. Likewise freedom in the sense that God leaves man in his own counsel and urges him to choose to transcend mediocrity is spelled out in texts ranging from Sirach 15:14 to Galatians 5:11. Genesis’s call to humans to unfold the potentiality contained in God’s original creative act via their intelligence and work encouraged positive views of human creativity and an impatience with passivity.

These insights are bounded by the Bible’s insistence that man is not God and is susceptible to using his reason in wrong and destructive ways. This reinforced the Western emphasis on limiting state power and created resistance to those utopian impulses that periodically rear their heads.

All this is undergirded by Judaism and Christianity’s affirmation that God’s true nature is not revealed in beliefs that posit nothingness as illumination, or religions populated by the frivolous, all-too-human gods of Rome and Greece, or creeds dominated by a hard desert Deity that mandates blind compliance with a Divine Will that commands us to act unreasonably. Instead, we find a God who, in addition to being a God of Love, is also Divine Reason, thereby affirming that, at the beginning of everything created, there is not chaos. Instead, we find Logos.

A West Minus Logos

Absent widespread confidence in the truth of this understanding of God, I’d suggest that Western civilization cannot help but decline. Today, for instance, emotivism and appeals to hurt feelings are weaponized to shut down discussion in elite and popular culture about topics ranging from marriage to immigration. This eclipse of reason has been accompanied by the ascent of scientism, which inevitably follows the empirical method’s detachment from the pre-empirical philosophical assumptions on which it rests.

Is it a coincidence that such developments parallel the falling away of many from orthodox Christianity’s claims? I think not. Edward Gibbon famously associated the Roman Empire’s decay with the rise of Christianity. In parts of the West today, however, we can see what happens when skepticism and practical atheism, not to mention those forms of Judaism and Christianity that have abandoned these faiths’ central truth claims about the nature of God and man, start taking hold.

We start, for example, to subordinate basic scientific truths about women and men to the lie of gender ideology. Others begin reattributing divine characteristics to the environment. A willingness to remove legal constraints on the use of lethal force against pre-born, sick, and elderly humans becomes more widespread. Utopian economic schemes to be realized via state fiat become popular. A concern for liberty collapses into the promotion—again, via state intervention—of libertinism. Taken together, these trends amount to Western civilization’s polar opposite: i.e., barbarism.

Judaism and Christianity’s central purpose is not, of course, to promote Western culture. That would be to subordinate these religions to the realization of other ends. That said, just as the West’s emergence took a decisive turn with the rise of Christianity, so too does Christianity’s gradual supplanting by pale facsimiles such as liberal religion, or outright antagonists like philosophical materialism, have grave consequences for that same culture.

Need people be faithful Jews or orthodox Christians to affirm Western civilization’s achievements? No. There are agnostics and atheists described by the late Michael Novak as “smiling secularists.” Though they might not accept Judaism and Christianity’s religious claims, they have no doubts whatsoever about these faiths’ indispensable role in the growth of Western culture.

Unabashed discussion and affirmation of that contribution is a good starting point for believers and non-believers alike to rediscover and reaffirm those truths without which, I fear, the West will eventually become unknown to itself.

This essay first appeared in The Public Discourse on August 14, 2017. 

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

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute

The United States on Wednesday condemned the call by Venezuela’s illegitimate Constituent Assembly for trials of the political opposition, including members of the democratically-elected legislature, on charges of treason and alleged involvement in Venezuela’s economic crisis.

Heather Nauert, US State Department spokesperson, said in a press statement that, “Venezuela’s economic situation is the result of the misguided policies and corruption of the Maduro regime, which bears direct responsibility for the suffering of the Venezuelan people.”

According to Nauert, “This injustice is only the latest in a sustained effort by the Maduro regime to undermine democracy, repress political dissent, and sow fear among its critics. It embodies yet another rupture in Venezuela’s constitutional order and defies the fact that in democracies, ideas and opinions are not crimes.”

Nauert said the US calls on the Venezuelan government to hold free, fair and internationally monitored elections; disband the illegitimate Constituent Assembly; respect the constitution and the authorities of the National Assembly; provide for the immediate and unconditional release of all political prisoners; and tend to the humanitarian needs of the Venezuelan people.

By Baisali Mohanty

As Afghanistan receives renewed strategic focus, the international community faces daunting challenges in establishing security and stability in the country. With the Trump Administration announcing a more robust South Asia strategy premised on more troops on the ground and tougher line against Pakistan, competition between the major actors could intensify. In this context, China is likely to play a critical role. From engaging minimally with Kabul since the early 2000s to a proactive Afghan policy after the period of Taliban rule, China’s interest has grown, especially since 2014.

In a strategic environment where India, Russia, Iran and Pakistan are significant stakeholders, China is carving a role that bequeaths status, enabling Beijing to perform a consequential role in establishing regional stability through multilateral cooperation.

Over the last three years, Afghanistan has benefited from significant Chinese contributions in development assistance and aid. China, besides confirming an aid contribution of over $1.5 billion, has gone a step further in conducting joint patrols with the Afghan authorities – looking to fill the vacuum which the complete draw-down of US forces from Afghanistan will herald.

During a recent visit to Beijing in June 2017, the Chinese foreign minister confirmed its support to peace building and the mediation process between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Engaging in several multilateral and regional efforts towards Afghanistan, China has additionally played an active role in the Heart of Asia process, initiated in 2011.

China went a step further to host the Heart of Asia Istanbul Conference in October 2014, describing it as ‘historic…, and a testament to the collective efforts by both China and Afghanistan to better relations and forge closer cooperation in the region’.

Since 2014, China has been enthusiastically participating in regional security and economic cooperation in Afghanistan. Beijing extended support to Afghanistan’s full observer status at the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit in 2012 and has mooted full membership since 2016.

In 2017, a number of state-level visits has re-energized Afghan-China ties. Early this year, in a meeting between Chinese President Xi Jinping and his Afghan counterpart Mohammad Ashraf Ghani, the head of states pledged to boost bilateral cooperation within the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Additionally, the Afghan Minister of Public Works Mahmuod Baligh and Vice-Chairman of China Road and Bridge Corporation Lu Shan signed the $205 million deal during a ceremony in the Afghan Presidential Palace. In November last year, the Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao visited Kabul to celebrate 60 years of diplomatic relations between Afghanistan and China.

Moreover, China has played a key role in the Quadrilateral Coordination Group, with the US, Afghanistan and Pakistan, since early 2016. Through its bilateral and trilateral engagements over Afghanistan, China seeks to ensure a dominant status for itself by proactively parting in the peace building and governance in Afghanistan.

Status of a state is hugely reliant on legitimate recognition, for which these institutional forums serve as the primary mechanism. It is inter-subjective and relational.

In February 2015, the first round of the China-Afghanistan-Pakistan Trilateral Strategic Dialogue (TSD) hosted in Kabul. Preceding the TSD were consultations and discussions between China, Russia and India in 2014. This highlighted an urgency in Beijing to gain significant advantage, diplomatically and economically, from involvement in Afghanistan.

China’s BRI has the potential to ameliorate Afghanistan’s deficit in infrastructure and natural resources. During Abdullah’s visit to China, a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed on the BRI. Recently, China started operating the first freight trains to Afghanistan between Hairatan and Mazar-e-Sharif. In 2015, the Chinese government announced more than 500 scholarships for Afghan students to study in China and train 3,000 Afghan professionals in fields such as anti-drug trafficking, agriculture, counter-terrorism and diplomacy.

There has been a strong push by Beijing to negotiate with the Taliban, considered a lesser evil than the Islamic State. In March 2017, a Taliban delegation visited China. The foreign minister, Wang Yi, has affirmed that China is willing to play a ‘constructive role’ in the Afghan peace process.

In any bargaining over states’ relative status, each state will leverage its comparative advantage. China has made strong efforts to be a key stakeholder in multi-party talks. International fora perform the role of status markers, providing legitimacy to that status by assigning positive recognition.

In the multiparty talks hosted by Moscow in December 2016, China was a key player. India did not receive an invitation from Moscow for the first conference, meanwhile Beijing enhanced its efforts to accommodate the Taliban, as well as forge stronger ties with the Afghan government. The three participant nations agreed to remove certain ‘Taliban figures from the UN sanction list as part of efforts to foster a peaceful dialogue between Kabul and the Taliban movement’. They underscored the urgency of accommodating the Taliban as a ‘necessary bulwark’ in the global fight against the Islamic state.

China has intensified engagement with Afghanistan, generating concerns among the other major players in Afghanistan. Russia and India have set distinct goals in Afghanistan and in the coming years multilateral engagement over Afghanistan will have far-reaching consequences, as China seeks a higher status and an enhanced global role.

By Arthur Waldron*

(FPRI) — Almost daily, we have news of Chinese military preparations or activities: her new second aircraft carrier, her quantum communications, her ever-increasing power. Serious analysts, however, usually pose a simple question when considering such developments: what is their purpose? What is the geopolitical end-state that the country in question envisions after her operations are completed? After all, no one is going to invade China, so defenses need not be on this scale. Is she seriously thinking of invading someone else? Her most important land neighbors are Russia, Kazakhstan, and India. Most would say that it would not only be pointless for China to attack any of these, but also self-destructive. Consider the bloody defeat inflicted on China in 1979 by little Vietnam (128,000 square miles; Germany is 138,000) in a conflict that still smolders. In the language of strategy: What is China’s policy? Where does she want to get?

Under my maddening, stupid, repetitive questioning, not unlike the below, I finally received the exasperated answer: “No matter what, we will be a great country” (無論如何我們是一個大國家). I had not the energy nor my poor victim any desire to discuss what “great” meant: Coming at the top of Freedom House’s list of countries rated by freedom and democracy? Having the lowest infant death rate? Or the highest literacy and numeracy level? Or most equal Gini coefficient? Cleanest and most beautiful natural environment? Number of Nobel Prizes or Olympic medals per capita? Largest number of people who say they are happy? Largest number of H-Bombs? You can choose lots of metrics, but no matter who you are, you will come out badly on some (e.g. U.S. Gini coefficient, literacy, etc.). To be tops in everything is what the Chinese wish for their country and their children—but it is impossible, and it is childish.

To the best of my knowledge, Alfred Thayer Mahan’s (1840-1914) works were not translated into Chinese the first time around, in the nineteenth century, when they went into Japanese and many other languages, and are thought by many to have influenced national policies. 1954 appears to be the first Chinese edition of The Influence of Sea Power on History which appeared in the West in 1890. Now, in print in China in better annotated editions than we have, clearly Mahan has influenced the Chinese who are now pouring vast sums into something no Chinese state has ever possessed before: namely, a high seas fleet. I suspect they are attracted not so much by the specifics of Mahan’s theory as by certain stirring generalities, for example:

“It was not by attempting great military operations on land, but by controlling the sea, and through the sea the world outside Europe, that England ensured the triumph of their country.”[1]

A phrase like “by controlling the sea, and through the sea the world outside Europe” may sound like a policy or desired end-state an ambitious country such as China, that feels status deprived. But it is not.

Mahan is not about how to use sea power to conquer the world, but only in how to use it to conquer a specific adversary. He got the ideas that made him famous during the War of the Pacific (1879-1883) when he stayed at the Phoenix Club in Lima (still there) and started reading about how Hannibal attacked Rome—crossing the Alps—and reflected on how easier a time he would have had if, like Scipio, he had been able to use ships to land on the coast and win quickly as Scipio did in 202 BC having crossed the sea easily to Zama near Carthage (and also by buying off Hannibal’s chief ally). This led Mahan to coin the phrase “sea power:” something long extant, but never named and examined before.

In both the Napoleonic War and the Second Punic War, maritime operations were direct contributors to the loss of what were essentially land wars. I believe the Chinese now consider sea control to be an element, if not the key element, in her future ill-defined greatness.

One suspects that some top leaders, having a superficial acquaintance with Mahan, think they can realize what was not even Mahan’s topic: control of much in global affairs with sea power. Such a concept is absent from Mahan. He believed that local sea control was necessary against an adversary in order to enforce a blockade that would bring it down. How exactly this would happen Mahan never says. His argument contains no real “theory of victory,” rather it assumes that most states are vulnerable to blockade (he was on service blockading the Confederacy during the Civil War). That may be true for small states, but it makes no sense for large land powers such as China, Russia, India, the United States, etc.

Not fleets, but alliances backed by military power, allow the extension of influence. Truth be told, China has no allies. How can one exercise unilateral hegemony over Asia from the sea as the Chinese are warning their neighbors? It is impossible. The United States aircraft carrier Reagan will visit Camh Ranh Bay in Vietnam next year not by shooting her way in but because the Vietnamese will welcome her. One can begin the conquest of a country with sea power and air power, but how does one get enough troops there by ship to fight on land? Can one rule from horseback, a Chinese general asked two thousand years ago—or rather, from the fleet? No. According to another story, the Germans were asked before World War I what they would do if the British landed on the Baltic Coast. They answered, “Send the gendarmerie and arrest them.”

More than anything else, Mahan emphasized, “never divide the fleet.” His theory of a “fleet in being,” essentially deterrence in nineteenth century diction, states that if a country maintains a fleet certain of victory, that fact will cause other powers not to attack, even though owing to sailing times, it might be two months before their fleet was destroyed. The Chinese seem not to have read this part. For with her numerous acquisitions of naval bases e.g. in Pakistan and coral atolls in the South China Sea, defense will require dividing the fleet. If submarines menace access to one of China’s “coaling stations” or South Sea rocks, several ships will have to be peeled off to deal with the contingency—which will not be easy to do, given the remoteness of these places from China and their proximity to land that can support, among other things, much more air power than they can bring to the theatre. Think how American submarines paralyzed the Japanese in the South Pacific by simply isolating islands holding immense garrisons, and thus taking them out of the war.

Such islets and harbors, however, are unlikely to be the focus of conflict. Russia, a naval power of some magnitude, will never tolerate Chinese dominance of the seas around Vladivostok and Kamchatka. A war started at sea would become a land war China could not win. The Korean peninsula flanks the Bohai Gulf which is the only sea lane into north China; Shanghai faces Kyushu, so it is strategically untenable; only Hainan island has some open water, but it is all either cupped like the island itself by Vietnam, or flanked by the long Vietnamese coast. Finally, let us not forget India which, one suspects, is capable of closing the Strait of Malacca from the Andaman and Nicobar islands: lining up ships, and pulling out those headed for China.

Is China in fact she neglecting land power? For some time before World War I, the Germans spent more on their failed “risk fleet” designed to keep Britain out by menacing her navy, key to the island’s survival. Had they spent that money on their army, they would probably have won the war.

I would count every one of China’s fourteen land neighbors—Pakistan included—as either potentially hostile or hostile. This number does not include offshore powers like Japan, which has immense resources with which to help. So suppose a war began, and as Chinese General Liu Yazhou (劉亞洲), a fervent anti-Japanese nationalist, who also knows his trade, has predicted, the Japanese stealthy submarines sank the eastern fleet in four hours? China would be humiliated and exposed. We lack the space to consider domestic political consequences.

I know a bit about the excellent Singapore navy which controls the Philip Channel, the narrowest part of the Strait of Malacca (1.5 miles). Suppose China, necessarily dividing the fleet, sent a taskforce to subdue Singapore (278 square miles). I have no doubt that Singapore would sink the Chinese. Multiply this scenario by all the contingencies China is creating, and one has an impossible strategic problem.

When it comes to strategic destinations, I use the following image. China is a bus, the biggest in world history. It is carrying more people than any bus has ever before. It is going faster than any bus in history. In what direction? Straight ahead. One steps up and asks the driver, “Where are we going?” The driver responds, “I’m not sure exactly, but as we get closer, I’ll be able to tell you more.” This is a terrible approach to strategy and policy, but it seems to be China’s right now.

About the author:
*Arthur Waldron has been the Lauder Professor of International Relations in the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, since 1997. He works mostly on the history of Asia, China in particular; the problem of nationalism, and the study of war and violence in history. Educated at Harvard (A.B. ’71 summa cum laude Valedictorian, PhD ’81) and in Asia where he lived for four years before returning to Harvard. He previously taught at Princeton University, the U.S. Naval War College (Newport, RI) and Brown University.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] Mahan, Alfred T., The Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire 1793-1812 (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company. 1895). Volume 2, p. 402 quoted in https://severalfourmany.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/mahan-corbett-douhet-and-mitchell.pdf

By Lukas Milevski*

(FPRI) — Russia’s Zapad-2017 exercise will take place from September 14 to 20 and may become the largest Russian military exercise since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The Baltic states have been expressing concern and suggesting that the exercise poses a potential threat to their national security and exacerbates the strategic imbalance already present in the region.

Some are taking these Baltic warnings seriously as understandably prudent. Others depict the Balts as unjustifiably paranoid. These warnings hearken back to 2010 when France first agreed to sell a number of Mistral ships to Russia despite the early concerns and protestations of a number of NATO countries, among them the Baltic states. Were the Baltic states displaying prudence or paranoia in their attitudes toward the sale? Time proved their stance to be prudent rather than paranoiac. The Baltic states are now again expressing grave concerns relating to Russia and Zapad-2017. This time, NATO is listening.

The Exercise Itself and NATO’s Response

What do we know about the Zapad-2017 exercise itself? Zapad, which means “West” in Russian and signifies the western strategic direction, is a series of exercises which occur once every four years. Zapad-2017 is the first Zapad exercise since Russia’s annexation of Crimea in early 2014. A joint exercise by Russia and Belarus, it will occur across vast expanses of territory stretching from Belarus to the Kola Peninsula in the far north. There will be seven exercise areas in Belarus alone. Russia and Belarus both claim that the number of participants will not exceed the 13,000 maximum stipulated in the 2011 Vienna Document.

Of these, Belarus asserts that 3,000 personnel will represent Russia, along with approximately 280 vehicles and up to 25 aircraft and helicopters; the rest will be Belarusian. Russia’s presence will include units from the 1^st Tank Army of Russia’s Western Military District, specifically the elite armored Tamanskaia Division. President Alexander Lukashenka of Belarus has assured the West that the requisite, treaty-mandated transparency will be maintained and that invitations for observers will be sent out 50 days prior to the exercise; however, Russia has taken some exception to his assurances. Ostensibly, Zapad-2017 has a defensive concept. Due to these professed features, Russia has painted the Balts, particularly the Lithuanians, as fear-mongers. It has been suggested that some Russian analysts even believe that Zapad-2017 is being kept intentionally small to allay NATO’s concerns.

Western observers, particularly those closest and most vulnerable to Russia, in the Baltic states as well as in Poland, paint a very different picture of Zapad-2017. These differences start with the increase in Russia’s regular annual reservation of trains in Belarus by a staggering amount. Baltic analysts believe that, rather than the stipulated 13,000 participants, Zapad-2017 will actually involve over 100,000 troops, requiring Russia to use approximately 4,000 train wagons to move troops and maintain the exercise logistically—wagons which the Russian government publicly estimates can transport up to 8,000 troops, a number contradicting official Belarusian accounts of the Russian scale of involvement. Independent Western calculations suggest that these wagons would suffice to transport up to two Russian armored or mechanized divisions—around thirty thousand soldiers and support staff.

Due to Russia’s recent demonstrations of landing craft in the Black Sea, it is believed, albeit not yet confirmed, that Zapad-2017 will almost definitely simulate an amphibious landing, a military task most suitable for only one of Russia’s seas: the Baltic Sea. Russia’s entire Baltic Fleet will reputedly be involved in Zapad-2017. Russia has also been preparing for Zapad-2017 with other exercises throughout 2017, including for airborne assault and electronic warfare. By all accounts, Zapad-2017 will be a sprawling affair, not only geographically, but also in terms of exercised capabilities.

Although the Baltic states profess readiness for the exercise, it is likely that their concept of readiness differs from that held further west. Lithuania, sandwiched between Kaliningrad and Belarus, is particularly concerned, and its intelligence services have warned of possible provocations or other pre-planned incidents occurring along the border during the exercise. They also note that the general readiness of Russian troops has increased, and estimate that Russia would be able to organize and invade the Baltic states within 24-48 hours. Finally, the Baltic states and Poland are also concerned about the possibility of Russian troops simply remaining in Belarus after the conclusion of the exercises, thereby extending their permanent presence along Baltic borders and increasing the implicit pressure on the Baltic states as well as Poland. Lithuanian observers believe that the theme of the exercise involves armed conflict with NATO.

The West has responded to Baltic concerns about these exercises. The multi-national battle groups promised in NATO’s Warsaw summit in July 2016 have finally and coincidentally begun arriving in the Baltic states and Poland. U.S. Army, Europe has also committed to increasing its presence in the Baltic states for the duration of Zapad-2017, with 600 paratroopers from three units to be deployed to the three countries.

The NATO, especially the American, presence has also increased through a succession of various small-scale military exercises. June, in particular, was a busy month. NATO exercises in the Baltic included Saber Knight 2017, involving 800 troops from the three Baltic states and Denmark to train Baltic brigade-level headquarters; Saber Strike 2017, a combined land and air exercise in Latvia involving more than 2,000 soldiers from eight NATO countries; and BALTOPS 2017, a maritime exercise to improve interoperability between NATO and regional partners which involves 4,000 troops, 50 ships and submarines, and over 50 aircraft from 14 NATO and partner countries.

These are all generic exercises aimed to improve capability and capacity. Moreover, Saber Strike has been an annual NATO exercise since 2010, and BALTOPS since 1972. Most important is the Iron Wolf exercise hosted by Lithuania and Poland, also in June, which involved over 5,000 troops from ten NATO countries. This NATO exercise was the first to war game a scenario explicitly related to the defense of the Baltic states—the defense of the Suwalki gap against a Russian attempt to cut the Baltic states off from the rest of the alliance.

The Strategic Significance of Zapad-2017

Zapad-2017 has brought both strategic benefits and strategic concerns to the Baltic states. Although the latter outweigh the former, the benefits are not necessarily inconsiderable.

The concerns, of course, relate to Russia’s intentions and the anticipated—rather than officially declared—massiveness of its exercise. Although Russia and Belarus proclaim that the scale of the exercise is within mandated limits, this is likely to be false. Russia has a long history of attempting to dupe the West about the size of its exercises. Sometimes, it downright lies through deliberate underestimation of the number of troops involved in exercises. Other times, Russia pretends that they are formally split up into multiple, essentially simultaneous, exercises under a single joint command in order to pass beneath the threshold for which either notification or external observation are required.

Moreover, Russia also has recent history of employing exercises either as the jumping off point for wars or as the cover for intervention. In the second half of July 2008, Russia’s 58^th Army conducted the periodic Kavkaz exercises in the Caucasus, which concentrated that army north of Georgia just in time for a war in early August. In 2013, Russia reintroduced an old training concept, the snap exercise. Within a year, a snap exercise was held which resulted in deploying troops to Crimea and its environs, leading to the conquest of Crimea.

Will Russia continue to follow this pattern with Zapad-2017? If so, against whom? The Baltic states are not the only potential targets of such duplicity and aggression, although they are the only candidates within NATO. Zapad-2017 will put tens of thousands of Russian troops closer to Kiev than they have been since the collapse of the Soviet Union, which is likely to worry the Ukrainian government. Belarus itself may well be the subject of implicit or covert Russian military pressure, especially given its attempts to become somewhat more strategically independent since the invasion of Crimea in 2014, of which Belarus publicly disapproved. The Baltic states are thus not the automatic target for any potential Russian aggression during or immediately after Zapad-2017, but geopolitically they may well be the most important due to their NATO membership. Whether or not Russia would actually invade the Baltic states is another matter, one which is impossible for any Western analyst to answer. NATO membership holds a deterrent effect, one which is becoming increasingly stronger as NATO continues to demonstrate its commitment to the Baltic states, despite President Trump’s frequent missteps and self-contradictions concerning the Alliance.

The benefits of Zapad-2017 for the Baltic states relate to NATO’s efforts to reassure its most vulnerable constituents. Whether through its exercises or through its temporary deployment of troops, NATO has—willingly or unwillingly—become a more visible presence in the Baltic states, both to reassure the Balts and to deter the Russians. The Iron Wolf exercise may even be the first step in a longer process of transforming a deterrence posture into a more permanent and more robust defense posture. Nevertheless, such a process would always be hostage to political currents in NATO capitols which are difficult, if not impossible, to predict.

Nevertheless, Zapad-2017 appears to encourage, as an unintended byproduct, a trend in NATO which began, however late, as a response to Russian aggression and which continues to be strengthened by Russian actions, despite Russian protestations against such developments. The Russian wind is itself closing the hypothetical window of military opportunity in the Baltic by its own pressure. One can only hope that Russia will not take advantage of that window while it still exists as one simultaneously prepares for the contingency that it may well do so.

Even if nothing untoward occurs between Russia and the Baltic states—or other neighbors—during Zapad-2017, NATO’s work will not yet be complete. Given that Russia is likely to experiment with relatively untried tactical or even operational concepts during Zapad-2017, military analysts will have a field day afterward dissecting what they could see and determining whether or not these new concepts might pose any threat to NATO countries, including the Baltic states.

Of the two depictions of the Baltic attitude toward Russia—prudence versus paranoia—it is generally safer to assume prudence. To assume paranoia saves money, time, and effort in the best case scenario and in the short term, but it also means being the weaker party in the worst case. To assume prudence costs money, time, and effort which may seem unnecessary in the best case scenario—despite acting as a factor to bring about that scenario—and means being prepared for the worst. Advantageous geopolitical circumstances are priceless. For everyone else, there’s strong defense policy.

About the author:
*Lukas Milevski is a Baltic Sea Fellow in the Eurasia Program

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Katrina vanden Heuvel’s August 27 National Interest article, exhibits some debatable points, while seeking improved US-Russian relations. Her article’s title “Washington and Moscow Must Embrace Detente – Despite Trump“, misdirects the major impediment to improving Kremlin-White House ties.

Perhaps vanden Heuvel didn’t pen that title. It’s common for some editors to select the title of a given article. Regardless, the article title in question is quite misleading.

The Democrats at large and a good number of key Republicans have been far more against Russia than Trump, in an often excessive way. This past Sunday, the rather obnoxious CNN Republican commentator Ana Navarro, chided Trump for being more critical of some Republicans than Russian President Vladimir Putin.

On another matter, vanden Heuvel states that: “Sanctions relief might be combined with an agreement for an internationally monitored referendum on Crimea’s status, under the UN’s auspices.” Former US Senator Bill Bradley and Brookings Institution wonk Michael O’Hanlon have earlier advocated the same.

Such are the double standards to be found among the more reasoned of Western establishment elites. There hasn’t been much of a fuss made on Kosovo not having a referendum. (In US mass media, former US President Barack Obama was spared an otherwise well deserved high profile criticism over his incorrect claim that Kosovo had a referendum.)

Like it or not, Crimea’s standing is clearly established. Roughly 83% of Crimea’s electorate voted in the 2014 referendum on the area’s status, with about 96% supporting a reunification with Russia. It’s reasonable to surmise that the 17% or so who didn’t vote, weren’t in favor of Crimea reunifying with Russia. Hence, there’s a well over 2/3 majority favoring reunification with Russia – something that coincides with the independent polling done on this particular.

Note that vanden Heuvel’s article is listed as one of several in a National Interest symposium on US-Russian relations, that features some leading US based foreign policy establishment elites. In that grouping, one hopes for a firm counter to the debatable aspects of her article. That desire pertains to some other essays in that National Interest grouping. The contributions of Graham Allison and Dov Zakheim immediately come to mind.

This advocacy draws attention to the same old, same old scenario of sources in an establishment environment, that continues to mute competent alternatives.

True, Ted Galen Carpenter has brought up the Kosovo-Crimea double standard in The National Interest – although not prior to yours truly at Eurasia Review and elsewhere. To date, Carpenter’s commentary on this subject isn’t included in The National Interest’s symposium on US-Russian relations. He’s not as likely to get high profile television time and Washington Post column space as vanden Heuvel and Daniel Drezner, who said in The Guardian that Kosovo’s separation from Serbia is somehow more legit than Crimea’s changed territorial status.

When referencing UN Security Council Resolution 1199, Drezner omits the role of Albanian terrorist actions that prompted a reply from the Yugoslav authorities. Concerning Kosovo and some other matters, a good deal of what was claimed against Yugoslavia is grossly exaggerated propaganda. Drezner doesn’t mention UN Security Council Resolution 1244, relative to Yugoslav and Serb boundaries. Contrary to Drezner, Kosovo was never a Yugoslav republic. Its autonomous standing for a period in Yugoslavia was as a part of Serbia – not separate from it.

Crimea’s reunification with Russia has been a virtually bloodless occurrence, reminding one of the term humanitarian intervention. Imagine if a toxic combination of pro-Stepan Bandera Ukrainians and Mustafa Dzhemilev’s call to ethnically cleanse Russians from Crimea went unchecked. We see the level of violence incurred in other parts of the former Ukrainians SSR – Kiev regime controlled Ukraine included.

Despite a considerable amount of Western aid, Kosovo has faced noticeable socioeconomic challenges, in conjunction with periodic outbursts of violence since the end of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign.

Michael Averko is a New York based independent foreign policy analyst and media critic.

British researchers led by Dr Punam Mangtani of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine have shown that BCG, the world’s only licensed tuberculosis (TB) vaccine, may offer protection against the disease for nearly twice as long as previously thought. Writing in the latest issue of the International Journal of Epidemiology, they noted that “Evidence of protection from childhood Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) against tuberculosis (TB) in adulthood, when most transmission occurs, is important for TB control and resource allocation.”

Is there a benefit in vaccinating children who were left out earlier?

Thus far, scientists knew that BCG vaccination is effective for 10-15 years; the new case-control study found that if given in early teenage years (12-13), the Bacillus Calmette-Guérin (BCG) vaccine protected over 50% of UK children against TB for at least 20 years, then the immunity waned.

“Although some studies in countries such as Brazil and Norway have indicated that BCG might be effective for longer than first thought, this study provides the most robust evidence to date,” they clarified.

Researchers invited cases and controls to take part in face-to-face interviews. Experienced field interviewers carried out Computer- assisted Personal Interviews (CAPIs), following training specific to the study including inspecting both arms of all subjects to identify BCG vaccination scars. BCG was a vaccine given in school at about 12–13 years and usually caused a pustule and then a scar. Researchers considered that recall by cases and controls is likely to be good. (I recall that because of the possibility of a permanent scar, many in my generation did not go for vaccinations and ran away when vaccinators visited their homes!)

Researchers assessed protection from BCG vaccination administered to children 10–30 years previously, 5-year intervals after vaccination and tested for trends over time by analyzing time since vaccination, on a continuous scale. The study covered only UK born White subjects

The study covered 677 cases and 1170 controls. Researchers reported that confounding by deprivation, education and lifestyle factors was slight 10–20 years after vaccination, and more evident after 20 years. Vaccination Effectiveness (VE) 10–15 years after vaccination was 51%; 57% at 15–20 years. At 20–25 years, VE was 25%; it was 1% at 25-29years.

“With no new vaccine for TB imminently available, the researchers say their findings highlight the important role BCG is playing in preventing the spread of the disease, and provide an argument for uptake to be higher in areas where TB risk is high but vaccination coverage is low, such as parts of Central and Western Africa, East Asia and the Pacific – important new evidence for agencies like the World Health Organization (WHO) advising on vaccines,” the press release on the British study asserted.

The British study applies to children who were vaccinated while they were aged 12-13 years. The study addressed protection against TB occurring 10-29 years later. The press release on the study stated that in most countries BCG vaccination is carried out during infancy. Environmental and genetic factors also may play a role. Dr Punam Mangtani, the lead author stated that “we do not know the duration of protection in different populations.”

“Is there not a need to conduct country-specific study to generate such data?”

“I agree that it would be good to have more information on the durability of the BCG after BCG vaccination in infancy and in other settings especially where the burden is highest and sensitization by environmental mycobacterium is more likely,” Dr Mangatani responded in my e-mail message.

“The paper does note other studies e.g.: in Saudi Arabia and Brazil where longer than expected protection is seen. Certainly having further confirmation will be useful,” she added.

The researchers listed the following key messages from the study:

• “It is unclear whether protection by school-aged Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) vaccination against TB continues into adulthood, when most transmission occurs.”
• “Using a case–control study design based on 677 cases and 1170 controls, we found about 50% protection that lasted 20 years and then waned.”
• “That BCG attributable protection against tuberculosis lasts longer than previously thought affects its cost-effectiveness and has implications for the evaluation of new TB vaccines.”

In the press release, Dr Mangtani stated that health officials should consider recommending childhood BCG vaccination where TB risk is high and where infant vaccination has not been given. To me, this is indeed the key message for most developing countries. I believe that this message should have been included as one of the “key messages” in the main text.

I sought Dr Mangtani’s reaction to my suggestion.

“Your point … is well taken and I hope that message can be made to come over more strongly,” she agreed.

To my query whether there is a mechanism that explains the attenuation of the efficacy of the vaccine in the vaccinated individual over time, Dr Mangtani responded thus:

“There are competing theories of why there is attenuation of BCG over time, not just the usual immunological memory waning as with most vaccines. The oldest is masking where by those not vaccinated get some protection from being sensitised by environmental mycobacteria so that BCG can add little. The other is blocking, so prior infection or sensitisation by environmental mycobacteria reduces the effect of BCG. It is unclear and could of course be a mixture of both especially as there is some evidence that BCG can prevent infection.”

She also referred to some correspondence on a recent systematic review of the randomized controlled trials of BCG efficacy she was involved in that gives more details and one or two references (Paper 1 and Paper 2) for the masking and blocking theories . These papers amply revealed how difficult it is to get clarity on the correct mechanisms.

The WHO in its “Global Tuberculosis Report -2016” stated that the TB epidemic is larger than previously estimated, reflecting new surveillance and survey data from India. The agency also noted that the number of TB deaths and the TB incidence rate continue to fall globally and in India.

However, some of the WHO data reveal a chilling reality. “In 2015, there were an estimated 10.4 million new (incident) TB cases worldwide, of which 5.9 million (56%) were among men, 3.5 million (34%) among women and 1.0 million (10%) among children. People living with HIV accounted for 1.2 million (11%) of all new TB cases. Six countries accounted for 60% of the new cases: India, Indonesia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa.”

Besides the TB Patients living with HIV, Multi Drug Resistant TB (MDR-TB) added a new dimension to the problem.

A large scale community-based double blind randomized controlled trial carried out in Chingleput district of south India to evaluate the protective effect of BCG against bacillary forms of pulmonary tuberculosis gave the following results:

• “BCG offered no overall protection in adults and a low overall protection in children…”
• “The findings at 15 years show that in this population with high infection rates and high nonspecific sensitivity, BCG did not offer any protection against adult forms of bacillary pulmonary tuberculosis”.
• “This lack of protection could not be explained by methodological flaws or the influence of prior sensitisation by non-specific sensitivity or because most of the cases arose as a result of exogenous re-infection”, the study concluded

A telling editorial titled “BCG revisited” in The Indian Journal of Tuberculosis concluded thus:

• “Since the first use of BCG in 1921, in the randomized controlled clinical trials of BCG vaccine carried out, its protective efficacy against tuberculosis has varied from 0 to 80%, in different populations”
• “In general, the protective efficacy was found to be greater in trials conducted in northern latitudes, where tuberculosis prevalence is low compared with studies elsewhere”
• “Variability in protective efficacy has been observed not only in the different trials but also between sites of the disease. However, a meta-analysis has shown that summary BCG protective effect against miliary tuberculosis or tuberculous meningitis in randomized control trials was 86%, and in case control studies it was 75%. Further, case control studies carried out in India (not included in the quoted meta-analysis) also show a protective efficacy of BCG against tuberculous meningitis of not less than 75%”.

The British paper did not refer to the Indian study presumably because the Indian study was carried out nearly 20 years ago.

“The efficacy of BCG in preventing TB varies geographically, particularly for pulmonary TB, with limited evidence of protection in many tropical areas, ” the British researchers conceded.

Under ideal conditions, each country should have specific information on the efficacy of BCG vaccination to its population including how long the immunity lasts. This is a very expensive proposition. Specialists and health policy makers should decide whether BCG vaccination of children not vaccinated in infancy must be included now in light of the British study.