New evidence has emerged that credibly implicates former President Ollanta Humala Tasso (2011-2016) in atrocities during Peru’s armed conflict in the 1990s, Human Rights Watch said in a report. The evidence also implicates Humala in the attempted cover-up of incriminating evidence when he ran for president in 2006.

The 24-page report, “Implicating Humala: Evidence of Atrocities and Cover-Up of Abuses Committed during Peru’s Armed Conflict,” provides an overview of existing evidence, including testimony by several soldiers that they tortured, killed, and forcibly disappeared people during military operations against armed groups in the 1990s. They said they did so under the orders—and sometimes in the presence of—Humala, who was allegedly stationed at the Madre Mía military base in the Alto Huallaga region in 1992 under the pseudonym “Captain Carlos.” In testimony provided to judicial authorities and interviews with Human Rights Watch and the media, several victims also implicated Humala in violations and in attempted cover-ups.

“Faced with very strong evidence implicating a former president in atrocities and their subsequent cover-up, the Attorney General’s Office should actively pursue all new leads,” said José Miguel Vivanco, Americas director at Human Rights Watch. “This is a unique opportunity that should not be wasted to pay Peru’s longstanding debt to many armed conflict victims who are still waiting for justice.”

Human Rights Watch interviewed victims and witnesses of violations in which Humala is implicated, the prosecutor in charge of the investigations, a former high-level Defense Ministry official, and a journalist who interviewed soldiers who were witnesses to or participated in the crimes. We also reviewed witness testimony provided by witnesses to prosecutors and other judicial records, and the soldiers’ testimony.

In May 2017, several soldiers who say they served under Humala’s command said on television that they had killed detainees, then dismembered their bodies, weighted them with rocks, and threw them into the Huallaga river. One soldier said he was told to torture men and children, kill them, and burn their bodies in a field.

Another said he witnessed soldiers burning a peasant alive, and raping three women after Humala told the soldiers the women were “gifts” and they “could do whatever they wanted with them.” Some of the soldiers made formal statements to prosecutors and are currently under a witness protection program.

One of the soldiers said Natividad Ávila, a local resident in the Alto Huallaga area who, together with her husband, Benigno Sullca Castro, was forcibly disappeared in June 1992, was initially held at the Madre Mía base. Her brother, Jorge Ávila, who was also detained at the base, said soldiers had subjected him to electric shocks while forcing his head into water asking if he was a Shining Path leader. He escaped after five days, but Sullca Castro’s body was found in the Huallaga river with a bullet hole in his forehead. Natividad Ávila’s whereabouts remain unknown.

A soldier stationed at the Madre Mía base, Jorge Ávila, and Ávila’s sister, who had gone to the base to ask about the whereabouts of her missing relatives soon after their detention, all said “Captain Carlos” oversaw the base at the time.

Since the soldiers’ testimony aired, other victims or their families have also publicly identified Humala as “Captain Carlos” and accused him of killings, enforced disappearances, and torture.

Humala has acknowledged that he served in 1992 in a battalion in the region, and that his pseudonym at the time was “Carlos.” Other evidence—including a photograph showing a young Humala wearing a T-shirt with the “Madre Mía” base on it and a copy of what appears to be his military record—also puts him at the base at that time. But Humala insists that many soldiers were called “Carlos” and denies participating in human rights violations.

In 2006, after the Avila-Sullca Castro family identified Humala as “Captain Carlos” during the presidential campaign, prosecutors opened an investigation. The case was closed in 2009 after Jorge Ávila and some soldiers retracted their statements.

However, taped conversations between people close to Humala and between one of them and Jorge Ávila, released in April 2017, strongly suggest that people close to Humala had bribed Jorge Ávila to retract his statement. These allegations are consistent with other testimony implicating Humala in covering-up incriminating evidence.

Since May, the Attorney General’s Office has reopened the investigation into the Natividad Ávila and Sullca Castro case, and has opened at least 10 new investigations.

The prosecutor in charge of these investigations—who cannot disclose information on specific cases to comply with Peruvian legislation—told Human Rights Watch that the biggest obstacle is the lack of cooperation by the Defense Ministry. The prosecutor said that the ministry has prevented the identification of suspects in “thousands” of cases by refusing to provide information on who oversaw the bases and the names of soldiers stationed in them.

Human Rights Watch asked the Defense Ministry for detailed information about soldiers and commanding officers at Madre Mía and other bases in the area, but was told that Armed Forces personnel had informed the ministry the information “would not exist.” A former high-level Defense Ministry official told Human Rights Watch it is believed the documents were deliberately destroyed by fire.

Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that the highest number of victims in the country’s northeast region were in the Huánuco jungle and the southern portion of San Martin, which includes Madre Mia. It concluded that 2,244 people were killed or disappeared there by security forces or Shining Path members in the 1980s and 1990s, with the highest numbers between 1990 and 1993. The vast majority of those responsible for these crimes have never been brought to justice.

Humala has been in pretrial detention since July, awaiting trial on corruption charges.

“Peruvian authorities should provide the Attorney General’s Office all the support it needs for these investigations,” Vivanco said. “Anyone who refuses to cooperate in identifying military officers, including commanders, or who may have been implicated in destroying important official documentation should be held accountable for obstructing justice.”

(RFE/RL) — U.S. President Donald Trump’s eldest son told Senate investigators that he met with a Russian lawyer in 2016 because he wanted to determine if she had damaging information about his father’s Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton, U.S. media are reporting.

Donald Trump Jr. on September 7 told investigators that nothing came of the meeting at Trump Tower, and he stressed he had nothing to do with any Russian government efforts to interfere in the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign.

The New York Times cited prepared statements Trump Jr. delivered to Senate Judiciary Committee investigators during a closed session. The New York Times said it had seen a copy of Trump Jr.’s statement, as did other news organizations.

Trump Jr. said he initially was unsure of what to do when he learned the lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, could have information damaging to Clinton’s campaign.

He said that although he was interested in what the lawyer might have, he intended to consult with his own lawyers about the appropriateness of using any information Veselnitskaya might provide.

Media reports in July that Donald Trump Jr.; President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner; and then-campaign Chairman Paul Manafort had met on June 9, 2016, at Trump Tower in New York raised questions about potential coordination between Kremlin-linked persons and the Trump campaign.

The president’s son gave varying accounts of the meeting before eventually acknowledging that he had received an e-mail suggesting the Russian lawyer had damaging information about Clinton.

“To the extent they had information concerning the fitness, character, or qualifications of a presidential candidate, I believed that I should at least hear them out,” he said in his prepared statement.

“Depending on what, if any, information they had, I could then consult with counsel to make an informed decision as to whether to give it further consideration.”

Trump Jr. met with Senate investigators for about five hours, answering questions after giving his prepared statement.

After the session, he posted a Twitter note saying: “I met with the Senate Judiciary Committee today. I am thankful for their professionalism and courtesy.”

He added that he answered “every question posed by the Committee…I trust this interview fully satisfied their inquiry.

Trump Jr. is also expected to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee at some point.

Sanctuary cities deliberately refer to themselves using this confrontational terminology, indicating that they provide a sanctuary for those who are in the country illegally. They do so by refusing to aid the federal government in enforcing federal immigration law.

Sanctuary cities could be less confrontational if they dropped the terminology and simply said they enforce their own laws, but they do not enforce the laws of other governments. Sanctuary cities are not shielding immigrants from federal enforcement, they just are not cooperating with the federal government to enforce federal law.

My reaction to this less confrontational view of sanctuary cities is to think that local law enforcement agencies enforce local laws, and it is up to the federal government to enforce federal laws. Why should local governments be required to enforce the laws of the federal government? What’s next? Should local governments also be looking for people who cheat on their income taxes?

Readers can surely see the relationship between sanctuary cities and the consumption of recreational marijuana, which is legal in several states but violates federal law. There is an uneasy tension here between state and federal law, but so far the federal government has not asked state and local governments to enforce its laws against the consumption of marijuana.

To be consistent on the two issues, either the federal government would leave sanctuary cities alone and enforce its own laws without local government assistance, or would require that local governments aid in the apprehension of recreational marijuana users and sellers even in states where state laws allow it.

I will end with a question for readers: Should local governments be responsible for enforcing federal laws?

This article was published at The Beacon.

The five-year long regime change effort in Syria may soon be over and the United States and its allies will be the losers. The Syrian Arab Army broke the siege of Deir Ezzor, which was one of the last Daesh strongholds in the country.

The neocon plot for American hegemony was hatched during the George W. Bush administration but was happily continued by Barack Obama and his Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. Fresh from their evil success in Libya, they thought the same combination of Arab monarchs and jihadists could dislodge Bashar al Assad and achieve the goal of destroying the few secular Arab governments still in power. But fortunately for humanity, Assad hung on long enough and the Russian Federation finally decided to back up their ally with military help.

It is good news that this war may soon be over. The United States and its allies committed a terrible crime against the Syrian people and five million of them were forced to flee their country to escape this latest example of state sponsored terrorism. There is no downside to Assad making good on his promise to take back his country from American sponsored jihadists.

The United States corporate media isn’t saying very much about Syria lately and that is a sure sign that victory is on the way. So is Israeli president Netanyahu’s meeting with Vladimir Putin. Things didn’t fall into place like the regime changers thought. Israel and others must move on to Plan B. Syria, Russia and Iran are the winners and that was not how things were supposed to play out.

One can never say what is on Donald Trump’s mind but it appears that his administration isn’t going to fight for this particular lost cause. But one never knows. Another false flag chemical weapons attack may be in the offing and the response from the unpredictable president could reignite the fire that is going out. The losers did not undertake their scheme with a plan to lose and they may still pose dangers.

But the moments of victory surely ought to be celebrated, as the people of Deir Ezzor did when they were freed from ISIS control. This should also be a moment for circumspection and honesty about the American government and the awful crime that was committed with bipartisan and international support.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton should be vilified for the rest of their lives for what they did in Libya and Syria. Obama should not be given a pass because he has better manners than his boorish successor. Not only was Syria very nearly destroyed, but its people were scattered all over the world in an effort to escape warfare in their homeland. The disruption to European governments came about because they chose to stand with their partner in crime and parrot “Assad must go” instead of standing up to the hegemon. They even paid Turkish president Erdogan, one of the instigators of the crime, $3 billion to keep refugees from using his country as an escape route. His double dealing certainly paid off.

A Syrian victory is to be applauded as it will make the United States think twice about trying the same thing anywhere else. The defeat also weakens Saudi Arabia and its campaign of terror against Yemen or any other country it should choose to target.

The consequence of trying to strengthen America’s hand had the opposite effect. Russia is more engaged in the world, not less. China and Russia are closer. Iran and Hezbollah are stronger. All of the parties declared as enemies or adversaries or the axis of evil have emerged as the winners.

Those on the left who are resolute in their condemnation of American aggression are the rhetorical winners. Let there be no confusion in the future. The left must always oppose regime change and must always support the forces who fight against it as the Syrian government has done. There should be no confusion about “good” and “bad” targets of aggression. United States foreign policy must be opposed, especially when it claims a responsibility to protect, or fight genocide or declare any other excuse for its aggression.

The pro regime change clique are only left with name calling. Labeling Assad a butcher is the substitute for victory they thought was certain. The United States government is fortunately not the only player on the world stage. The other actors do well when they unify and keep its awful plans in check.

Thunderstorms directly above two of the world’s busiest shipping lanes are significantly more powerful than storms in areas of the ocean where ships don’t travel, according to new research.

A new study mapping lightning around the globe finds lightning strokes occur nearly twice as often directly above heavily-trafficked shipping lanes in the Indian Ocean and the South China Sea than they do in areas of the ocean adjacent to shipping lanes that have similar climates.

The difference in lightning activity can’t be explained by changes in the weather, according to the study’s authors, who conclude that aerosol particles emitted in ship exhaust are changing how storm clouds form over the ocean.

The new study is the first to show ship exhaust can alter thunderstorm intensity. The researchers conclude that particles from ship exhaust make cloud droplets smaller, lifting them higher in the atmosphere. This creates more ice particles and leads to more lightning.

The results provide some of the first evidence that humans are changing cloud formation on a nearly continual basis, rather than after a specific incident like a wildfire, according to the authors. Cloud formation can affect rainfall patterns and alter climate by changing how much sunlight clouds reflect to space.

“It’s one of the clearest examples of how humans are actually changing the intensity of storm processes on Earth through the emission of particulates from combustion,” said Joel Thornton, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle and lead author of the new study in Geophysical Research Letters, a journal of the American Geophysical Union.

“It is the first time we have, literally, a smoking gun, showing over pristine ocean areas that the lightning amount is more than doubling,” said Daniel Rosenfeld, an atmospheric scientist at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem who was not connected to the study. “The study shows, highly unambiguously, the relationship between anthropogenic emissions – in this case, from diesel engines – on deep convective clouds.”

Mapping lightning and exhaust

All combustion engines emit exhaust, which contains microscopic particles of soot and compounds of nitrogen and sulfur. These particles, known as aerosols, form the smog and haze typical of large cities. They also act as cloud condensation nuclei – the seeds on which clouds form. Water vapor condenses around aerosols in the atmosphere, creating droplets that make up clouds.

Cargo ships crossing oceans emit exhaust continuously and scientists can use ship exhaust to better understand how aerosols affect cloud formation.

In the new study, co-author Katrina Virts, an atmospheric scientist at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, was analyzing data from the World Wide Lightning Location Network, a network of sensors that locates lightning strokes all over the globe, when she noticed a nearly straight line of lightning strokes across the Indian Ocean.

Virts and her colleagues compared the lightning location data to maps of ships’ exhaust plumes from a global database of ship emissions. Looking at the locations of 1.5 billion lightning strokes from 2005 to 2016, the team found nearly twice as many lightning strokes on average over major routes ships take across the northern Indian Ocean, through the Strait of Malacca and into the South China Sea, compared to adjacent areas of the ocean that have similar climates.

More than $5 trillion of world trade passes through the South China Sea every year and nearly 100,000 ships pass through the Strait of Malacca alone. Lightning is a measure of storm intensity, and the researchers detected the uptick in lightning at least as far back as 2005.

“All we had to do was make a map of where the lightning was enhanced and a map of where the ships are travelling and it was pretty obvious just from the co-location of both of those that the ships were somehow involved in enhancing lightning,” Thornton said.

Forming cloud seeds

Water molecules need aerosols to condense into clouds. Where the atmosphere has few aerosol particles – over the ocean, for instance – water molecules have fewer particles to condense around, so cloud droplets are large.

When more aerosols are added to the air, like from ship exhaust, water molecules have more particles to collect around. More cloud droplets form, but they are smaller. Being lighter, these smaller droplets travel higher into the atmosphere and more of them reach the freezing line, creating more ice, which creates more lightning. Storm clouds become electrified when ice particles collide with each other and with unfrozen droplets in the cloud. Lightning is the atmosphere’s way of neutralizing that built-up electric charge.

Ships burn dirtier fuels in the open ocean away from port, spewing more aerosols and creating even more lightning, Thornton said.

“I think it’s a really exciting study because it’s the most solid evidence I’ve seen that aerosol emissions can affect deep convective clouds and intensify them and increase their electrification,” said Steven Sherwood, an atmospheric scientist at the University of New South Wales in Sydney who was not connected to the study.

“We’re emitting a lot of stuff into the atmosphere, including a lot of air pollution, particulate matter, and we don’t know what it’s doing to clouds,” Sherwood said. “That’s been a huge uncertainty for a long time. This study doesn’t resolve that, but it gives us a foot in the door to be able to test our understanding in a way that will move us a step closer to resolving some of those bigger questions about what some of the general impacts are of our emissions on clouds.”

In February NASA astronomers discovered­­ seven Earth-like planets, potentially harboring life, orbiting the star TRAPPIST-1, not too far from Earth.

Scientists have yet to discover life, or evidence of civilizations, on these or other planets. But in the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence, they often categorize hypothetical worlds according to the amount of energy their inhabitants could potentially harness.

They do this using what is known as the Kardashev scale. Named in 1964 for Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev, the scale takes energy use as the key indicator of a civilization’s advancement, and places those hypothetical civilizations in one of three categories:

A Type 1 civilization–still a distant goal for Earth–utilizes all of the energy that reaches its planet from its parent star (in Earth’s case, the Sun).

A Type 2 civilization is capable of using all the energy put out by its star and planetary system.

A super-advanced Type 3 civilization harnesses all the energy of its home galaxy.

The Kardashev scale has been a gold standard classification system for thinking about “exo-civilizations” for decades. It does not, however, take into account how a civilization in turn affects its planet when it gathers and uses energy.

That omission is increasingly significant as, in the half-century since Kardashev proposed his classification scheme, evidence is accumulating that our energy-intensive, industrial civilization is affecting our planet.

Given those effects, can planets and civilizations co-exist for the long haul? And if so, how?

To answer these questions, a team of researchers led by Adam Frank, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of Rochester, devised a new classification scheme for the evolution of civilizations based on the idea that it’s not just how much energy you use, but how you use it that matters.

With this new scale, the researchers determined that in order to survive long-term, a civilization must learn to “think like a planet”–or risk the civilization’s demise.

“The Kardashev scale is concerned with extracting energy,” Frank said. “But what we’ve recognized with our classification scheme is that you can’t use energy without causing different kinds of waste. That waste feedbacks on the state of planet.”

In a paper in the journal Anthropocene, the researchers discuss this new classification system as a way of thinking about sustainability on a planetary scale.

“The discovery of seven new exoplanets orbiting the relatively close star TRAPPIST-1 forces us to rethink life on Earth,” said Marina Alberti of the University of Washington, a co-author on the paper. “It opens the possibility to broaden our understanding of planetary system dynamics and lays the foundations to explore a path to long-term sustainability.”

Earth’s biosphere–the global layer where life exists–is unique in that the presence of life has altered the planet’s surrounding atmosphere above and lithosphere below. The researchers note that rapid urbanization–including deforestation, air pollution, and increasing energy demand–has had damaging effects on the planet. Currently most of the energy on Earth comes from fossil fuels, a limited resource that puts pressure on the earth’s ecosystems.

Humans will need to find new ways of generating work from the energy they harvest in order to sustain civilization, the researchers say.

“You can’t just bring a planet to heel, you need to bring it a plan and figure out how to extract energy while also maintaining the health of the planet’s biosphere,” Frank said. “Human beings are part of the biosphere so they need to work with it in order to take the next steps in planetary evolution.”

The new classification system for planetary evolution is composed of five levels:

Class I: Planets without an atmosphere. The ability of the planet to change and evolve is severely limited. (Mercury or Earth’s moon)

Class II: Planets with atmospheres but no life forms. The flow of gases and fluids leads to change and evolution in the form of climate and weathering. (Venus and Mars)

Class III: Planets with a “thin” biosphere that might sustain some biological activity, but this does not affect the planet as a whole. There are no current examples of Class III planets. However, Earth 2.5 billion years ago, before life created the oxygen atmosphere, would have been a Class III world. If early Mars hosted life when it had liquid water on its surface then it too might have been a Class III world. Once life appears, new forms of change, evolution, and innovation become possible.

Class IV: Planets with a thick biosphere strongly affecting the flow of energy and work through the rest of the planetary systems. Planets co-evolve with their biospheres as life dominates many of the processes happening between the surface and the upper atmosphere. (Earth today)

Class V: Planets in which an energy-intensive technological species establishes a sustainable form of cooperation with the biosphere that increases the productivity of both. On these planets the civilization enhances the ability of the biosphere to innovate and evolve.

According to the researchers’ findings, Earth might reach Class V in the future if humanity successfully advances to harvest energy in forms like solar that do not harm the biosphere.

Although researchers can’t conclude that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations currently exist in our galaxy, previous work by Frank demonstrates that unless the laws of the Universe are highly biased against them, other technologically advanced civilizations are likely to have existed at some point in cosmic history.

“The Universe has created a lot of opportunities for what’s happening to us to have happened before,” Frank said. “We’re starting off by assuming there have been Class V planets.”

And what might a Class V planet look like?

Frank lists several ways­­ humans on Earth might form a technological cooperative between biosphere and civilization, including “greening” large desert land masses such as the Sahara by finding ways to plant trees that will absorb carbon and release oxygen; or creating genetically modified trees with photovoltaic leaves that covert the sun’s energy into electricity.

“Civilization arose as part of a biosphere,” Frank said. “A Type 2 civilization on the Kardashev scale that is super space-baring could live without a biosphere. But a young civilization, like ours, has to see itself as a part of the biosphere. We’re not separate from it, we’re just the latest experiment the earth is running in the evolution of life. If we’re not careful, it will just move on without us.”

Programmers from ITMO University created a computer algorithm that allows tourists to find places of interest that are most popular with locals based on their Instagram posts.

To test the algorithm, the team analyzed Instagram photos taken in Saint Petersburg and compiled a list of museums, cafes, streets, and event venues preferred by the residents of Russia’s northern capital, thus providing local suggestions to tourists. The results of the research were presented at The International Conference on Computational Science and published in Procedia Computer Science.

People tend to photograph memorable moments or places. Therefore, social networks, such as Instagram, are constantly becoming more and more popular. There are more than 700 million active Instagram users around the world. In most cases, people post photos either because it’s their first time visiting a place or, on the contrary, because they go there often.

Programmers at the eScience Research Institute at ITMO University found a way to distinguish between Instagram users living in a city and visiting tourists based on how they post on social media. In a nushell, the researchers discovered which locations were most loved by St. Petersburg residents.

“Of course, popular locations for locals and tourists differ, but it was important for us to know how they differ. Guides usually offer tourists a list of 10-15 attractions. However, locals usually know much more. By identifying their favourite places, we can significantly diversify tourists’ experience”, explained Alexander Visheratin, engineer and head of research at eScience Institute at ITMO University.

To remove tourists’ input from the analysis, the scientists chose two months of the year with the least number of visitors, that is, February and November, and collected all the posts from Instagram taken during that time in St. Petersburg. Based on each photograph that was posted, the programmers then analyzed the profiles of all the users who posted them.

Tourists would usually post a bunch of pictures made in the center of the city, along the main street, while geotags of residents’ photos were scattered throughout St. Petersburg.

In order to detect city residents more effectively, the scientists used official tourist statistics. According to the information from the city administration, the largest number of tourists comes from the European Union (32%) and their holidays usually do not exceed two weeks. Thus, a user was identified as a tourist if his or her posts in St. Petersburg during a calendar year were covered by two 15-day or less long windows with a gap of at least 30 days between each time period.

Furthermore, the programmers excluded the 15 top tourist locations. “The main idea behind our work is to give tourists insider information from residents. Therefore, Nevsky prospect, Kazan cathedral, the Hermitage, Pulkovo airport and other well-known areas were excluded from the analysis. Metro stations, geotags for locations that represent the city as a whole, and nearby cities were also not included,” shares Ksenia Mukhina, the first author of the paper, engineer at the eScience Research Institute, and assistant at the High Performance Computing Department at ITMO University.

The scientists also note that the algorithm now automatically organizes popular locations according to five categories: theaters and museums, restaurants and bars, bridges and streets, parks and other. Thus, the most popular place in the “Theaters and Museums” category was the Ice Palace, a big arena and concert venue, which was more popular than even the world-famous Mariinsky Theater in terms of the number of photographs taken there. In the category “Streets and Bridges”, the locals mostly liked the Alexander Column at the Palace Square and the Fontanka river embankment.

The findings can have a real effect in the urban planning practice.

“The method developed by researchers at ITMO University gives a fresh overview of Instagram data, this time from the perspective of the users who live in the city”, said Damiano Cerrone, co-founder and principal at SPIN Unit consulting group, Project researcher at Tampere University of Technology and principal researcher at TERREFORM New York. “By isolating only the pictures taken by locals, ITMO researchers can produce maps that are less about global trends and mass-media and more about the everyday life in the city – a “locals’ guide” for the city of St. Petersburg that is as genuine as it gets. Further on, they can also study how different uses and urban spaces are perceived by locals and tourists, providing two different perspectives that, if studied apart, can give planners new ideas on what is popular in the city”.

Monarch butterfly populations from western North America have declined far more dramatically than was previously known and face a greater risk of extinction than eastern monarchs, according to a new study in the journal Biological Conservation.

“Western monarchs are faring worse than their eastern counterparts,” said Cheryl Schultz, an associate professor at Washington State University Vancouver and lead author of the study. “In the 1980s, 10 million monarchs spent the winter in coastal California. Today there are barely 300,000.”

Schultz adds, “This study doesn’t just show that there are fewer monarchs now than 35 years ago. It also tells us that, if things stay the same, western monarchs probably won’t be around as we know them in another 35 years.”

Migratory monarchs in the west could disappear in the next few decades if steps aren’t taken to recover the population, Schultz said.

Like eastern monarchs, which overwinter in Mexico, western monarchs have a spectacular migration. They overwinter in forested groves along coastal California, then fan out in the spring to lay their eggs on milkweed and drink nectar from flowers in Arizona, California, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Utah. They return to their coastal overwintering sites in the fall.

In the 1990s, residents of coastal California became alarmed that a once common butterfly seemed to be disappearing. The Biological Conservation study indicates that those concerns were justified. The researchers combined data from hundreds of volunteers who have participated in the Xerces Society’s Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count since 1997 with earlier monarch counts conducted by amateur and professional butterfly enthusiasts in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. They then predicted the monarch population’s risk of extinction over the next several decades.

Emma Pelton, endangered species conservation biologist at the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation and co-author of the study, said the research will help conservationists better understand the extinction risk of western monarchs.

“Scientists, policy makers and the public have been focused on the dramatic declines in the well-known eastern population, yet this study reveals that western monarchs are even more at risk of extinction,” Pelton said. “We will need significant conservation action to save monarch butterflies in the West.”

The precise causes of the decline in western monarchs are not yet clear, but the loss and modification of its habitat and pesticide use across the West, where monarchs breed, are likely culprits, the researchers said. Climate change and threats to coastal California overwintering sites likely also play a role, they said.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which funded the study, is currently considering whether to list the monarch butterfly as a threatened species under the Endangered Species Act.

Elizabeth Crone, Tufts University professor and a co-author on the study, says that “The hard part of being a conservation biologist is documenting species declines. The exciting part is figuring out how to help declining species recover. In the 20th century, we brought bald eagles back from the brink of extinction by limiting use of DDT. If we start now, we can make the 21st century the era in which monarchs return to our landscapes.”

Research by Surrey’s Centre for Environment and Sustainability (CES) has found that Western European garment industry workers in BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) countries earn only half of the living wage.

The study, which has been published in The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment, shows that while globalization has made the Western European clothing supply chain fairer by increasing employment opportunities and income for workers in BRIC countries, their income is still insufficient to support a decent standard of living.

The research was conducted using a Social Life Cycle Assessment (SLCA) approach, in which impacts across the whole lifecycle of the product are considered. So, rather than focusing solely on factory workers, the researchers looked at everyone involved in the garment industry supply chain – including, for example, workers growing cotton and miners providing metal to make machinery.

The researchers estimated how much workers would need to be paid in order to be able to afford a decent, but not luxurious life – a living wage. The research found that garment factory workers are only paid around half the living wage, and agricultural workers are paid even less.

The study was also innovative in taking into account financial demands on workers – income tax and social security contributions – in addition to wages, thus giving a more comprehensive picture than previous studies where the living wage does not account for these costs. It found that in real terms, workers would need to be paid, on average, an additional 35 per cent to offset these factors.

The research was led by Research Fellow Dr Simon Mair, with Angela Druckman, Professor of Sustainable Consumption and Production and Tim Jackson, Professor of Sustainable Development and Director of the Centre for the Understanding of Sustainable Prosperity (CUSP) within Surrey’s Centre for Environment and Sustainability (CES).

According to Dr Mair, “Despite some improvements to workers’ income and employment opportunities through globalization over the last 20 years, this research has demonstrated that workers are still not paid a living wage, so the supply chain cannot be described as ‘fair’.

Mair said that, “The next step is to look at the potential impact on companies and consumers if BRIC workers were paid a living wage. For example a company may choose to absorb the additional cost, or might pass the cost onto consumers.”

In the opinion of Mair, “Faced with a higher priced product, consumers might choose to buy less, which could in turn have a positive impact on the environment (by reducing carbon emissions) but possibly a negative social impact (by reducing employment).”

Professor Druckman noted that,  “This research has implications for all those who are concerned about social justice along clothing supply chains.”

The research is a strand of CES’s ongoing work on the sustainable economy, led by Professor Tim Jackson, whose book Prosperity Without Growth (first published in 2009) outlined a ground-breaking vision for lasting prosperity on a finite planet.

The research paper, ‘Investigating fairness in global supply chains: applying an extension of the living wage to the Western European clothing supply chain’, was published in The International Journal of Life Cycle Assessment on 30 August. The research is also featured in a new book, The Social Effects of Global Trade, published by Pan Stanford Publishing Pte Ltd, due out later this year.

Ancient Norwegians made top-quality iron. But where did the knowledge to make this iron come from? A professor emeritus from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology may have solved this riddle.

For centuries, people in Norway’s Trøndelag region, in the middle of the country, made large amounts of first-class iron out of bog ore for use in weapons and tools. Production peaked at about 40 tonnes a year at around 200 AD. With production levels this high, it is likely that they exported iron to the European continent as well.

But where did the expertise to smelt the ore come from? And how did it actually get to Norway to begin with?

Arne Wang Espelund, a professor emeritus at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology’s (NTNU) Department of Materials Science and Engineering, has been interested in iron making since the 1970s.

He himself has helped to smelt iron with a method described in the 1700s by Ole Evenstad in Stor-Elvdal, just north of Lillehammer.

However, this method is different than techniques used in Norway for roughly 900 years until about 600 AD, when plague and an economic downturn in Europe caused everything to grind to a halt and the art of making iron was forgotten. At the moment, no one really knows how Iron-Age Norwegians learned to make iron.

Espelund, however, has found some clues. And they lead to the Roman Empire.

A furnace in Austria

Scientists in Austria have found a furnace with exactly the same measurements and design as furnaces in Norway. This part of Austria belonged to the Roman Empire.

The archeologist Brigitte Cech found a furnace in Semlach, a village that during Roman times was in Noricum. The furnace dates from around 100 AD.

“It’s an exact copy of furnaces in Trøndelag. It has the same dimensions and a side opening,” said Espelund.

It’s true that the slag pit is built of clay, while those in Norway were made of stone. And this particular furnace in Austria is younger than the oldest Norwegian furnaces of the same design. But even older furnaces are found nearby, in Populonia in Italy and Burgenland in Austria.

Espelund believes it could be a very exciting project for a master’s student to investigate other aspects of the furnaces.

“I believe the technology for extracting iron must have originated outside of Norway,” he said.

His opinion is reinforced by the fact that no one has yet found any evidence of experimentation with making iron in Norway. That means ancient Norwegians would have mastered the art of making high-quality iron with as little as 0.2 per cent carbon contamination — without any evidence of trial and error. That is, unless they learned the art somewhere else.

The Romans’ forefathers

It was perhaps the Etruscans who were the first in Europe to learn to make iron. They lived in what is now Italy and Corsica from around 700 before our time bill. Etruscans dominated Rome at the empire’s the beginning. However, there is also evidence of iron production in Turkey from 4000 years ago.

The Celts improved the metal by adding some carbon and thus making steel. The technique spread over the Roman Empire. And perhaps even to Norway.

In Norway iron was made from bog ore. The ore was gathered in the spring, while the smelting was done in the autumn. In sparsely populated Norway, where much is preserved, there are hundreds of places with evidence of this production, from areas where the ore was collected to places where the iron was extracted from the ore.

Solving the puzzle with chemistry

Today, the most common sign of ancient iron production is the slag heap. Chemical analyses of these slag heaps is a central part of understanding how the ore was smelted.

Espelund is actually a mining engineer, not an archaeologist. However, in this situation that may be something of an advantage. He’s quite used to chemical analyses and the natural sciences, which can help make an important contribution in a subject that Espelund believes is often somewhat descriptive.

Archaeologists often describe their finds in impressive details. Espelund would like to thank NTNU archaeologists for their trustworthy cooperation out in the field. He, however, has a different approach when he is faced with an archaeological site — he likes to draw on his natural sciences toolbox.

Iron ore contains different oxygen-rich compounds (FeOOH). The raw ore is first heated over an open fire to create Fe2O3.

When placed in a furnace, this raw material is then transformed into very pure iron because carbon monoxide in the furnace reacts with theFe2O3. However, a certain percentage of the iron remains in the slag, as FeO, which ensures the quality of the iron.

Slag

Slag from three places in Norway, and from Iceland, Catalonia and Austria all have a remarkably similar composition.

The slag consists of about 65 per cent of a mixture of iron oxide (FeO) and manganese oxide (MnO). About 20 percent is silicon oxide (SiO2). This mix is called fayalite and is usually written as (Fe, Mn) 2SiO4.

Espelund has introduced the fayalite fraction (% FeO +% MnO) /% SiO2 (in molar mass) to characterize the slag. This in turn can tell us something about the quality of the ore and provide comparable values between slag from different places.

A high content of SiO2 in the ore makes it impossible to produce iron. The ore in Norway, on the other hand, seems to have maintained good quality.

High production

Heglesvollen in Levanger municipality in Trøndelag in central Norway is one of the most important sites for iron production. Since 1982, four furnaces and 96 tonnes of slag have been found in the area.

This suggests there was a great amount of iron production here that took place over a number of years. The furnaces had been patched and repaired several times.

Archaeologists have found remains of something that could have been an air intake for a furnace that would have been powered by the chimney effect in Vårhussetra in Hessdalen. But this is the only place where this kind of air intake has been found.

“Could it be that parts of the production process were kept secret and that these air intakes were destroyed?” Espelund asked.

We do not know. But Espelund says that one possible approach could involve five air intakes that would cause a kind of chimney fire that in turn would create high temperatures.

Pine wood

Carbon dating and other analyses of wood suggest that people in Trøndelag relied almost exclusively on pine wood for iron production — or at least they preferred it.

“That’s because pine will burn twice,” Espelund said.

First, the wood burns with a high flame. This wood then becomes charcoal that sinks down in the furnace, which can then be burned again and help with the smelting.

Adding wood creates a chimney effect in the furnace, something that combined with air intakes in the correct spots could eliminate the need to use a bellows, which could be exhausting.

Curiosity

Espelund continues to attend conferences to learn more and to contribute to the debate. The 87-year-old will give a talk at the CPSA conference in Prague, in honour of the great archaeologist Radomér Pleiner.

Espelund can’t say enough good things about how he has been treated lately. His travels are financed by a non-fiction fund. He continues to make academic contributions with new publications in this area and in others, some of which he finances himself.

Unfortunately he is no longer very mobile and can no longer go out in the field. He hopes that someone will take up his quest to understand iron production in Norway. Many questions still remain, and he is not sure he will find all the answers.

“You have to be curious,” he said.

What makes alcoholics drink? New research has found that in both men and women with alcohol dependence, the major factor predicting the amount of drinking seems to be a question of immediate mood.

They found that suffering from long-term mental health problems did not affect alcohol consumption, with one important exception: men with a history of depression had a different drinking pattern than men without a history of depression; surprisingly those men were drinking less often than men who were not depressed

“This work once again shows that alcoholism is not a one-size-fits-all condition,” said lead researcher, Victor Karpyak (Mayo Clinic, MN, USA). “So the answer to the question of why alcoholics drink is probably that there is no single answer; this will probably have implications for how we diagnose and treat alcoholism.”

The work, presented at the ECNP congress by researchers from the Mayo Clinic, determined the alcohol consumption of 287 males and 156 females with alcohol dependence over the previous 90 days, using the accepted Time Line Follow Back method and standardized diagnostic assessment for life time presence of psychiatric disorders (PRISM); they were then able to associate this with whether the drinking coincided with a positive or negative emotional state (feeling “up” or “down”), and whether the individual had a history of anxiety, depression (MDD) or substance abuse.

The results showed that alcohol dependent men tended to drink more alcohol per day than alcohol dependent women. As expected, alcohol consumption in both men and women was associated with feeling either up or down on a particular day, with no significant association with anxiety or substance use disorders. However, men with a history of major depressive disorder had fewer drinking days (p=0.0084), and fewer heavy drinking days (p=0.0214) than men who never a major depressive disorder.

Victor Karpyak said that, “Research indicates that many people drink to enhance pleasant feelings, while other people drink to suppress negative moods, such as depression or anxiety. However, previous studies did not differentiate between state-dependent mood changes and the presence of clinically diagnosed anxiety or depressive disorders. The lack of such differentiation was likely among the reasons for controversial findings about the usefulness of antidepressants in treatment of alcoholics with comorbid depression.”

According to Karpyak, “This work will need to be replicated and confirmed, but from what we see here, it means that the reasons why alcoholics drink depend on their background as well as the immediate circumstances. There is no single reason. And this means that there is probably no single treatment, so we will have to refine our diagnostic methods and tailor treatment to the individual. It also means that our treatment approach may differ depending on targeting different aspects of alcoholism (craving or consumption) and the alcoholic patient (i.e. man or a woman) with or without depression or anxiety history to allow really effective treatment”.

Commenting, Professor Wim van den Brink (Professor of Psychiatry and Addiction at the Academic Medical Centre, University of Amsterdam) said that, “This is indeed a very important issue. Patients with an alcohol use disorder often show a history of other disorders, including mood and anxiety disorders, they also often present with alcohol induced anxiety and mood disorders and finally the may report mood symptoms that do not meet criteria for a mood or anxiety disorder (due to a failure to meet the minimal number of criteria or a duration of less than two weeks). All these different conditions may influence current levels or patterns of drinking.”

The current study seems to show that the current presence of mood/anxiety symptoms is associated with more drinking in both male and female alcoholics, whereas a clinical history of major depression in male alcoholics is associated with lower current dinking levels. Although, the study does not provide a clear reason for this difference, it may have consequences for treatment.

For example, antidepressant treatment of males with a history major depression may have no effect on drinking levels. However, these findings may also result from residual confounding, e.g. patients with a history of major depression might also be patients with a late age of onset of their alcohol use disorder and this type of alcohol use disorder is associated with a different pattern of drinking with more daily drinking and less heavy drinking days and less binging. More prospective studies are needed to resolve this important but complex clinical issue.

By Matthew Allen

Around a quarter of the $1.5 billion (CHF1.45 billion) raised by cryptocurrency crowdfunding ventures this year has found its way to Swiss foundations. Many people on social media channels are crying foul, but is there anything sinister behind half a billion dollars finding its way into such structures in the last few years?

What’s been happening?

This year, new cryptocurrency projects have stumbled on a rich source of seed capital – crowdfunding. This helps emerging ideas to get off the ground by bypassing cautious venture capitalists and tapping into a growing grassroots enthusiasm for cryptocurrencies.

The idea is not exactly new, but the so-called ‘initial coin offering’ (ICO) model has exploded this year. In the whole of 2016, some $222 million was raised in this fashion. In the first half of 2017, the volume of funds raised has already exceeded $1.5 billion.

For example, Tezos raised $232 million in a few days, beating the $150 million accumulated by the Bancor ICO some weeks before.

What’s this got to do with Switzerland?

These start-ups obviously need a place to house their newly acquired funds while they actually produce the innovations they have promised. Why not a bank account? Because they say they are non-profit, open source ventures working for the public good. Some even issue tokens to people who contributed to the crowdfund raise.

Switzerland, and especially canton Zug, has forged a growing reputation as a global cryptocurrency centre. The Zug-based cryptocurrency advisory service Bitcoin Suisse has been involved in several ICOs and estimates a quarter of the global capital raised now sits in Swiss foundations – that’s more than half a billion dollars over the last couple of years.

Switzerland has an established foundation model that support NGOs, charities and other entities. Foundations separate the funds from the people running the organisations, a way of making sure donations are not syphoned off into the wrong pockets. Independent officers manage the funds according to the organisation’s charter and not at the whim of individuals.

Law firm MME Legal says it has helped 13 crypto foundations to set up in Switzerland so far, and is advising around 10 more such entities.

So what’s the problem?

Even from the beginning, when the Ethereum Foundation set up in Zug in 2014, social media posts challenged the motivation of setting up foundations as piggy banks for cryptocurrency ventures.

Some posts question the necessity of raising such large funds – hundreds of millions of dollars in extreme cases. There is also annoyance that some foundations are tasked with handing out large piles of tokens to the project founders – as is the case with Tezos.

Critics in general fear some cloak and dagger motive behind hoarding funds in a foundation in the famously secretive Swiss jurisdiction. A common post might read: “Switzerland is reinventing banking secrecy with cryptocurrencies”.

Beyond social media, some industry experts are concerned about potential business failures or even fraud.

What’s the response from cryptocurrency start-ups?

“The Ethereum fundraiser, which helped Ethereum blossom into a successful project with a vibrant community, was decried as ‘unconscionable’ by many a keyboard warrior,” says the Tezos foundation in a statement. “Tezos’s founders do not share this vocal minority’s ethos, nor do we ask that those who embrace it take part of in the Tezos fundraiser. We suggest instead that they find, and contribute to, a project which does share their values.”

Tezos, along with other foundations have countered criticism by promising high levels of transparency. Along with a detailed explanation of what rewards go to founders, several say they will give regular updates on spending and project development. Swiss fintech start-up Lykke, for example, recently published an independent audit into its foundation.

What do the Swiss regulators say?

It’s “business as usual” for Switzerland’s Foundation Supervisory Authority, which regulates how well these entities stick to the demands of their charters. The agency has no particular reservations about the wave of crypto foundations or the new form of business they are in. In fact, they are allowed to make profits and distribute funds.

At the end of 2016, Switzerland hosted more than 13,000 foundations. Collectively, they managed some CHF70 billion in 2015, according to the Neue Zürcher Zeitung newspaper. It’s up to cantons to check out the legality of foundations before allowing them to register. Supervision of their activities is then undertaken by either cantonal or federal authorities.

What have industry insiders got to say?

Zug-based Crypto Valley President Oliver Bussmann believes the industry should formulate a self-regulatory code of conduct to protect investors from the ICO boom. “Setting up a foundation is almost like setting up a charity to capture donations. Most investors don’t understand that they are donating funds to a non-profit organisation that has limited interest in increasing value of token. There might be disappointment if investors don’t read the small print,” he told swissinfo.ch.

“Investors have to do their homework. ICOs are high risk investments and people shouldn’t get in unless they understand the business. Twenty years ago, 80% of internet start-ups did not survive.”

Bussmann also wants foundations to create more jobs in Switzerland. “They are leveraging the Swiss legal environment to issue the tokens, but the development is not located in Switzerland. They create a lot of business for lawyers and consultants, but we want research and sustainable business models operating out of Switzerland, generating jobs.”

David Siegel, founder of cryptocurrency platform Pillar Project, will soon set up a foundation following a $21 million ICO in July. “Open source is by definition non-profit,” he told swissinfo.ch. “Entities with such a model are eligible for tax exempt status. We don’t have shareholders or beneficial owners and we don’t have any profit model. We want to change the world and are committed to public ownership. We are the same type of organization as the Red Cross.”

He does not yet know where the foundation will be situated, but believes the Swiss authorities supervise such entities closely.

“There is a lot of regulatory oversight of Swiss foundations,” he told swissinfo.ch. “You have to explain everything to the regulator – they virtually take a seat on your board. This is designed to stop people using foundations just to squirrel away money and pay executives $2 million a year.”

Siegel added that the crowdfunding ICO model will transform both the way seed capital is raised by start-ups and the type of entities they create.

“Regulators should really keep an open mind about this new technology,” he said. “They should focus on creating a new framework rather than trying to pack the new model into the old framework and put things back 20 or 30 years.”

“Crypto anarchists are here to stay. If any jurisdiction over-regulates then we can move away and create our currency elsewhere. There are a million ways to get around the rules.”

Credit reporting firm Equifax confirmed Thursday a cybersecurity incident that could potentially impact approximately 143 million US consumers.

According to Equifax, criminals exploited a US website application vulnerability to gain access to certain files, which based on the company’s investigation, the unauthorized access occurred from mid-May through July 2017.

The company said that it has found no evidence of unauthorized activity on Equifax’s core consumer or commercial credit reporting databases.

Equifax said the information accessed primarily includes names, Social Security numbers, birth dates, addresses and, in some instances, driver’s license numbers. In addition, credit card numbers for approximately 209,000 US consumers, and certain dispute documents with personal identifying information for approximately 182,000 US consumers, were accessed.

As part of its investigation of this application vulnerability, Equifax said it also identified unauthorized access to limited personal information for certain UK and Canadian residents.

Equifax said it will work with UK and Canadian regulators to determine appropriate next steps. The company said it has found no evidence that personal information of consumers in any other country has been impacted.

Despite announcing the news on Thursday, Equifax said that it discovered the unauthorized access on July 29 and acted immediately to stop the intrusion. The company said it promptly engaged a leading, independent cybersecurity firm that has been conducting a comprehensive forensic review to determine the scope of the intrusion, including the specific data impacted.

Equifax said it also reported the criminal access to law enforcement and continues to work with authorities. While the company’s investigation is substantially complete, it remains ongoing and is expected to be completed in the coming weeks.

“This is clearly a disappointing event for our company, and one that strikes at the heart of who we are and what we do. I apologize to consumers and our business customers for the concern and frustration this causes,” said Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Richard F. Smith. “We pride ourselves on being a leader in managing and protecting data, and we are conducting a thorough review of our overall security operations. We also are focused on consumer protection and have developed a comprehensive portfolio of services to support all US consumers, regardless of whether they were impacted by this incident.”

Paolo Duterte, son of Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, has denied allegations that he is connected with an international drug cartel that attempted to ship $125 million-worth of drugs into the country.

Paolo Duterte testified before a Senate inquiry Thursday and claimed he had no links to multimillion-dollar shipment of shabu (slang for crystal methamphetamine in parts of southeast Asia) from China to Manila in May, describing such allegations as “baseless.”

“My presence here is for the Filipino people and for my fellow Davaoeños whom I serve,” Duterte said, as cited by Reuters, referring to the people of Davao, where his father served as mayor for more than 20 years before his election as president in 2016.

Senator Antonio Trillanes, one of President Duterte’s most vociferous opponents, showed photographs of the president’s son beside the businessman alleged to be responsible for importing the shipment of drugs.

He also cited unspecified foreign intelligence that Paolo Duterte is a member of a crime syndicate while alluding to a “dragon-like” tattoo on his back as proof.

“I cannot answer allegations based on hearsay,” Paolo Duterte, the vice mayor of the southern city of Davao, told the Senate as cited by Reuters.

When asked if a photograph could be taken of the tattoo and sent to the US Drug Enforcement Agency for analysis, he simply replied, “No way.”

His sister, and Davao City Mayor, Sara Duterte took to Facebook to ridicule the line of questioning.

Trillanes also pressed alleged co-conspirator Maneses Carpio and his wife Sara Duterte, daughter of the president, about their private bank accounts which he alleges contain over $2.3 million. Both declined to answer questions citing the right to financial privacy.

“Anyway, if I am wrong the whole world will laugh at me,” Trillanes said, as cited by The Philippines Inquirer.

One of the hallmarks of President Duterte’s time in office has been the extremely violent crackdown on both drug users and drug dealers. Official records show that more than 3,800 people have died in police raids since July 2016, though Human Rights Watch claims the figure is closer to 7,000.

President Duterte has vowed to resign if his critics could prove any of his family members were involved in corruption. However, he is known to have made about turns on controversial statements made in the past.

Harvey disaster underscores the need for energy importers to rely on diverse energies, suppliers and transport routes.

By Agnia Grigas*

After devastating Houston and other parts of southeast Texas and continuing on to Louisiana, the hurricane known as Harvey put a spotlight on the rising role of the Gulf of Mexico in the global energy sector. The most powerful storm to hit Texas in half a century has already resulted in reduced shale oil and gas production as well as oil refining, and higher gasoline prices. Liquefied natural gas, or LNG, exports were not significantly impacted, but the storm’s aftermath and cleanup raise questions among energy importers across the globe who eye these resources.

The disaster underscores the need for energy-importing states to rely on diverse suppliers rather than become overly dependent on any one source. This means diversifying imports from more countries and regions, utilizing various land and sea routes, and relying on a mix of energy resources – including LNG, piped gas, oil and renewables. Despite the rise of renewables, oil and gas will remain key components of most nations’ energy mix, with natural gas consumption only rising during a “golden age of gas” as proclaimed by experts. Washington, industry regulators and importers across the world are watching how quickly Houston and the region’s energy sector recover.

Since the 1970s, Houston emerged as America’s energy capital and a top energy hub in the world. The city is the main gateway for exports of LNG produced from shale gas as well as a major center of oil refining, largely due to the region’s role in the US shale revolution, which boosted oil and gas production through a process known as fracking.

The impact of the shale revolution for global energy markets cannot be underestimated, and thus Harvey is significant beyond the regional economy. Largely due to the shale boom, the United States went from fearing energy security in the early 2000s to emerging as the world’s largest producer of natural gas in 2011, surpassing Russia and subsequently becoming the leader in refined petroleum products and among the leading producers of oil now rivaling Saudi Arabia.

As a result of the energy boom years, the US government lifted its historic ban on oil exports and launched LNG exports globally in 2016. The country is expected to become the third largest LNG exporter after Australia and Qatar by 2020. By the same year, it is also expected to add some 20 percent of the total LNG volumes traded globally in 2014 to the international gas market.

Houston, the country’s fourth largest city, is at the epicenter for many of these changes. It’s the home of Cheniere Energy – the only US company exporting LNG produced from shale gas. Starting last year, the company’s LNG exports went to Brazil, India, Kuwait, Spain, Portugal, China and Mexico and this summer made their way with great fanfare to Poland and Lithuania. Indeed, as explained in my book The New Geopolitics of Natural Gas, US LNG exports have a tremendous impact on the global natural gas markets and will transform the geopolitics of gas in Eurasia, especially between European states and Russia: “If the optimistic projections of the gas revolution come to fruition, American gas could secure and diversify Europe’s supplies, reign in Russia’s energy influence, woo energy-hungry Asia, and ensure that the twenty-first century once again remains in the firm grasp of the United States and its allies.”

Natural or manmade disasters could still play havoc with these ambitions. Cheniere’s main export terminal Sabine Pass is located on the Gulf Coast at the Louisiana-Texas border but export operations did not suffer, and the company opened an emergency office in Dallas to prevent service disruptions. Cheniere’s second Texas export facility in Corpus Christi, also on the Gulf Coast, is under construction and sustained minor damages. Another terminal under construction just outside Houston – the Freeport LNG – faced minor water damage.

Though natural disasters are part of life, the region around Houston and Gulf Coast is susceptible to extreme flooding, storms and hurricanes as seen from hurricanes Rita and Katrina of 2005 and Ike of 2008. While it’s been eight years since a hurricane hit this area, Houston endured three 500-year flooding events during the past three years.

The fact that America’s LNG export hub is emerging around this disaster-prone area, could raise questions about the reliability of Houston’s export capacities while raising concerns among European and Asian importers. Importing countries always seek substitutes to ensure reliable energy sources. On the positive note, many other LNG export facilities ae being built elsewhere in the country, with the newest Cove Point terminal due to open on Maryland’s coast this year. Still America’s pipeline infrastructure connecting many gas-producing regions with export infrastructure or domestic markets could use more improvements.

Houston and the energy industry remain confident. Houstonian and independent director of several energy companies Peter Ragauss states that storm disruptions are a common occurrence along the Gulf coast and the energy industry is well prepared: “Hurricane Harvey will be remembered for its severity, but will have no long-term impact on industry investment plans.”

Harvey’s limited impact on natural gas markets is reflected in natural gas prices, which increased only by 4 percent last week largely because less US gas production is located in the Houston area. In fact, the Gulf of Mexico’s share in American gas production fell from 25 to 5 percent since 2005 as shale-gas production has shifted to the Appalachian Basin in the northeast and other parts of Texas. Another reason for the relatively stable prices: Power outages and flooding tempered demand for gas in the Gulf region.

Moreover, while LNG exports have not been hard hit by Harvey, the region’s petroleum refining capacity has been. Nearly half of America’s refining capacity is on the Gulf Coast from Alabama to Texas while nearly a third of the county’s refining capacity is located between Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Corpus Christi, Texas. The Houston area is home to a number of refineries including the Marathon Galveston Bay, Phillips 66 Sweeny, Exxon Beaumont, LoyondellBasell, and the country’s largest refinery Motiva. Many report reduced capacity. The Koch Industries refinery in Corpus Christi also shut down following the storm. Partly due to a lack of supply from refineries, major regional pipelines such as the Magellan shut down while the Colonial and Explorer pipelines operated at reduced rates. As a result of Harvey, about 25 percent of the country’s refining capacity was shut down. Disruptions constrained flows of resources across the United States, leading to a surge in oil and gasoline prices, though the latter have stabilized since.

Many of the refineries are restarting operations, and the process is expected to take a few weeks.

As the United States solidifies its lead in the global energy markets, local natural disasters or manmade accidents will have cross-border implications on world energy pricing, supply and liquidity. Such disruptions are unlikely to significantly change the calculus of states from Europe to Asia looking to import LNG. Energy security depends on diversified supplies, and for now US LNG is perceived as an additional source rather than a sole provider for most importing states. Meanwhile, the industry is likely to take lessons from Harvey, considering additional safety measures and preparing for more regulations to ensure successful operations.

*Agnia Grigas, author of The New Geopolitics of Natural Gas (Harvard UP, 2017), is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC. Follow her at @AgniaGrigas and Grigas.net.

By Dong Yan*

(FPRI) –As Ukraine’s recent economic difficulties persist—the country registered a modest growth rate of 2.3% in 2016, and painful IMF-mandated reforms continue to progress slowly—optimistic commentators forecast an increase—and eventual surge—in Chinese investment in the country. Speculation has been driven by three phenomena in particular: the recent publicity surrounding Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, an uptick in Chinese tourists to Ukraine following more liberal visa policies in March, and Chinese suggestions of commencing free trade zone talks between the two countries this year.

Despite Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko’s absence at President Xi’s Belt and Road summit in Beijing this past May, Ukrainian officials have voiced their support for the Chinese infrastructure initiative. Ukrainian Deputy Minister of Infrastructure Viktor Dovgan encapsulated Ukraine’s hopes for the project stating that “within six months Ukraine will appear as a logistic hub on China’s Silk Road map.” However, eager official rhetoric has also been accompanied by wariness from some commentators who argue that “successful businesses must align with their investors in terms of values and cultural choices. . . . Before opening Ukraine’s doors, the government will do well to protect the country’s positive but still fledgling transformation from being exploited by foreign authoritarian investors.” They are concerned that China might exert unwanted influence over Ukrainian politics.

As is common when discussing Chinese investment in many Eurasian economies, both claims should be taken with a grain of salt. This is especially true for Ukraine, where political turbulence has played a significant role in shifting investor sentiments—first positive, then negative, than positive again—over the past few years. A closer look at recent business and diplomatic relations between Ukraine and China suggests that, if anything, China possesses few levers to improve bilateral relations. With this in mind, China’s official position on investment in Ukraine has been much more hesitant and equivocal than that of private Chinese capital. Since major projects (and financing capabilities) of the Belt and Road Initiative fall at the discretion of state-owned Chinese conglomerates, a significant surge of Chinese investment in the near future seems unlikely.

China’s Caution

So what explains China’s caution when it comes to investing in Ukraine? To find the answer, one must look back at the trajectory of Sino-Ukrainian relations from the early 2000s to the present. Compared to other post-Communist countries in Eastern Europe, Ukraine has been exceptional in two ways: first, in the frequency and severity of its political upheavals, and second, in the degree to which these upheavals have affected its relationship with China. The reasonably productive relations between Ukraine and China under the Leonid Kuchma administration—namely a strategic partnership based on technical transfers and weapon sales—became far patchier following the Orange Revolution in 2005. Ukrainian officials offended Beijing by inviting high-ranking Taiwanese officials to attend semi-official international conferences in late 2005, leading to a stalling in senior-level exchanges during the Viktor Yushchenko administration. During this decline in the bilateral relationship, military-technological exchanges were the only facet of Sino-Ukrainian relations robust enough to survive.

This situation quickly changed with the ascent of Viktor Yanukovych as president in 2010. After assuming office, the new Ukrainian president met with Chinese President Hu Jintao within two months and visited China shortly thereafter. A series of hastily-negotiated investments followed, few of which panned out. The most damaging investment was the failed loans-for-grain deal financed by Export-Import Bank of China in 2012. China agreed to lend Ukraine 1.5 billion USD for investment in agriculture, which Ukraine was to repay in corn exports. Despite concluding the deal in 2012, it has yet to be fully implemented. The spectacular fall of Yanukovych in early 2014, merely weeks after his visit to China and the conclusion of a friendship treaty between the two countries, further revealed Chinese diplomats’ inability to accurately assess, much less influence, Ukraine.

The cautious stance of current Chinese officials towards investment in Ukraine, therefore, stems from an acute realisation of the limitations of Chinese influence. One important reason for these limits is that Ukrainians are especially dissatisfied with China’s perceived fence-sitting regarding Crimea and Donbas, as indicated by Chinese abstentions over UN resolutions on Ukraine in 2014. The stalled loans-for-grain deal, which some news outlets claimed was adjudicated at London Court of International Arbitration, has resulted in a slowdown of further investment by China’s Export-Import Bank, traditionally a major source of financing for investment abroad. Even a recent visit by Vice Prime Minister Stepan Kubiv to the bank’s headquarters in Beijing this May resulted in a lukewarm Chinese response. The only public gesture made by the Ukrainians was to delay privatizing its State Food and Grain Corporation until it began servicing its 2012 loan from China.

Similarly, a loan worth up to 3.65 billion USD proposed by China Development Bank to Naftohaz, Ukraine’s state gas company, agreed-upon in 2012, has not yet been disbursed due to departmental infighting within the Ukrainian government as to the funds’ uses. The deadline for Ukrainians to submit project proposals to secure the loan was pushed from June to August of this year. However, as the general prosecutor’s office currently investigates the reasons for delay, it remains unknown whether the Ukrainians will be able to meet the postponed deadline. Even after project proposals are submitted, Chinese lenders must then conduct due diligence before the loan may be disbursed. As Ukraine’s annual Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) inflows (including from conduit-countries such as Cyprus and the Netherlands) stood at a meagre 3.44 billion USD in 2016 (which is an improvement from 2015), China would be unwise to get more deeply involved.

Lack of Caution Does Not Mean Lack of Interest

However, China’s official caution about major investments in Ukraine should not be conflated with a lack of interest. Politically, high-level exchanges been the two countries’ executive and legislative branches have resumed since late 2016, and China has discreetly donated emergency relief and other non-lethal equipment to Ukraine (one of the few non-NATO members to do so). Perhaps more significantly, Chinese officials have made encouraging statements regarding Ukraine’s potential membership in its working group with Central and Eastern European countries (otherwise known as the “16+1” Mechanism). In doing so, they potentially strive to aid Ukraine’s efforts to distance itself from the Commonwealth of Independent States orbit.

Economically, traditional patterns of cooperation in agriculture and military technology have continued. Chinese firms are beginning to take advantage of competitively-priced Ukrainian expertise, such as in the production of aircraft engines. There has also been renewed interest by Chinese companies in infrastructure projects. Given the complexity of the contracting process for major construction projects in Ukraine and recent upheavals in the domestic banking sector, it remains to be seen whether the recently signed Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) between Chinese infrastructural firms and branches of the Ukrainian government will come to fruition. With the MOU in mind, the acquisition of a minor Ukrainian state bank by the Bohai Commodity Exchange in late 2016 is particularly interesting. The bank’s new owners pursued the deal with the specific aim of bridging the regulatory and financing hurdles faced by private Chinese firms interested in the Ukrainian market. However, given the paltry sum involved (around 3.17 million USD), the deal should be seen more as an attempt to position Chinese investors more advantageously should a breakthrough in Ukraine’s investment conditions occur.

Ultimately, any major surge in investment from China would only come at the initiative of the Ukrainians. They could commence negotiations for a free trade agreement or enhance coordination between Ukrainian agencies to improve investment conditions. Despite the groundwork laid by state-owned and private Chinese companies, the Chinese have learned the lesson of the Yanukovych era well. As the Chinese commerce attaché quoted with approval at the China-Ukraine strategic partnership forum this past May, “деньги любят тишину” (money loves silence).

About the author
*Dong Yan is a doctoral candidate in history at University of California,

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

By Kevin D. Stringer*

Russia’s revanchism toward its neighbors and its strong desire to extend power into traditional spheres of influence have major security implications for a number of post-Soviet states. This policy is magnified by Vladimir Putin’s “Russian World” ideology, which implies that any former Soviet republic with either an ethnic Russian population or an unresolved territorial or security dispute with Russia faces a potential national security threat ranging from internal subversion to outright territorial invasion by Russian forces. The Russian occupation of Crimea in March 2014 and the Kremlin’s intervention in eastern Ukraine between February and September 2014 demonstrate this risk to bordering states and overall European stability.1 In particular, Russian use of hybrid warfare amplifies the threat.

Hybrid warfare is an effective mix of military and nonmilitary activities with conventional and irregular components ranging from diplomatic and legal campaigns to clandestine transfers of armed personnel and weapons. These activities fall short of actual armed conflict and can destabilize and subvert a target nation’s stability and sovereignty but not trigger North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) or bilateral treaty commitments.2 To mitigate this risk, a targeted state’s society must be ready to conduct resistance should all or parts of its territory be occupied or subverted by a foreign invader or its proxies. This requirement implies looking back to the Cold War concept of “Total Defense” for some applicable models to evaluate and implement. The Cold War–era case of Switzerland, a small, neutral state that prepared for resistance against the Soviet Union, provides valuable inputs to the creation of stay-behind resistance organizations in the modern context and informs U.S. interagency and special operations forces (SOF) considerations in supporting such efforts.

A Review of Total Defense

The goal of the Cold War Total Defense model was whole-of-society involvement in defense matters. The concept was to have the entire country involved in national security—not only the military, but also the private sector, local government, and nongovernmental organizations. During the Cold War, small states prepared a large array of tools such as total mobilization, guerrilla warfare, civil resistance networks, and clandestine organizations to achieve national security objectives and deter Warsaw Pact aggressors.3

Switzerland is an example of a state that practiced this doctrine during the Cold War. Its defense went far beyond the armed forces and included the economic and psychological mobilization of the population. The entire populace was subject to call-up for both military and nonmilitary functions, and the national infrastructure and industrial production base were co-opted and tooled for possible defense usage. With extensive civil defense frameworks and wide civic integration into security plans, this democratic and neutral state achieved a high level of societal resilience during the Cold War period.4

Total Defense and Resistance

Swiss defense preparations during the Cold War are instructive for small countries at the strategic level for Total Defense and at the operational level for unconventional warfare and resistance missions. Unconventional warfare is defined as those activities “conducted to enable a resistance movement or insurgency to coerce, disrupt or overthrow an occupying power or government.”5

These arrangements are also politically relevant, since as a neutral country during the Cold War, Switzerland had to be self-reliant for defense and could not count upon allies or other states for support or intervention. This same situation could arise for neutral states such as Finland or Sweden today, or even Eastern European countries whose fellow alliance members might hesitate to intervene in an action that might be short of war or in the gray space of hybrid warfare.

At the strategic level, the Swiss viewed the military as only one element of national power to achieve their security objectives. In the early 1960s, the Swiss Federal Council postulated a shift from the concept of National Defense to Total Defense, which incorporated the diplomatic, informational, economic, and social elements of national power into a traditionally military domain.6 Swiss foreign policy oriented on the strategy of armed neutrality, while maintaining sufficient access to external markets for inbound and outbound trade. Social policy was designed to buttress the physical and psychological resilience of the nation.7 For example, to lower vulnerability to foreign propaganda, Switzerland maintained an objective national news service, promoted education among the populace, and engendered national pride in Swiss institutions.8 Economic policy was designed on the principle of autarky, with reserve food supplies and materials maintained at national, local, and individual levels. Civil defense became a cornerstone of population protection to ensure the survival of the nation in the event of nuclear, chemical, or biological warfare.9 In essence, the strategic objective was to make the society resilient to any form of outside aggression, physical or otherwise, through a holistic Total Defense methodology. This same objective is relevant today for those former Soviet states that find themselves targets of Russian hybrid operations and subversion.

A general principle guiding Swiss defense efforts was dissuasion, a form of psychological deterrence. This concept—when combined with powerful conventional forces, guerrilla resistance, and the self-destruction of Switzerland’s industrial, communications, and transportation networks to deny their usage to an enemy—would signal to an aggressor that the only gain in attacking Switzerland would be the occupation of a hostile area, denuded of economic or transportation value, with continued resistance by a determined and armed population.10 The objective of Total Defense was to make Switzerland an indigestible and costly to consume “hedgehog” to potential adversaries—in this case, the Soviet Union or its Warsaw Pact allies.

A critical component of Total Defense was the ability to conduct resistance operations in enemy-occupied Swiss territory. Despite its neutral status, Switzerland feared an invasion of the Red Army in the post–World War II period and conducted extensive research and analysis on resistance movements and irregular warfare. One popular misconception about Swiss preparations for resistance is that the Swiss military establishment followed the writings of Major Hans von Dach. In Total Resistance, his seven-volume series on unconventional warfare, von Dach propagated a concept of resistance conducted by the entire population, which he termed partisan warfare.11 The Swiss General Staff rejected this approach amid concerns over the law of land warfare and the maintenance of governance over a population of partisans, and chose instead a conventional doctrine with an integrated resistance plan.12 The Swiss military’s other major concern was that an overemphasis on von Dach’s partisan warfare would neglect other important components of Total Defense.13

The government’s 1973 Swiss Security Policy Report explicitly stressed the need for resistance in occupied regions—hence, the national defense requirement for the classical stay-behind unconventional warfare mission and an organization to carry it out. Section 426 of the report stated, “The occupation of the country must not mean that all resistance has ended. Even in this case, an enemy shall meet not only with the population’s antipathy, but also active resistance.”14 Section 717 of the same publication highlighted, “Guerrilla warfare and non-violent resistance in occupied areas are being prepared within the limits of international law, and will, if necessary, be carried out.”15 This official position of the Swiss government to conduct resistance in enemy-occupied Swiss territory remained unchanged until the end of the Cold War.

Yet these resistance operations were to be well integrated with the operations of a robust, conventional force. Under the organizing concept of the so-called Swiss Army 61, the military consisted of three field army corps designed to protect the heartland, and one mountain army corps for the alpine regions. These 4 army corps were organized into 12 divisions—3 field, 3 mechanized, 3 mountain, and 3 border—supplemented by a mix of 14 border, fortress, and redoubt brigades.16 At its peak, Swiss Army 61, with its recruitment based upon a militia concept of universal conscription, encompassed 625,000 personnel.17 This number stands in relation to a 1962 population of 5.5 million.18 The main battle doctrine revolved around a defense-in-depth with static units to channel Soviet forces into destruction zones, and mobile units for counterattacks.19 An integral part of this plan was resistance in occupied Swiss territory, should regular defense fail. After the operative collapse of regular military units, the remnants of these formations would continue the fight in the occupied regions as guerrillas and partisans. In parallel, the civil population in these areas would practice nonviolent resistance within the parameters of international law. A preestablished resistance cadre organization would support and bring coherence to these efforts. The potential risk of repression and counterviolence was noted, and the government called upon the populace to prepare itself for such eventualities.20

Resistance Organization

Like other threatened Western countries, Switzerland set up covert organizations tasked with the conduct of resistance in the event of a full or partial Soviet occupation. The Swiss Federal Council also established a government-in-exile location in Ireland for such an eventuality.21 As a result of its research, the Swiss government at first designated the so-called Special Service to organize popular resistance to the enemy and supply the government-in-exile with intelligence. The Special Service was made up of three hierarchical levels, with the top level consisting of a small group of directing officers, members of the regular military who always dressed in their military uniforms and who were responsible for the administration and training of the secret army. The second level was made up of “trusted persons” who spread across Switzerland and were responsible for the recruitment of resistance fighters and supporters who formed the third level in their respective parts of the country. The persons recruited by the second level could themselves recruit a number of new members to join the resistance organization.

In 1979, the Swiss government transformed and redesignated the initial set-up into the P-26 organization, a designation derived from the 26 Swiss cantons.22 Defense planners conceived of P-26 as a top-down, cadre-led structure rather than a broad, decentralized civilian resistance movement envisioned and advocated by von Dach. Like the Special Service, the P-26 organized into three levels. The P-26 command staff consisted mainly of senior military officials on civilian contracts or secondment. On the second and core level, the cadre organization formed the secretive and well-trained nucleus of the resistance underground. This formation possessed a decentralized organizational model based upon the development of distributed clandestine cells. The third level would only have been recruited by the cadre organization if Switzerland had come under foreign occupation. The government tasked P-26 with recruiting and training core personnel who could continue the fight after an occupation. P-26 executed this by setting up stay-behind arms caches, storing specialized equipment that would be required by the resistance movement, and organizing the necessary infrastructure for the coordinated command of the resistance from unoccupied parts of Swiss territory or from a potential exile base.23 In essence, P-26 provided the framework for the creation of both an underground and partial auxiliary. The underground is understood as a “clandestine cellular organization within the resistance movement that has the ability to conduct operations in areas that are inaccessible to guerrillas, such as urban areas under the control of the local security forces,” and a partial auxiliary is “that portion of the population that is providing active support to the guerrilla force or the underground.”24

Operationally, the P-26 concept offers four areas for contemporary consideration on how to set up a clandestine organization for the conduct of resistance in the case of occupation. First, the group prepared for four possible and plausible operational scenarios:

• a foreign military transiting Switzerland and occupying only a portion of territory without the goal of full occupation
• a foreign power attacking Switzerland and occupying a portion of territory with the ultimate goal of full conquest and occupation
• full conquest and occupation by a foreign army
• the overthrow of the Swiss government by external forces resulting in the occupation of Switzerland.25

Second, the Swiss government placed the organization outside of the traditional military and government bureaucracy to protect its members from discovery in the event of occupation and to preclude its surrender as part of an overall capitulation agreement. Its military leader was hired under a private-sector contract, and personnel signed an employment convention via a front company delineating rights and obligations, with members paid and insured discreetly by the federal government. During peacetime, P-26 fell under the direction of the Swiss Chief of the General Staff.26

Third, for recruitment, P-26 sought members who were balanced, independent, stress-resistant, and trustworthy, but with a low profile from both character and societal dimensions. They were to have regular jobs that would provide cover for periodic training absences. Many had no military service records, and there were also a minority of females. Professions included a school principal, nurse, hospital administrator, medical doctors, engineers, and academics.27 Recruitment occurred slowly, with a careful vetting and selection process. Once enrolled, the members were trained and allocated to one of the approximately 80 resistance regions spread across the country. The manning for P-26 was set at 800 personnel, about half of which had been recruited by the time of its deactivation in 1990. The 6-to-10 person units found in the 80 resistance regions were autonomous, and each had an active and sleeper cell assigned, with the active cell having no knowledge of the existence of the sleeper cell.28 A typical cell had an operational chief, communicator, courier, and demolitions/engineering specialist.29 Finally, the degree of planning, detail, training, secrecy, and operational security conducted by P-26 within the context of a democratic society lends itself to further study and research for the operationalization of resistance plans during peacetime.

Conclusions for Contemporary Planning

Given the specter of Russian irredentism in Eastern Europe, threatened countries such as Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Georgia, and even Kazakhstan must reevaluate their national defense strategies for their ability to conduct resistance or unconventional warfare on all or parts of their sovereign territory. Historical analysis can inform this process. Unsurprisingly, the Russian military draws upon its historical experience in the Russian Civil War and Soviet Cold War for the components of its hybrid warfare model. Similarly, at-risk states can review the Cold War period and, through the careful study and analysis of appropriate historical resistance and unconventional warfare cases, can assess previously used concepts for possible adaptation, application, and integration into a national resistance strategy. Although not actually tested by war and Soviet occupation, the Swiss example illustrates a pragmatic approach for a small European state in preparing for resistance in the event of full or partial occupation of its national territory by threat forces. The Swiss case study also provides reflections for U.S. interagency or SOF support to allies considering resistance as an integral element of national defense. Several lessons for evaluation come to the forefront.

First, the Swiss profile as a small country with limited resources has relevance for its equally small European cousins. While a RAND report on Swiss unconventional warfare highlighted the mountainous topography and homogenous nature of Swiss society as major differences with the Baltic countries, this assertion is incorrect.30 On the contrary, the Swiss P-26 resistance organization would have conducted its operations in the rather flat Swiss Mittelland, which encompasses most of the population centers as well as the industrial engines of the economy. This pre-alpine region is also not much different than the topography found in the Baltics. Additionally, the Swiss population is highly heterogeneous, having German, French, Italian, and Rhaeto-Romanic regions. The Swiss have successfully meshed these diverse cultural and ethnic groups into a single Swiss identity that provides an important foundation for societal resilience and resistance to foreign occupiers. This prerequisite is an important lesson for the Baltic nations and the integration of their Russian and Polish minorities.

Second, articulating the Total Defense concept and resistance mission in official national security documents provided clear and essential policy guidance for a whole-of-government approach to these efforts. The 1973 Swiss Security Report is one example of the need for current governments to provide national-level direction to these defensive efforts. All elements of national power must be integrated into a defense concept, and the psychological/information war component takes a leading position for preparation. As shown in the Swiss case, credible media outlets, an educated, critical-thinking population, and a degree of national pride are antidotes to adversarial propaganda campaigns.

Third, while guerrillas may come from parts of the armed forces, a clandestine cadre organization can provide one structural model for unconventional warfare preparation and clandestine network establishment, with new recruits being brought into the underground and auxiliary forces only after hostilities are initiated. Naturally, other models can and should be evaluated. Of particular interest is the recruitment of nonmilitary personnel conducted by the P-26. In an age of biometrics and electronic databases, this approach could provide a resistance movement a greater degree of security against aggressor pacification operations.

Fourth, resistance planning and operations must be well integrated with an adequate conventional military force deterrent. Resistance operations alone are insufficient in deterrent effect to dissuade an aggressor. The Swiss coupled a resistance concept and organization with a four-corps, 625,000-person conventional military force, which represented almost 12 percent of its population in time of national emergency.

Finally, Switzerland did not possess a true SOF capability during the Cold War. Today, SOF are traditionally responsible for unconventional warfare and resistance missions, and they can be an important catalyst for resistance planning and preparation by facilitating unified action with their interagency brethren to achieve unity of effort in resistance operations.

The Cold War ended with the dissolution of that “Prison of Nations” called the Soviet Union. Yet an irredentist and revanchist Russia has emerged after almost two decades to replace it. Already casting its shadow on the NATO members of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, the Kremlin may look to other post-Soviet states such as Moldova, Kazakhstan, or Georgia for further “Russian World” adventurism.31 Considering how to adapt the Cold War concept of Total Defense to current events, especially its critical resistance element, is an important task for national policymakers and their SOF elements to evaluate. The Swiss Cold War experience provides a useful starting point.

About the author:
*Colonel Kevin D. Stringer, USA, Ph.D., is Director, Strategy, Plans, and Policy (J5) at Special Operations Command Europe.

Source:
This article was published in the Joint Force Quarterly 86, which is published by the National Defense University.

Notes
1 Roy Allison, “Russian ‘Deniable’ Intervention in Ukraine: How and Why Russia Broke the Rules,” International Affairs 90, no. 6 (2014), 1,255–1,297.

2 H. Reisinger and A. Golts, Russia’s Hybrid Warfare: Waging War below the Radar of Traditional Collective Defence, NATO Research Paper no. 105 (Rome: NATO Defense College, November 2014).

3 Milton Paul Davis, “An Historical and Political Overview of the Reserve and Guard Forces of the Nordic Countries at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century,” Baltic Security & Defence Review 10 (January 2008), 171–201.

4 Switzerland and Sweden both practiced Total Defense. See Robert Dalsjo, “From Self-Sufficiency to Solidarity: The Transformation of Sweden’s Defence and Security Policies,” in Strategic Management of Military Capabilities: Seeking Ways to Foster Military Innovation (Tokyo: National Institute for Defense Studies, 2013), 141–160.

5 Joint Publication 3-05, Special Operations (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2014), xi.

6 Jon A. Fanzun and Patrick Lehmann, “Konzeptionelle Grundlagen der Schweizer Aussen-und Sicherheits-politik,” in Zuercher Beitraege zur Sicherheitspolitik und Konfliktforschung, Nr. 57, ed. K. Spillmann et al. (Zurich: ETH, 2000), 63–86.

7 Lewis W. Walt and George S. Patton, The Swiss Report: A Special Study for Western Goals Foundation (Alexandria, VA: Western Goals Foundation, 1983).

8 Dietrich Fischer, “Invulnerability Without Threat: The Swiss Concept of General Defense,” Journal of Peace Research 19, no. 3 (1982), 205–225.

9 Walt and Patton.

10 Fischer, 205–225; Walt and Patton; and Gustav Daeniker, Schweizerische Selbstbehauptungs-Strategien im Kalten Krieg (Frauenfeld, Switzerland: Huber Verlag, 1996), 30–31.

11 Marc Tribelhorn, “Terror-Rezepte aus der Schweiz,” Neue Zürcher Zeitung, July 26, 2013, 12.

12 Bundesrates an die Bundesversammlung betreffend die Organisation des Heers (Truppenordnung) (Bern: Bundesrat, June 30, 1960), 329.

13 Tribelhorn, 12.

14 Bericht des Bundesrates ueber die Sicherheitspolitik der Schweiz. Konzeption der Gesamtverteidigung, Berne, June 27, 1973, 16.

15 Ibid., 38.

16 Bundesrates an die Bundesversammlung betreffend die Organisation des Heers, 367–368; and Heinz Haesler, “Grundsaetzliche Ueberleguungen eines ehemaligen Generalstabschefs,” in Erinnerungen an die Armee 61, ed. Franz Betschon and Louis Geiger (Frauenfeld, Switzerland: Verlag Huber, 2009), 96.

17 Haesler, 96.

18 World Bank data, 2016.

19 Kleine Heereskunde (Bern: EMD, 1992), 13–14.

20 Mauro Mantovani, “Der ‘Volksaufstand’: Vorstellungen und Vorbereitungen der Schweiz im 19. und 20. Jh,” in Military Power Revue der Schweizer Armee, Nr. 1 (2012), 52–60.

21 Daniele Ganser, “The British Secret Service in Neutral Switzerland: An Unfinished Debate on NATO’s Cold War Stay-behind Armies,” Intelligence and National Security 20, no. 4 (December 2005), 553–580.

22 Lucien Fluri, “Ehemalige Geheimarmee P-26,” Solothurner Zeitung, July 14, 2012.

23 See Bericht der Parlamentarischen Untersuchungskommission zur besonderen Klaerung von Vorkommnissen von grosser Tragweite im Eidgenossischen Militaerdepartement, Bern, November 17, 1990; Martin Matter, P-26. Die Geheimarmee, die keine war (Baden: Verlag hier + jetzt, 2012); Tribelhorn, 12.

24 Mark Grdovic, A Leader’s Handbook to Unconventional Warfare, SWCS Publication 09-1 (Fort Bragg, NC: U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School, 2009).

25 Matter, 47.

26 Ibid., 153–154.

27 Ibid., 82.

28 Ibid., 50–58.

29 Fluri.

30 Jan Osburg, Unconventional Options for the Defense of the Baltic States: The Swiss Approach (Santa Monica, CA: RAND, 2016), 8, available at <www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE179.html>.

31 Reisinger and Golts.

“Floods in Africa in August killed 25 times more people than Hurricane Harvey did.” That was the headline of a recent story in Quartz online by Lagos-based writer Yomi Kazeem.

“Like severe floods in southern Asia, the disasters in Africa have been largely under-reported compared to similar events in Houston where Hurricane Harvey, a once in a ‘500-year storm’ has wreaked havoc,” wrote Kazeem.

Across Texas, 50 people have been reported dead due to the tropical storm but across Africa, intense rains and mudslides killed at least 1,240 people in August, he pointed out.

Besides the mudslide in Sierra Leone, destructive floods have been reported in Niamey, Niger’s capital city. A few days ago, thousands of people in Niamey were advised to evacuate their homes following severe flooding. Back in May, the United Nations had warned that more than 100,000 people were at risk of the flooding and so far this year, the death toll has topped 40 people. Hundreds of homes have been destroyed forcing stranded residents to take shelter in local schools.

In Ituri, DR Congo, over 200 people are believed to have died after a mudslide hit a fishing village in mid-August. At the time, Pacifique Keta, deputy governor of the northeastern province, said rescue operations were “complicated” given the mountainous terrain of the area and the continued adverse weather. Like in Freetown, residents in the area have mushroomed on steep hillsides over the years worsening the effects of floods.

Similarly, in Benue, a state in Nigeria’s middle belt, more than 110,000 people have been displaced in after intense rains. In addition to thousands of homes, local markets and government offices were badly affected by the flood, according to the state emergency agency.

While President Muhammadu Buhari says he’s received reports of the flood with “great concern” and has ordered relief efforts, very little has been forthcoming. Collins Uma, a Benue-based writer says most of the relief efforts made available so far are down to the “efforts of individuals and groups, not the government.”

The floods in Benue are also not a new event. “This happens every year and will likely happen next year, but the government pays lip service to it,” Benue-based writer Collins Uma told Quartz. “If we had working drainage systems, this would not happen.”

Environment ministers and high-level officials from over 30 countries in Asia-Pacific have committed to move towards a clean and green Asia-Pacific, one that is more resource efficient and pollution free at the first Asia-Pacific Ministerial Summit on the Environment that concluded today in Bangkok. This will advance global agendas like the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development, the UN Environment Assembly resolutions and other global commitments.

The Summit culminated in a call for collaborative action to ensure that environment and development is approached in an integrated way, from promoting the sustainable management of natural resources, urban planning and spatial development, to fostering sustainable agriculture practices and advancing the green economy to reduce waste and pollution.

Participants at the Summit, jointly organized by the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP) and UN Environment also highlighted the urgency of addressing environmental health risks associated with pollution, promoting resource efficiency measures and practices, and protecting natural capital and ecosystem integrity including wildlife, biodiversity and oceans.

United Nations Under-Secretary General and Executive Secretary of ESCAP Dr. Shamshad Akhtar said, “This is an important cornerstone of regional collaboration on sustainable management of natural resources in Asia and the Pacific. It underpins the agreement already reached in the regional roadmap for sustainable development and provides us with the vision of our member States on future cooperation.”

“There is a clear resolve to bring about a pollution free Asia Pacific. Political leadership, private sector engagement and citizen action is essential to ensure that people’s basic needs like access to healthcare, water and proper sanitation are met. At the same time, it is imperative that we step up efforts to reduce plastic waste and marine litter,” said Erik Solheim, head of UN Environment.

Other issues addressed at the periphery of the Summit include gender and environment, oceans governance, climate geoengineering, investments in water infrastructure and the Astana Green Bridge Initiative.

By C. S. Kuppuswamy

When Suu Kyi took over after a sweeping victory in the elections, she had three priorities in mind. The first was ethnic reconciliation, the second was constitutional amendment and the third economic empowerment. Within the limited space available to her under the 2008 constitution, Suu Kyi has deftly managed to make some progress in ethnic reconciliation. On the economic front, Myanmar continues to suffer from “economic underdevelopment” as Suu Kyi herself admits and is because of lack of peace and stability that depends very much on the Army. As for the second, the country has a long way to go as the Army still holds the key and is unlikely to relent in the near term. Amidst all these, Myanmar has shot into prominence internationally for the wrong reasons- the Rohingyan crisis that resulted in a firm response from the army to simultaneous attacks on 30 Police posts in northern Rakhine Province by a terrorist unit that called itself as the Arakan Rohingyan Salvation Army.

Consequent to the second round of the 21st century Panglong Conference in end May 2017 there has been a lull in the political activity in Myanmar except for renewed efforts between the ethnic groups and the government for sorting out the differences and encouraging more groups to sign the National Cease-fire Agreement in the near future. The latest good news was that the UNFC- a group that did not participate in the Second Panglong Conference is said to have decided to go the “National Cease Fire Agreement Way” as proposed in the first conference.

However, the release of the final report of the Kofi Annan-led Advisory Commission on Rakhine State on 23rd August 2017, an attack in the early hours of 25 August 2017 on the security forces by the Arakan Salvation Army in the Rakhine State and the reactions of the Government and the clearance operations by the Tatmadaw (armed forces) to this attack has brought the nation to the limelight of the international media and condemnation by the human rights agencies of the world. Besieged as she was from international media as well as some countries like Turkey, Suu Kyi in turn denounced the international attention and blamed the terrorists for a “huge iceberg” of misinformation on the violence in the Arakan State

Arakan Advisory Commission

The nine- member Arakan Advisory Commission under the Chairmanship of former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan was constituted in September 2016 to investigate and give their recommendations for the conflict involving the Rohingyas and the other communities in the state of Rakhine. The commission submitted its final report on 23 August 2017. While indicating that a highly militarized response is unlikely to bring peace to the area, the commission recommended among other things the review of the 1982 citizenship act for granting citizenship to the Rohingyas and for their freedom of movement, employment opportunities and socio-economic development of the area.

The State Counsellor’s office conveyed its appreciation of the final report and that it is serious in its efforts to find a way forward for Rakhine and indicated the progress already made in this direction on the basis of the recommendations made in the interim report. However, it had also enumerated the constraints being faced by the government in this regard.

Attack by Militants and the military Crackdown in Rakhine State

In the early hours of 25 August 2017 the Rohingya militants staged a co-ordinated attack on 30 police posts and an army post in Maungdaw. The Army Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing “cited the casualties of security forces as 13 (11 policemen and two soldiers) besides an immigration officer, a member of health staff and 14 ethnic Arakanese civilians. He also described infrastructure that had been destroyed including eight bridges and more than 2700 homes”. – The Irrawaddy 04 September 2017.

The Arakan Salvation Army (ARSA) which has claimed responsibility for this attack has been declared a terrorist organisation by the Government. The Maungdaw area has been declared a military “operational area” in order to ensure the “effectiveness” of the clearance operations as indicated by the Myanmar Army C.in.C.

In the crackdown and the clearance operations launched on 25 August and which is still in progress, the causalities and the number of Rohingyas fleeing into Bangladesh have been increasing every day. A Reuters report of 05 September 2017 indicates that nearly 1,25,000 Rohingya Muslims have fled to Bangladesh and at least 400 of them have been killed besides burning of homes and extensive damage to infrastructure.

Aung San Suu Kyi and her government is under great pressure for an immediate end to the military operations in this area and to provide humanitarian assistance and development aid for the short and long term. The UN Security Council met on 30 August 2017 and expressed its concern. Bangladesh, Malaysia and Indonesia have expressed their concerns on the increasing violence against Rohingya Muslims.

Civil Military Relations

Early August 2017 the Yangon Region Chief Minister had commented “The Military should be under civil administrative rule. According to protocol the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces is at the level of the director-general. But we have to deal with the (C-in-C) as head of state. This is not democracy at all” – Frontier August 06, 2017.

The Armed forces created a ruckus over this remark and the Yangon Region Chief Minister had to tender an apology for his remarks. The Tatmadaw went to the extent of saying that such remarks damage the prospects for national reconciliation and for building a long term relationship between the government and the Tatmadaw.

There was another instance- the Economic Advisor to the NLD besides blaming inept bureaucracy, pointed out that military control as one of the reasons for poor economic performance. He said that the first challenge to improve the stagnant economy, is the constitution and its limitations with the Army taking away 25 percent of the parliament seats and three ministries!

It looks that, given the constraints and the limited space available, the present government is trying to maintain a harmonious relationship with the Tatmadaw (Army). However, the obstacles posed by the Tatmadaw in the peace process, its offensives on some major ethnic groups and the current operations against the Rohingyas indicate that the relations are at present strained and the government is in a weak and delicate situation to handle the Tatmadaw. For instance the unilateral decision of the Army to undertake “clearance operations” in Kachin controlled area would certainly go against the spirit of the recently held Second Panglong Conference. When members in the Parliament raised objections, the Army representative bluntly told them that according to the Constitution the army need not seek approval from anyone!

Sino-Myanmar Relations

Aung San Suu Kyi had a one to one meeting on 16 May 2017 with Xi Jinping during her visit to China to attend China’s Belt and Road Initiative Forum. (BRI)

China and Burma signed five agreements on that day regarding co-operation in economic development, health and the preservation of historic monuments in Bagan. Of these agreements the framework of the Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road Initiative and the establishment of the China- Border Economic Cooperation Zone are very important.

China has taken special interest in the ongoing peace process in Myanmar by sending its special envoy Sun Guoxiang who had met Aung San Suu Kyi and some ethnic groups and had even arranged a flight to fly some ethnic groups to Naypyidaw to attend the peace conference in end May 2017.

China sent Song Tao, Head of International Liaison Department of the Communist Party of China on an official trip to Myanmar. He had a meeting with Aung San Suu Kyi on August 04, 2017 which was highly publicised. There are indications of a high level visit from China to Myanmar.

China is the only neighbouring country which had not commented on the current Rohingya Crisis.

With the UNFC deciding to go by the NCA, the field is now open between the China controlled Federal Political Negotiation Consultative Committee (FPNCC) and the Government. This group completely negates the modalities laid down by the National Cease fire and would take on the government collectively. While Suu Kyi’s government is willing to be flexible, the Army appears to be reluctant to move away from the NCA! It is not willing either to recognize the northern alliance as yet though it is now part of the FPNCC. Here again the Army holds the key.

Indo-Myanmar Relations

Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on his first bi-lateral state visit to Myanmar from 05-07 September 2017. He had last visited Myanmar in November 2014 for ASEAN-India Summit.

India, though not trying to compete with China, is improving its connectivity with Myanmar and is actively involved with Myanmar in some development cooperation projects in its pursuance of its Act East policy. The PM’s visit appears to have been a great success. It had indicated, that unlike other countries, it is not interested in commercial cooperation and has no agenda of its own in Myanmar.

Conclusion

State Counsellor Suu Kyi has too many challenges to cope with. People who have swept her into power have high expectations and may not be aware of the constraints placed on her in the 2008 Constitution to Myanmar’s transition to democracy. Despite obstacles in the peace process and in maintaining law and order she has done her best, given the fact that she is not in control. She still has the international support. Where she has power she has used – for e.g. she has not allowed the National Defense and Security Council to meet where the army has the majority. She did not allow martial law to be declared in Northern Rakhine State, though tough clearance operations are still going on. The Rohingya problem which has shot into lime light needs to be attended to immediately. She could do more in improving the economy and this cannot wait for the ethnic problem to be solved.