Researchers are creating a library of movement data from different dog breeds, to make animal animations in films and video games more realistic.

Films such as the Planet of the Apes used motion capture techniques extensively to transform their human actors into human actors into apes, however this process doesn’t work well for true four-legged animals.

Now computer scientists from the Centre for Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research & Applications (CAMERA), at the University of Bath, are looking to automate this process.

They are developing a new technique that will be able to use the movements of a two-legged human actor to drive a four-legged animal character, to make it move in a more realistic way.

The team has invited canine residents from local neighbours Bath Cats and Dogs Home to their studio to help collect the motion capture data.

Head of Studio at CAMERA, Martin Parsons, said: “At the moment, actors have to walk around on all fours, and the computer software changes them into an animal.

“What we want to do is to look at the movements of the human actor and then use a kind of translator to look at a library of real animal data to make the character on the screen move in a realistic way.

“It works a bit like a puppeteer, with the actor using their whole body to drive the animal avatar.

“We’re really grateful to the Bath Cats and Dogs Home for letting us work with their dogs.

“It is fantastic to be working with an important local charity just down the road from the University and we’re delighted to be making a donation to contribute towards the valuable work they do.”

The dogs will be wearing coats with reflective markers fixed onto them. Infrared light hitting the reflective markers is sensed by special cameras that are placed around the edge of the studio, which can then record the 3D position of the marker. This information can be used to reconstruct the movement of the dogs on the computer screen.

The dogs will play on an agility course set up in the studio with their Animal Carers from the Home and an animal behavioural assistant on hand to help them interact, overcome any camera shyness and of course have fun.

Simon Lynn, Head of Animal Operations at Bath Cats and Dogs Home, said: “This is such an innovative project for our dogs and team to be a part of. It will be so beneficial for the dogs taking part as it is great socialisation for them – meeting new people and seeing different sights and sounds.

“Kennel life can become repetitive so we’re always looking at ways to add enrichment to our dog’s lives whilst they’re waiting to be adopted and a trip to the CAMERA team at the University of Bath definitely fits the bill.

“Their carers are with them at all times so we can check they’re relaxed and happy but we’re sure they are going to love it. Not only that but the donation towards Bath Cats and Dogs Home’s work will help these dogs find new homes and help us to save many other unwanted animals in our area.”

They will be using lots of different breeds to study the different gaits of the animals, and hope to expand the project to use cats next year.

As well as informing the research at CAMERA, the data collected during the shoots will be used as part of collaborative research and developments projects with industrial partners to drive the next generation of tools and processes across the visual effects and games industries.

The next generation of electronic hardware security may be at hand as researchers at New York University Tandon School of Engineering introduce a new class of unclonable cybersecurity security primitives made of a low-cost nanomaterial with the highest possible level of structural randomness.

Randomness is highly desirable for constructing the security primitives that encrypt and thereby secure computer hardware and data physically, rather than by programming.

In a paper published in the journal ACS Nano, Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering Davood Shahrjerdi and his NYU Tandon team offer the first proof of complete spatial randomness in atomically thin molybdenum disulfide (MoS2). The researchers grew the nanomaterial in layers, each roughly one million times thinner than a human hair. By varying the thickness of each layer, Shahrjerdi explained, they tuned the size and type of energy band structure, which in turn affects the properties of the material.

“At monolayer thickness, this material has the optical properties of a semiconductor that emits light, but at multilayer, the properties change, and the material no longer emits light. This property is unique to this material,” he said. By tuning the material growth process, the resulting thin film is speckled with randomly occurring regions that alternately emit or do not emit light. When exposed to light, this pattern translates into a one-of-a-kind authentication key that could secure hardware components at minimal cost.

Shahrjerdi said his team was pondering potential applications for what he described as the beautiful random light patterns of MoS2 when he realized it would be highly valuable as a cryptographic primitive.

This represents the first physically unclonable security primitive created using this nanomaterial. Typically embedded in integrated circuits, physically unclonable security primitives protect or authenticate hardware or digital information. They interact with a stimulus — in this case, light — to produce a unique response that can serve as a cryptographic key or means of authentication.

The research team envisions a future in which similar nanomaterial-based security primitives can be inexpensively produced at scale and applied to a chip or other hardware component, much like a postage stamp to a letter. “No metal contacts are required, and production could take place independently of the chip fabrication process,” Shahrjerdi said. “It’s maximum security with minimal investment.”

The Yeti or Abominable Snowman — a mysterious, ape-like creature said to inhabit the high mountains of Asia — looms large in the mythology of Nepal and Tibet.

Sightings have been reported for centuries. Footprints have been spotted. Stories have been passed down from generation to generation.

Now, a new DNA study of purported Yeti samples from museums and private collections is providing insight into the origins of this Himalayan legend.

The research, which will be published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, analyzed nine “Yeti” specimens, including bone, tooth, skin, hair and fecal samples collected in the Himalayas and Tibetan Plateau. Of those, one turned out to be from a dog. The other eight were from Asian black bears, Himalayan brown bears or Tibetan brown bears.

“Our findings strongly suggest that the biological underpinnings of the Yeti legend can be found in local bears, and our study demonstrates that genetics should be able to unravel other, similar mysteries,” said lead scientist Charlotte Lindqvist, PhD, an associate professor of biological sciences in the University at Buffalo College of Arts and Sciences, and a visiting associate professor at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore).

Lindqvist’s team is not the first to research “Yeti” DNA, but past projects ran simpler genetic analyses, which left important questions unresolved, she said.

“This study represents the most rigorous analysis to date of samples suspected to derive from anomalous or mythical ‘hominid’-like creatures,” Lindqvist and her co-authors write in their new paper. The team included Tianying Lan and Stephanie Gill from UB; Eva Bellemain from SPYGEN in France; Richard Bischof from the Norwegian University of Life Sciences; and Muhammad Ali Nawaz from Quaid-i-Azam University in Pakistan and the Snow Leopard Trust Pakistan program.

The science behind folklore

Lindqvist said science can be a useful tool in exploring the roots of myths about large and mysterious creatures.

She notedthat in Africa, the longstanding Western legend of an “African unicorn” was explained in the early 20th century by British researchers, who found and described the flesh-and-blood okapi, a giraffe relative that looks like a mix between that animal and a zebra and a horse.

And in Australia — where people and oversized animals may have coexisted thousands of years ago — some scholars have speculated that references to enormous animal-like creatures in Australia’s Aboriginal “Dreamtime” mythology may have drawn from ancient encounters with real megafauna or their remains, known today from Australia’s fossil record.

But while such connections remain uncertain, Lindqvist’s work — like the discovery of the okapi — is direct: “Clearly, a big part of the Yeti legend has to do with bears,” she said.

She and colleagues investigated samples such as a scrap of skin from the hand or paw of a “Yeti” — part of a monastic relic — and a fragment of femur bone from a decayed “Yeti” found in a cave on the Tibetan Plateau. The skin sample turned out to be from an Asian black bear, and the bone from a Tibetan brown bear.

The “Yeti” samples that Lindqvist examined were provided to her by British production company Icon Films, which featured her in the 2016 Animal Planet special “YETI OR NOT,” which explored the origins of the fabled being.

Solving a scientific mystery, too: How enigmatic bears evolved

Besides tracing the origins of the Yeti legend, Lindqvist’s work is uncovering information about the evolutionary history of Asian bears.

“Bears in this region are either vulnerable or critically endangered from a conservation perspective, but not much is known about their past history,” she said. “The Himalayan brown bears, for example, are highly endangered. Clarifying population structure and genetic diversity can help in estimating population sizes and crafting management strategies.”

The scientists sequenced the mitochondrial DNA of 23 Asian bears (including the purported Yetis), and compared this genetic data to that of other bears worldwide.

This analysis showed that while Tibetan brown bears share a close common ancestry with their North American and Eurasian kin, Himalayan brown bears belong to a distinct evolutionary lineage that diverged early on from all other brown bears.

The split occurred about 650,000 years ago, during a period of glaciation, according to the scientists. The timing suggests that expanding glaciers and the region’s mountainous geography may have caused the Himalayan bears to become separated from others, leading to a prolonged period of isolation and an independent evolutionary path.

“Further genetic research on these rare and elusive animals may help illuminate the environmental history of the region, as well as bear evolutionary history worldwide — and additional ‘Yeti’ samples could contribute to this work,” Lindqvist said.

The rift between the Gulf countries and Qatar has created a space for Asian countries to step in to engage with the small peninsular state.

There’s a silver lining for Asian countries in the six-month old crisis in the Gulf that pits a UAE-Saudi-led alliance against Qatar. That is as long as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates shy away from attempting to harness their financial muscle to shore up lagging international support for their diplomatic and economic boycott of the idiosyncratic Gulf state.

Asian nations, including India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia and the Philippines, whose nationals populate the Gulf’s labour force, have already reaped initial benefits with Qatar, eager to put its best foot forward, significantly reforming its controversial kafala or labour sponsorship regime.

Qatar recently became the first Gulf state to introduce a minimum wage, albeit criticized by human rights groups for being at $200 below earning levels in many of the labour-supplying states. It has also sought to improve workers’ rights and committed to improving their living conditions.

Qatar was under pressure to reform the kafala system long before the Gulf crisis erupted, but the dispute with its Gulf neighbours strengthened its interest in being seen to be doing the right thing. Its moves are over time likely to persuade other Gulf states to follow suit.

The boycott as a result of its refusal to accept UAE-Saudi demands that would curtail its independence has forced Qatar to restructure trade relationships, diversify sources for goods and services, creative alternative port alliances, and recalibrate the strategy of its national carrier, Qatar Airways.

The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and their allies insist that Qatar unconditionally break its ties to various political groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, adhere to Saudi and UAE foreign policy, reduce relations with Iran, shutter the Al Jazeera television network, and accept monitoring of its compliance. Qatar has rejected any infringement of its sovereignty and called for a negotiated solution.

The two countries have so far shown no willingness to compromise on their insistence on unconditional Qatari acceptance, but have also shied away from escalating the dispute, by among others pressuring third parties to choose sides.

The dispute has further divided the Arab world with some countries like Egypt and Bahrain siding with the UAE and Saudi Arabia, others like Jordan, Lebanon, Tunisia,and Algeria sitting on the side lines and calling for a negotiated solutions, and finally nations like Oman and Algeria who have stepped in to help Qatar offset the impact of the boycott.

The fracturing of the Arab world was on display at a meeting in Cairo in mid-November of Arab foreign ministers. Saudi Arabia was able to wrest a statement condemning Iran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, but failed to achieve a consensus as Lebanon teetered on the balance because of Saudi pressure.

Without breaking the stalemate and the initiation of negotiations that at best would achieve a face saving formula that falls short of a fundamental resolution, the dispute is likely to settle in as a fact of life and further undermine the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) that groups the six Gulf states. Saudi Arabia and its allies have said they were not contemplating military intervention even if they have sought to foster tribal opposition to Qatari emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani led by lesser known members of the ruling family.

The UAE’s articulate ambassador to Russia, Omar Ghobash, suggested in June that “there are certain economic sanctions that we can take which are being considered right now. One possibility would be to impose conditions on our own trading partners and say you want to work with us then you have got to make a commercial choice.”

Six months later, the UAE and Saudi Arabia have yet to act on their threat, creating business opportunities as Qatar settles in for the long haul and structurally ensures that it will no longer depend primarily on its Gulf neighbours.

Food is one key area, making food security a Qatari priority. Turkey and Iran were quick to step in to fill the gap created by the Saudi ban on export to Qatar of dairy and other products. With the import of some 4,000 cows, Qatar has sought to achieve a degree of self-sufficiency with domestic production within a matter of months accounting for approximately 30 percent of consumption. Nonetheless, with a minimal food processing industry, Qatar will seek to diversify its sources, creating opportunity for Asian producers.

With the loss of some 20 Gulf destinations as a result of the boycott, state-owned Qatar Airways, the region’s second largest airline, may be the Qatari entity most affected by the crisis. Against the backdrop of a likely annual loss, Qatar Airways is looking to expand its route network elsewhere and weighing stakes in other airlines.

Asia is an obvious target. Qatar is scheduled to initiate flights to Canberra in Australia, Chiang Mai and Utapao in Thailand, and Chittagong in Bangladesh in the next year. The airline has rejected proposals that it bid for Air India, but plans to move ahead with plans for the launch of a domestic Indian airline. Elsewhere, Qatar Airways acquired a 9.61 percent stake in troubled Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific for $662 million.

Similarly, Qatar has had to compensate for its loss of port facilities, primarily in the UAE by diverting to Salalah in Oman and Singapore. While that solved the Gulf state’s immediate bottlenecks, it is probable that Qatar will take an interest in other Asian ports in competition with Saudi Arabia and the UAE.

Given Saudi interest in China-backed ventures such as Pakistan’s Gwadar and the Maldives, Qatar could well look at Indian alternatives, including the Indian-supported Iranian port of Chabahar, a mere 75 kilometres further up the coat from Gwadar. Singapore port has stepped in with Qatar availing itself of shipping and logistical services. Vietnam and India see opportunities in the sale of food and construction materials.

Perhaps most fundamentally, Asian countries like India, in a bid to ensure the security of their energy supplies, are looking at diversifying their sources and increasing the non-Middle Eastern portion from producers like the United States. Indian Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan adopted a tough stand in recent talks with OPEC Secretary General Sanusi Mohammad Barkindo, advising him that India was looking at alternative sourcing. India recently cut crude oil imports from Iran because of stalled negotiations over the development of an offshore gas deposit in the Gulf, forcing Iran to look for alternative buyers in Europe.

The Gulf, irrespective of if and how the crisis may be resolved, is unlikely to return to the status quo ante. As a result, the crisis is certain to influence political, economic and commercial relationships for decades to come. That creates opportunity that Asian nations potentially can capitalize on.

This article appeared at Pragati

By Nicholas Freiling*

The motives of net neutrality advocates differ. But the common thread among them is a general belief that internet service providers (ISPs) face no serious competition, and therefore overcharge both their supply-side (i.e., Netflix) and demand-side (internet users) customers and generally treat customers poorly.

In other words, ISPs have “natural monopolies” that allow them to rake in profits without improving service to customers or dealing with different customer-types in an equitable manner.

This perspective gave rise to “net neutrality,” which the Trump administration soundly condemned last week. This measure would have essentially transformed the internet into a public utility by regulating ISPs like other utilities (electricity, water, etc.). For convoluted reasons, regulators believe this will ensure internet service is distributed equitably among all who are willing to pay the going rate — no more up-charging big bandwidth-eaters (like Netflix), even at mutually-agreeable prices.

Underlying this perspective is the belief that we can decipher, in some way, the level of service that ought to be offered on the ISP market. To implement net neutrality, regulators would allegedly examine the ISP market and decide, on some grounds, that what exists ought to be different, and that such a change can only come about through government regulation.

But by what standard are regulators judging ISPs to be acting unfairly? Who can say they are making too much or offering too little? Sure, internet service, as the technology has evolved, bears some similarity to public utilities like water and electricity. But it is not the same service.

More specifically, how can we know what ISPs ought to charge?

Some argue that ISPs have obtained special regulatory favors in the past that positioned them to build unfair monopolies in the present. That’s another argument entirely that, frankly, isn’t often made by regulators. But even if that were true, is the solution to end the market for internet service altogether, and opt instead for a pseudo-market whose bounds and limits are controlled, ultimately, by government regulators?

This brings to mind an aspect of the socialist calculation debate, whereby Austrian economists (among others) revealed the self-destructive nature of socialism. One pillar of their argument — Mises’s specifically — is that without a market to study and observe, central planners will not know what prices to mandate for what quantities of goods. The result will be over- or under-production of regulated goods — distortive resource misallocations that ripple throughout the economy and cause excess supply and/or demand. Further, such regulations stifle investment and innovation in targeted industries, most often by indirectly capping profits.

It is not hard to see how this applies to net neutrality and regulating ISPs. By arbitrarily changing existing markets for internet service, regulators risk corrupting the fragile preconditions necessary for firms and consumers to calculate rationally, and the incentives necessary to lure investment and risk-laden innovative enterprises. The result could be excess demand in the market for internet service if regulations force prices too low, excess supply if regulations force prices too high, or stilted innovation in ISP technology altogether. Tech icon Marc Andreesen explains:

A pure net neutrality view is difficult to sustain if you also want to have continued investment in broadband networks. … If you have these pure net neutrality rules where you can never charge a company like Netflix anything, you’re not ever going to get a return on continued network investment — which means you’ll stop investing in the network. And I would not want to be sitting here 10 or 20 years from now with the same broadband speeds we’re getting today.

This is not a complex point, but it’s important in this particular context, given the importance of internet service in modern economies. A subtler but equally applicable point regards the nature of change in a dynamic world. In a sense, this is a more formal restatement of the problem with comparing market conditions to some model rooted in a concept of the economy as rotating in some static equilibrium. Economist Peter Boettke explains:

Mises [explained] how the static conditions of equilibrium only solved the problem of economic calculation by hypothesis, and that the real problem was one of calculation within the dynamic world of change, in which the lure of pure profit and the penalty of loss would serve a vital error detection and correction role in the economic process.

In the context of the issue at hand, this is particularly consequential. The market for internet service is brand new and growing and evolving quickly. To decide, in a market as young and dynamic as this, that current market prices are not fair reveals a great degree of confidence in mere “hypotheses,” as Boettke puts it, about what the ideal market for internet service should look like.

About the author:
*Nick Freiling is Founder/Director at Haven Insights, a DC-based market research firm. He studied Austrian economics at Grove City College and George Mason University.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

By Arthur Waldron*

(FPRI) — I made my genuine Thanksgiving on October 27. The occasion was Mr. Abe’s crushing victory in the Japanese election; the reason was a genuine, though perhaps erroneous, sense that we had been spared a potentially ghastly war in Asia, by the rebalancing of regional power that victory brought.

Japan will now start deliberately rearming and aiding her neighbors, with the pace determined by China’s aggressiveness. If China does not abandon her current expansionist territorial policy, but rather attempts nuclear blackmail against her neighbors, at the end of the day, Japan will match that too, with her own nuclear force, checkmating China. This will bring an armed peace.

Since at least 1995 when she occupied the Philippine Mischief Reef, China has been attempting to expand her territory to include Arunachal Pradesh (“South Tibet” in Beijing’s terminology) in India and islands held by South Korea, Japan, the Philippines, and others, as well as to take control of the entire South China Sea, half again bigger than the Mediterranean.

China calculated that no one would react seriously. She was emerging as the hegemon of Asia; others would recognize this fact (which may not be one) and doff their caps, no more. Certainly, the United States would continue to do nothing. The Obama administration had done effectively nothing while this attempt to transform the Indo-Pacific region was being carried out.

China is also actively seeking bases in Africa and elsewhere, with a view to controlling the key choke points in the international maritime transport network. This is Griff nach der Weltmacht, with Chinese characteristics. A continuation of such aggressive behavior will almost certainly lead to conflict, escalation, and perhaps general war.

In 2010, sparks flew at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations summit, as Hillary Clinton delivered a strong verbal condemnation. Then, in 2014, the Philippines filed suit in The Hague, under The Law of the Sea, the authority of which China has ratified and accepted. In 2016, the International Court of Arbitration found that all of China’s actions were illegal. China, however, ignored the decision completely, continuing her expansive policy, assuming that she could divide her opponents, intimidating them above all with her immense military and nuclear capabilities.

This seemed to work. Rodrigo Duterte, an erratic man, became president of the Philippines, and he began to come to terms with China. It became bad form to mention The Hague’s decision. Having torn up the international court’s decision, China looked set to create a fait accompli by flouting the law to use military intimidation instead.

The United States began to take serious action with the new administration in office. When President Trump made his highly successful visit to Asia, he did not need to mention security, as an almost unprecedented three Carrier Strike Groups were exercising in the seas nearby, message enough.

The United States is far away, though, and not trusted by anyone to use nuclear weapons to defend them. That is why the United Kingdom and France, both allies, maintain at great expense their own independent nuclear deterrents. But Japan? She foreswore war in her Constitution. Not only that, the United States presented herself as the “cork in the bottle” that would prevent Japanese armament. The drastic changes that China started unilaterally, assuming Japan would dither, in fact focused that country’s attention.

With Abe’s victory, we may expect Japan to become normal, which is to say possess a self-sufficient military capability including, if so pressed, nuclear weapons that will deter China and freeze her current policy. A democracy, Japan can move only with the support of her people. China’s threats to her territory, as well as the firing of two North Korean ballistic missiles over the islands, contributed to Abe’s victory. Now, we can expect a carefully calibrated Japanese response that will match China at every stage.

What does Japan have now? Her self-defense force numbers at about 250,000. At present, she lacks any but defensive armaments. Even so, her advanced technological capabilities mean that she can develop herself any weapon she needs, as good or better as the American systems on which she now largely relies. Japan does not steal technologies. She already has her technologies.

The jewel in her crown is her small (19) submarine force. The Sōryū is a conventional submarine so stealthy that the highly skilled Japanese anti-submarine forces can find only 5% of them when under way. They regularly sink American carrier escorts (using lasers) in war games. More importantly, as retired Chinese General Liu Yazhou 劉亞洲, an adamant Japanophobe, has warned, in case of naval conflict today, the Japanese submarines could sink the entire Chinese East Sea fleet in four or so hours.[1] (Liu is also an outspoken advocate of democracy). As the Japanese ambassador remarked to this author, “We are a shadow nuclear power.” In other words, it might take them a week to create an arsenal.

Otherwise, Japan has a slightly obsolescent air force to which U.S. F-35s are being added. More importantly, she has a prototype sixth generation stealth fighter the X-2 “Shinshin.” Cynics say she is building this to force American prices down. That may have been correct in the past, but today she is building it so as to be self-sufficient in aircraft. I believe this will be a superb jet: remember, not until 1943 did the United States field a fighter that could down the Japanese Zero.

Japan has also been launching “Information Gathering Satellites” since 2003. The most recent, launched earlier this year, is thought to have resolving power far superior to any other nation’s. Japan has enlarged her intelligence service. Particularly in cooperation with Taiwan (below), Japan will achieve intelligence dominance in the region.

What is missing?

Japan has only very short-range missiles. Now, however, she has undertaken a program to build a maneuverable missile having sufficient range and payload to pose a severe problem to any adversary, and a 1,000 mile-range missile nicknamed the “Japanese Tomahawk” about which in fact we know very little.

The Japanese speak of these as counter-strike missiles: in other words, to be used only after being attacked. Nothing, however, prevents their pre-emptive use. Likewise, they are intended to be conventional. Nothing, however, prevents the Japanese from unscrewing a conventional warhead and replacing it with a nuclear weapon.

In other words, Japan is now on the threshold of becoming a regional great power, not capable of attacking or invading her adversaries, but of paralyzing them by means of her advanced military capabilities. This fact transforms the Asian strategic situation. No longer will China be able to intimidate without fearing retaliation. The Hague decision will be proclaimed as justification, and who can gainsay the legitimacy of that?

Japan will become an Asian alliance focus in the emerging alliance—“The Quad”—of Australia, the United States, India, and Japan—hammered out, significantly, on the sidelines of this year’s ASEAN conference in Manila, so far China’s chief target. Also, she will become a non-U.S. source of advanced weaponry.

This last point—weapons supply—is particularly significant with respect to Taiwan. United States policy has always been to keep Taiwan weak enough that China can imagine conquest, yet fulfill the letter of the Taiwan Relations Act which requires us to supply defensive armament, by selling mostly obsolete or unwanted systems at great profit to our defense contractors. In fact, the loss of Taiwan, while it would be a crime against humanity, would not affect American security.

It would, however, mortally threaten Japan, whose main islands are 800 miles away, while her closest small island, Yonaguni, is less than 70 miles from the east coast of Taiwan. Japan and Taiwan are part of the same mostly submerged ocean mountain range. So we may expect Japan and Taiwan to cooperate in whatever ways are necessary to keep China at bay. If we continue to seek to please China even as we supply Taiwan with inadequate equipment, we may expect Japanese systems to fill the gap—submarines, naval vessels, state of the art aircraft. Not to mention close intelligence cooperation. Taiwan is often thought of as an American issue. Look at the map, though. It is a Japanese issue.

Finally, we must speak of diplomacy. Japan is widely distrusted, though this is perhaps a myth. Even South Korea, which was tortured brutally by Japan during the period she was a colony (1910-1945), maintains a high level of day to day security interaction with Tokyo. Japan’s diplomatic prowess is often underestimated, in part because she conceals it. But, particularly if aided by the United States and other “Quad” powers, she will show great effectiveness. “The Quad,” which China never imagined but was instrumental in creating as a counterbalance to her aggression, is more than a sufficient counterweight.

Note that China has created this situation for herself. She has no real allies: does anyone expect Russia or Pakistan to go to war on her behalf? Rather, by making such vast territorial claims from India to Japan (with the Russian Primorskii Krai, which controls the Pacific coast of Eurasia from Korea north on deck as the next), she has alienated, effectively, all her neighbors—here I include unstable Pakistan and opportunistic Russia—creating what political scientists would call a “countervailing coalition.”

Our greatest 19^th century general, Winfield Scott, might have called it “an anaconda” that China has created, but in the toils of which she now finds herself. This entanglement will render impossible China’s miscalculated policies.

Note too that without China’s aid or at least acquiescence, North Korea would not be able to command the attention or elicit the fear that she does now. She is a dependent variable in this larger change, which will undermine and weaken her. South Korea is furthermore high on the list of nuclear capable states.

Actions elicit equal and opposite reactions, so Newton states. Clausewitz notes that unlike physical reactions, those in conflict, being the product of the human mind, are entirely unpredictable. When she set out on her ill-conceived expansion program, China wrote off both Japan and the United States. Now, they are at the heart of the game.

Of course, all of this could go wrong. The possibility of a war worse than any in history erupting in Asia remains with us. The developments outlined here, however, render that less and less likely, while a cold and peaceful standoff looks more realistic.

If such should turn out to be the case, we may date its onset from the Japanese election that has brought Abe to complete power. Now, our task is to create an alliance with Japan such as the late Ambassador Hisahiko Okazaki always advocated—as close as ours with the United Kingdom.

So let us celebrate a war that I believe has been averted!

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

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] 流亞洲 ”日本4 小時內 ‘清空’中國東海艦隊” in當代世界 October 2015, http://mp.weixin.qq.com/s?__biz=MzA3NzY1ODg0Mg==&mid=2649667933&idx=5&sn=e8e3d08c32f890c2401ef7baf99dac58&chksm=8754b6e8b0233ffeb7a6e6f4bd865546855b51407bfc05a2fe6f95c7a7936e560888742dbf58&mpshare=1&scene=5&srcid=1016RLOGG4OLHCUBEgPeO034#rd, p. 1.

According to a poll by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah: 57% of the Israeli public supports mutual recognition of Israeli and Palestinian national identity, while 37% opposes it. Among Palestinians, 42% support mutual recognition and 56% oppose it. Thus the gap between Israelis and Palestinians in support of mutual recognition is 15 points and the gap for opponents is 19 points.

But if one looks at views of political states rather than national identities: 62% of Israelis support a two-state solution while 33% oppose it; among Palestinians, 53% support and 46% oppose a two-state solution. There will be little chance for peace until opponents are less than 20-30% and the gap between the sides is less than 20 points.

The majority of Israelis (68%) and Palestinians (69%) view the chances for the establishment of an independent Palestinian state next to Israel in the next five years as low or non-existent.

Mahmoud Abbas once described Palestinian and Arab rejection of partition as a “mistake” (in an interview in 2011).

Following the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Sharif Hussein, leader of the Arab Revolt against the Ottoman empire, urged the Arabs to “welcome the Jews as brethren and cooperate with them for the common welfare.” Those wise words were ignored by the Palestinian Arab leadership then, and continue to be ignored by the Palestinian Arab leadership now.

*Rabbi Maller’s new book ‘Judaism and Islam as Synergistic Monotheisms: A Reform Rabbi’s Reflections on the Profound Connectedness of Islam and Judaism’ (a collection of 31 articles by Rabbi Maller previously published by Islamic web sites) is now for sale ($15) on Amazon and Morebooks.

The residents of Egypt’s North Sinai governorate are facing further misery after President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi gave security officials the green light to use “all brute force” to gain complete control of the area within three months.

The speech, which came as part of a televised ceremony to mark the birth of the Prophet Mohammed, was the second time since Friday’s deadly mosque attack that the Egyptian leader spoke of using brute force in the war-ravaged area.

“I am mandating Maj. Gen. Mohammed Farid Hegazy before you and the entire people of Egypt to restore security and stability in Sinai,” Sisi said as he looked directly at the General.

“With God’s benevolence and your efforts and sacrifices, you and the police will restore security and use all brute force, all brute force,” he said.

While it is unclear what such force would entail, the Egyptian Army has long been criticized for alleged abuses and extra-judicial killings in the governorate.

The call comes after 305 people, including 27 children, were killed during Friday prayer at the al-Rawdah mosque, near the city of Al-Arish.

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack although it is claimed that the attackers carried ISIS banners during the brutal assault.

North Sinai has long been a thorny issue for the government in Cairo.

All non-state media outlets are restricted from covering the governorate, which has been under emergency law since 2014, and local journalists and activists face prison for speaking out.

The Egyptian president has previously said that terror groups benefit from the care taken by the security forces to prevent civilian casualties.

However, many rights groups paint a very different picture and the security forces have regularly stood accused of collective punishment of the residents, who are already caught in the battle between the military and Jihadists.

Lengthy power, water, and phone outages are common and the security forces allegedly carry out forced disappearances and extrajudicial killings with impunity.

As outsiders are rarely allowed access to the area, the alleged crimes often go unpunished and the voices of those terrified by both ISIS and the military are unheard.

Original source

In an interview on Telecinco, Spain’s Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy stressed that a reform of the Spanish Constitution cannot be “a reward” for those who sought to destroy it.

Furthermore, Rajoy said that the recent statements from the General Secretary of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) [Republican Left of Catalonia], Marta Rovira, on how Central Government was going to act against any sovereignty process are “slanderous”.

Rajoy again recalled that “a parallel legal situation was invented” in Catalonia, something “genuinely unbelievable in a democratic country such as Spain”. Although he admitted that triggering Article 155 of the Spanish Constitution was not an “easy” decision, Rajoy acknowledged that it served to change “many things”.

In this regard, Rajoy also stressed that legality has been restored in Catalonia and elections have been called within a legal framework, and “we now face a situation of much greater normality”. “The goal now is for Catalonia to recover peace and social harmony following the elections on 21 December”, he added.

21 December

As regards Article 155, Rajoy stressed that “it is a democratic act” provided for under the Spanish Constitution, which states that, “under exceptional circumstances, the State is entitled to defend itself.”

As regards the elections on December 21, Rajoy said he is convinced that “things will go well for those of us who believe in the law”, “in the rule of law”, “in national sovereignty and in the unity of Spain.”

When asked about the possible return of Carles Puigdemont to Catalonia before  December 21, Rajoy stressed that “we should expect anything” from him, although the former President of the Regional Government of Catalonia “has a duty to obey the law and comply with the Spanish Constitution” in any case.

After analyzing a database of geological records dated within the last 100,000 years, a team of scientists from the University of Bristol has discovered the average time between so-called volcanic super-eruptions is actually much less than previously thought.

Volcanoes and bolides, such as asteroids, are geohazards powerful enough to be destructive on a global scale.

One recent assessment described them as capable of returning humanity to a pre-civilization state.

The largest explosive eruptions are termed ‘super-eruptions’, and produce in excess of 1,000 gigatons of erupted mass, enough to blanket an entire continent with volcanic ash, and change global weather patterns for decades.

The team from the University of Bristol’s Schools of Earth Sciences and Mathematics estimated how often the largest explosive eruptions happen. Their analysis indicates that the average time between super-eruptions is only slightly longer than the age of our civilization — dating from the Agricultural Revolution 12,000 years ago.

Jonathan Rougier, Professor of Statistical Science, said, “The previous estimate, made in 2004, was that super-eruptions occurred on average every 45 – 714 thousand years, comfortably longer than our civilization.”

“But in our paper just published, we re-estimate this range as 5.2 – 48 thousand years, with a best guess value of 17 thousand years,” Rougier added.

According to geological records, the two most recent super-eruptions were between 20 and 30 thousand years ago.

According to Rougier, “On balance, we have been slightly lucky not to experience any super-eruptions since then.”

“But it is important to appreciate that the absence of super-eruptions in the last 20 thousand years does not imply that one is overdue. Nature is not that regular,” Rougier said. “What we can say is that volcanoes are more threatening to our civilization than previously thought.”

Our civilization will change in unimaginable ways over the next thousand years, and there are many other ways in which it might suffer a catastrophic blow well before the next super-eruption, according to Rougier.

On that basis, Professor Rougier said there is little need to plan now for a super-eruption, especially with many other pressing issues to address, which will affect the current and the next generation of humans. But large eruptions, which are much more frequent, can still be devastating for communities and even countries, and careful planning is a crucial part of disaster risk reduction.

Regarding the paper, Professor Rougier explained, “As well as improving our understanding of global volcanism, our paper develops relatively simple techniques to analyse incomplete and error-prone geological and historical records of rare events.

“These difficulties are ubiquitous in geohazards, and we expect our approach will be used for reappraising other types of hazard, such as earthquakes.”

By Dzana Brkanic

The Public Prosecution Service in The Hague has opened an inquiry into the possible ‘assisted suicide’ of Slobodan Praljak, who died after saying he had taken poison in court during his verdict.

Dutch prosecutors told BIRN on Thursday that they have opened an inquiry into the death of former Bosnian Croat military chief Praljak, who swallowed a vial of liquid during his verdict at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and later died.

“The Public Prosecution Service The Hague has received a request of the ICTY to investigate the death of Praljak. For the time being the inquiry will focus on assisted suicide and violation of the Medicines Act,” the prosecution said.

It said that Praljak “swallowed something and died possibly of the consequences”.

“As the inquiry has just started, the Public Prosecution Service The Hague cannot comment any further on the matter,” it added.

ICTY spokesperson Nenad Golcevski also told BIRN that because the inquiry is underway, he could not give any more information about Prljak’s death on Wednesday.

“What we can say is that we will work with the police,” Golcevski said.

He offered no information about the security procedures that Praljak underwent at the UN court on Wednesday.

As the court confirmed the 20-year sentence handed down to Praljak, the former commander of the Main Headquarters of the Bosnian Croat wartime force, the Croatian Defence Council, HVO, the defendant noisily interrupted the proceedings.

“Slobodan Praljak is not a war criminal. I reject your judgment,” he shouted at the judge.

He then drank something from a small container. In the confusion that followed, his defence lawyer Natasa Fauveau-Ivanovic could be heard saying that Praljak “says he has drunk poison”.

It remains unclear how the liquid suspected to have been poison got into the courtroom.

The UN court on Wednesday also upheld the convictions of five other political and military leaders of the unrecognised wartime Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia for crimes against Bosniaks in Bosnia and Herzegovina.

Jadranko Prlic, Bruno Stojic, Milivoj Petkovic, Valentin Coric and Berislav Pusic were all found guilty of crimes against humanity and other crimes against Bosniaks while they were senior political and military officials of the Herzeg-Bosnia statelet during wartime.

Prlic, the former prime minister of the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia and the senior figure among the defendants, was jailed for 25 years.

Stojic, the defence minister of the Croatian Republic of Herzeg-Bosnia, was jailed for 20 years, as were HVO chief Praljak and Petkovic, who was the HVO’s deputy commander.

Coric, the former commander of the HVO’s military police, was sentenced to 16 years in jail, while Pusic, the president of Herzeg-Bosnia’s Commission for the Exchange of Prisoners, was given ten years.

By Rock Rozario

Pope Francis has arrived in Bangladesh on the second leg of his Asian tour after departing Myanmar’s former capital Yangon on Nov. 30.

The pope arrived just after 3 p.m. local time and was greeted at Dhaka’s international airport by Bangladesh President Abdul Hamid, eight local bishops and political leaders.

A group of children also welcomed Pope Francis with flowers, song and dance.

After the welcoming ceremony, the pope visited the National Martyrs’ Memorial, at Savar, 35 kilometers northwest of Dhaka, where he placed a floral tribute in memory of the country’s liberation war of 1971 when the country separated from Pakistan.

He later traveled to the Bangabandhu Memorial Museum to pay homage to the late Sheik Mujibur Rahman, known as the “father of the nation” and who is also the father of the present Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina.

In his message to the President of Myanmar Htin Kyaw prior to his departure, Pope Francis expressed his appreciation for the welcome he received and thanked “the beloved people of Myanmar for their warm embrace.”

Before departing Pope Francis gave the Archbishop’s Residence in Yangon a sculpture representing Saint Francis talking to the birds: a symbol of brotherhood between mankind and creation.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) closed above 24,000 for the first time, as two prominent stocks lead the way on the 30-stock index. The surge occurred as new numbers show the US economy growing, while congress gets closer to passing tax reform.

The surge on Thursday occurred when the blue-chip index, which tracks the shares of the top-performing publicly traded companies, gained 331.67 points, and closed at the end of the trading day at 24,272.35. The massive gains were propped up by two stocks from United Technologies and Boeing, which both climbed 2.8 percent, according to the New York Post.

The DJIA wasn’t the only stock market index that soared on Thursday, Standard and Poor’s 500 index (S&P 500), which is an index based on market capitalizations of 500 large companies that all have common stock listed on the NASDAQ or the New York Stock Exchange, advanced .08 percent. And another index called the Nasdaq Composite also made significant gains, as it climbed 0.7 percent, CNBC reported.

As the trading day opened on Thursday, the Dow speedily gained more than 100 points, and allegedly got an extra push upwards after Senator John McCain (R-Arizona) said he supported the tax overhaul bill currently making its rounds in the Senate, the Post reported.

The surge also happened on the heels of new numbers released from the government on Wednesday, showing the US economy grew at annual pace of 3.3 percent in the third quarter, from the month of July, through September, which is the fastest growth in three years, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

The government stated that third-quarter growth surpassed their initial reports of a three percent expansion.

Investment in business specifically increased at an annual pace of 7.3 percent from July through September, which is cited as the biggest gain since the end of 2016. However, consumer spending, which accounts for 70 percent of economic output in the US, only grew at an annual pace of 2.3 percent. This figure is down from 3.3 percent in the second quarter.

With the good economic news coming from the US, the global economy is also gaining momentum, as most major countries are now growing at the same time for the first time in years, according to CNN Money.

Since President Donald Trump was elected to the presidency last year, the Dow has risen nearly 6,000 points, notching a total of 79 daily record highs since, CNN Money reported.

Former President Barack Obama will meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an upcoming trip abroad.

Obama will visit China and India before making a stop in Paris, according to a spokesperson for the former president. Obama will speak at various summits in the three countries he visits.

The Times of India last week reported that Obama would be in India’s capital city of New Delhi on Dec. 1 for an Obama Foundation event, which the spokesperson confirmed in a statement.

President Trump recently concluded his own five-nation tour of Asia, in which he met with both Xi and Modi during the 12-day trip.

Obama’s trip to India will come shortly after first daughter Ivanka Trump’s visit to the country. Trump, a White House senior adviser, met with Modi during the eighth Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Hyderabad.

“It was an honor to meet with you Prime Minister Modi. Thank you for co-hosting the 8th annual Global Entrepreneurship Summit! @StateDept,” Trump wrote on Twitter Tuesday.

During her speech to the summit, Trump spoke of female entrepreneurs, adding to her continued focus on women’s issues in her role at the White House

Other empires have come to an end, but Russia’s has experienced a different and more tragic trajectory, Vadim Zaydman says. It has periodically fallen apart – twice in the 20^th century alone — but then has partially reconstituted itself only to set the stage for its falling apart more completely in the next round.

“In 1991,” the Moscow commentator continues, Russians “mistakenly decided that the disintegration of the Soviet Union and the destruction of communism was the final and irreversible collapse of evil, an exit from darkness into the light and from slavery into freedom” (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5A1EDEF944A52).

But it turned out to be too soon to be happy with that outcome, Zaydman continues. Once again, “this was not the final disintegration but only a partial disintegration. [And] it turned out that the chief evil was not in communism but in the imperial essence of the Russian state” regardless of the livery in which it decked itself out.

As a result, after a brief interval and claiming to feel “phantom wounds,” the empire began to try to reassert itself; but it could do so only in part and by so doing could not fail to restart yet another semi-disintegration that would leave the country ever small, just as 1917 and 1991 did.

Vladimir Putin, Russia’s ruler today, “is an outstanding 19^th century politicians” who is trying to preserve the Russian Empire in the 21^st, an effort doomed to failure however much bluff and bluster he brings to the attempt and one that has no more genuine vitality than “an exhibit in a museum.”

This cycle of partial disintegration followed by partial reconquest will continue, Zaydman says, until the Russian people and its rulers finally recognize that “the imperial essence” of the Russian state “is the chief centuries-long curse of Russia and its Achilles’ heel” and until they see that each new iteration of this process is ever less an empire and ever more a parody of one.

“The more parody-like this becomes, the commentator continues, the more people will experience these phantom pains until from the former greatness of the past will remain only the Muscovite principality, from which, in fact, all this began.”

By Lisa Fuller*

Former National Security Council Director Peter Feaver recently told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that “even a single nuclear detonation” could “trigger an escalatory spiral that would lead to civilization-threatening outcomes.”

Two days later, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA) introduced a bill that could therefore save civilization. The entirety of the No First Use bill reads: “It is the policy of the United States to not use nuclear weapons first.”

The risk of nuclear war is at an all-time high, according to Former U.S. Secretary of Defense William Perry and expert Scott Sagan. Smith’s bill could be one of the most effective ways to mitigate that risk. It would substantially reduce the likelihood that either the U.S. or North Korea would start a war, whether through a pre-meditated attack or as a result of miscalculation.

First, the policy would constrain the Trump administration from launching a preventative nuclear strike on North Korea — a scenario that has become a realistic possibility.

The problem isn’t only that nobody can stop Trump from realizing his long standing desire to use nuclear weapons. It’s also that Trump’s advisers may now be more likely to toss him the nuclear football than to pry it out of his hands.

Top administration officials — including Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, Chief of Staff John Kelly, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Joseph Dunford — have all voiced support for using a preemptive strike to prevent North Korea from developing the capacity to strike the continental U.S., even while acknowledging the “horrific” ramifications.

As U.S. intelligence indicates that North Korea could attain such capabilities in early 2018, former U.S. General Barry McCaffrey’s predicts that we’ll be at war by summer 2018. North Korea’s latest missile test confirms that they are making rapid progress.

Rep. Ted Lieu and Sen. Edward Markey had enough foresight in January to introduce other legislation intended to prevent Trump from launching a pre-emptive strike. Unfortunately, their bill had too many loopholes to be reliable — including an exception in the event of an “imminent threat.”

Unfortunately, the restriction becomes impotent if the Trump administration uses “elastic definitions of the phrase ‘imminent threat,’” as the Cato Institute’s John Glaser puts it. Given Trump’s propensity for stretching the truth, it’s safe to assume that he considers definitions to be elastic as a general rule.

Smith’s bill, in contrast, allows scant wiggle room. Unless we fall down the Orwellian rabbit hole into a world where “war is peace and freedom is slavery,” it will be difficult to falsely claim that North Korea dropped a nuclear bomb.

Of course, a U.S. pre-emptive strike isn’t the only way to start a war — North Korea could also initiate hostilities. Smith’s bill would reduce the likelihood of that scenario as well.

While the CIA and independent experts agree that Kim Jong-un would only launch a pre-emptive attack if he believed that a U.S. offensive was imminent and unavoidable, the risk of miscalculation remains high. Misunderstandings and computer errors nearly led to nuclear war between the U.S. and the Soviet Union on at least seven occasions during the Cold War.

Given that U.S. and North Korea are not even on speaking terms, the risk of miscalculation is even higher now. Even when Cold War tensions peaked during the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev were in direct communication.

Plus, it would be understandable if Kim were feeling a little jumpy, given that the U.S. has deployed all of the military assets needed to launch an offensive over the last three months — including aircraft carriers, ships, and submarines armed with missiles, as well as bombers, munitions, and fighter jets — and has been practicing large-scale attacks off the Korean coast.

The most effective way to reduce the chances that Kim Jong-un will press the nuclear button would therefore be to convince him that the U.S. won’t drop the first bomb.

Opponents of Smith’s bill would likely claim that this strategy is counterproductive because it undermines U.S. deterrence capabilities. However, as Senator Ben Cardin points out, this argument is based on Cold War realities, and doesn’t apply to the North Korea crisis: Unlike the Soviet Union, North Korea doesn’t have the ability to obliterate U.S. nuclear assets in a first strike.

There is little reason to believe that the North Korea crisis will de-escalate if we continue on our current trajectory. Sanctions are unlikely to succeed, diplomatic deadlock has set in, and talks have ceased. Trump will continue to spout off threats and other dangerous rhetoric as long as he retains the ability to speak or tweet, and he may well undermine any serious attempts to restart diplomacy.

As long as Trump is in office, therefore, the No First Use bill is our best hope of preventing war.

Our survival may depend on it.

*Lisa Fuller spent the past eight years as a senior staff member and a civilian peacekeeper at Nonviolent Peaceforce, working in war zones such as Iraq, South Sudan, and Sri Lanka. She currently writes about civilian peacekeeping and conflict prevention. Follow her on Twitter: @gigipurple.

By Georgi Gotev

(EurActiv) — Bulgarian Prime Minister Boyko Borissov skipped the Africa-EU summit in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, and went instead to Saudi Arabia, a country with which Bulgaria has an almost virgin track record of relations.

In Saudi Arabia, Borissov is joined by his foreign minister, Ekaterina Zaharieva. This meant Bulgaria could only send a deputy foreign minister, Todor Stoyanov, to the summit.

The snub does not augur well for development being given top billing in the priorities of Bulgaria’s upcoming Presidency of the Council of the EU, despite communication on Twitter suggesting the opposite.

Teodor Kalpakchiev, a Governance and Political Inclusion Fellow to the 5th African Union – European Union Summit, who is currently in Abidjan, criticised his country’s leadership for lack of strategic vision in Africa. In an op-ed published on 13 November, he wrote:

“The lack of transparency in who, how and why represents Bulgaria in multilateral formats such as the currently ongoing UNFCCC’s COP23 in Bonn and the 5th African Union – European Union Summit in Abidjan that will take place 29-30 of November 2017 speaks of the lack of Europeanization of institutional practices, as well as of the lack of strategic vision.

“Although COP and ASEM meetings take place each year, the AU-EU (formerly Africa-EU due to the exclusion of Morocco) meeting is convened once in three years and is instrumental in discussing questions relating not only to development cooperation, but also sectoral collaboration in education, business and investments, trade, culture and intellectual property, etc.

“The lack of interest in Africa that transliterates into a possibility of non-representation, as the prime minister will be in Saudi Arabia and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is preoccupied with the preparations for the Council of EU Presidency.”

No official list of participants at the summit is available. According to the family photo in Abidjan, in which not all faces are visible, Central and Eastern Europe was represented as follows in Abidjan:

• Estonia, holding the EU Presidency, by Prime Minister Jüri Ratas;
• Poland, by Prime Minister Beata Szydło;
• Slovakia, by Prime Minister Robert Fico;
• Hungary, by Foreign Minister Péter Szijjártó;
• Czech Republic, by Foreign Minister Lubomír Zaorálek;
• Lithuania, by Foreign Minister Linas Linkevičius;
• Latvia, by Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkēvičs;
• Slovenia, by State Secretary Andrej Logar;
• Romania, by State Secretary Monica Gheorghiță (not visible in the photo).

Most of the older EU members were represented by their heads of state or government: France by President Emmanuel Macron, Germany by Chancellor Angela Merkel, Spain by PM Mariano Rajoy, Italy by PM Paolo Gentiloni, Belgium by PM Charles Michel, the Netherlands by PM Mark Rutte, Luxembourg by PM Xavier Bettel, Sweden by PM Stefan Löfven and Portugal by PM António Costa.

By Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar*

When Chairman Xi declared at the opening of the 19th Congress of the Communist Party of China, “It is time for us to take centre stage in the world,” he may have drawn this deduction from two perceived shifts in the global strategic environment. Firstly, the sensed flagging of US interests in global pacts emblematised by the “America First” agenda that most resembled an impending abandonment of regional partnerships that did not recognise US pre-eminence; and secondly, apparent US distraction in providing decisive security leadership in the troubled parts of the world. Of course, the issue of whether any grouping of major countries wanted Xi’s leadership never entered the debate.

China in recent years has become a major funder of infrastructure in the developing world. Its arrival has challenged existing institutional lenders, particularly when Xi in 2013, announced a scheme to resurrect the medieval Silk Road through a vast network of roads, pipelines, ports and railways that connected China with Europe via Central Asia, West Asia and ports in South Asia and East Africa. China intends to provide proprietary financial support to the project. The innards of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) are driven by ‘over the line’ issues such as client-government superintendence and financing on a scale not seen before or, remarkably, with such indistinct terms. Essentially, the scheme’s purpose is strategic influence of global connectivity; while at the same time, deploying close to 30 per cent of China’s substantial dollar reserves (over US$ 3 trillion) that has hitherto held low yielding US debt, on more strategically beneficial ventures.

Yet, restoring the lost grandeur of the Silk Route has many other challenges that may not be overcome by Xi’s ‘fiat.’ Beginning with internal corruption, since the entire programme is to be funded largely by state-owned banks. In the instance, as a wit put it, “then, how does a barber cut his own hair?” The matter of an opaque dispensation attempting to break from its political roots to gain a mandate of the people must add to planners’ discomfort. The questionable economics of committing billions of dollars into the world’s most impoverished and unstable regions hardly instils confidence in the programme. Already falling prices of primary products and unhinged host politics have undermined some of the 900 constituent projects. Compounding matters is the cost of freightage by rail, which is as much as four to five times that of cargo movement by sea. Besides, the current state of the enterprise is unidirectional as rakes return largely empty on the east-bound leg. Chinese ideology is hardly welcome in the region. The recent use of trade as a tool of punishment, specifically in the case of Philippines from where banana imports were cut, while rare earth exports to Japan were curbed, tariff barriers raised unilaterally, and the general economic retaliation on South Korea, does not in any way serve the ends of free trade-flow or economic inclusiveness.

Chinese historians do not tire of reminding the world of its recent past that staggered between the collapse of an empire to humiliating colonisation, from bloody wars to the civil anarchy of Maoism, and now in the success of ‘authoritarian capitalism,’ some even perceive a return of the Middle Kingdom. But even if the old world order were to make way, slipping into a mire of lost belief, there remains the problem of a potentially bizarre future where not nearly-quite-dead capitalism is controlled by a totalitarian regime fervently dependent on magnifying growth, perpetuity of dispensation and a disruptive brand of nationalism for stability; all of which echo a past not quite from the Orient but from a more recent Europe of the first few decades of the twentieth century.

In response, for Xi to turn to an even more assertive military-led foreign policy, brings to the fore the probability of conflict; specifically, on the Korean Peninsula, where China’s role as agent provocateur is becoming more and more undeniable. If the generalised theory of war suggests causes of armed conflict as introduction of weapons of mass destruction, a revisionist agenda stimulated by significant change in the balance of power, and lastly, a contrarian and often disrupted structure of order; then these are all eminently resident in the region. Yet global remedies adapted to date have neither generated a consensual course of action nor has the status quo been emphasised. In the on-going brinkmanship polity on the Korean Peninsula, the antagonists have predictably provided partisan military support and embraced a skewed one-sided stoppage of financial and economic flows that fuel the causes of conflict (being the main donor to North Korea, Chinese leadership sees no reason to check continuance). Similarly, dialogue has focused on little else than a dual-stance posture: delivery of military threats and a litany of in-executable demands.

The littorals of the West Pacific have, in the meantime, rediscovered the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) sans the US; while on the security front the quadruple entente (an initiative involving Australia, India, Japan, and the US) is averred for revival. These undercurrents suggest not just a hesitancy to endorse a China-led order, but also a push back on belt-and-road craft as well as Chinese blue-water ambitions.

In truth, much would depend upon the will to order, the universal repugnance to leaving centre stage untenanted, or the unlikely event of China’s amenability to sharing the stage.

* Vice Admiral (retd) Vijay Shankar
Former Commander-in-Chief, Strategic Forces Command of India

Kashmir is not new to ISIS flags being waved in the valley; however, the number of instances of this is negligible.

By Kabir Taneja

On 17 November, Islamic State’s officially aligned mouthpiece Amaq released a statement claiming responsibility for the killing of a police officer, later identified as one Imran Tak, in a shootout in the Zakura region of the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. One of the assailants, Mugees Ahmad Mir, was killed, while another was injured and arrested.

The fact that Amaq claimed ISIS responsibility for the attack in Zakura technically puts a lot of weight behind its legitimacy.

Historically, most attacks conducted or orchestrated by ISIS, whether by individuals or groups in the Middle East, Europe and beyond, are claimed by Amaq, giving the event “official” legitimacy. Amaq regularly releases such statements, including infographics detailing ISIS operations over the period of a month, while also operating channels on the instant-messaging service Telegram marketing the outcomes of ISIS operations to ever-receptive international media and an expansive online recruitment drive orchestrated with immense precision by the proto-state.

Al-Naba, considered ISIS’ official newsletter, released an info-graph detailing this year’s attacks on foreign lands a few days after Amaq’s Kashmir claims; however, the Kashmir attack did not figure in these data.

Kashmir is not new to ISIS flags being waved in the valley; however, the number of instances of this is negligible. Police forces in the region continue to maintain that ISIS has no “imprints” in the Kashmir Valley, which remains largely true.

Over the past three years, there have been sporadic instances of ISIS imagery, mostly the flag, being waved during unrest in Kashmir (many times the flags waved were incorrect in their use of Islamic imagery, showcasing the novelty factor of ISIS more than an ideological connection).

However, in an unplanned oddity, the already existing political complexities in the Kashmir Valley, if ISIS makes any official attempt to set up a wilayat (quasi-state) in J&K, it should expect great pushback from the prevailing situation in the region, both from state security and jihadists alike.

The combination of Pakistan’s state-sponsored terrorism, the Indian Army’s overwhelming presence to lay a security blanket throughout the valley to fight Islamabad’s overtures, and local Kashmiri factions fighting for their own causes creates a challenging environment for any outside intervention.

This is highlighted by Al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS) “hiring” former Hizbul Mujahideen terrorist Zakir Musa, and the organisation’s umpteenth attempt to make inroads into the Indian terror discourse without too much success despite taking a leaf from ISIS’ propaganda manual and releasing material online in regional languages.

However, ISIS is losing territory both in Iraq and Syria, and it could look to cause disruptions using its online mechanism to instill fear and chaos in precarious regions such as Kashmir. Previously ISIS, via Amaq, has claimed responsibility for acts of terror that it originally had nothing to do with, in an opportunistic strategy. Overall, even ISIS’ famed media propaganda machinery is reportedly falling silent as it faces a complete loss of its proto-state, and is forced to go back to its original roots, that of an insurgency movement.

According to some testimonies regarding alleged Indian pro-ISIS activities gathered by intelligence agencies, the issue of Kashmir has only come up a few times. According to one charge sheet, the accused said Kashmir was already held captive by the kuffar (unbeliever) Indian Army and nationalist Pakistani jihadi groups who are only fighting for land, and would never accept fighting under Islamic State.

However, it is imperative to remember that the narrative of the “death of ISIS” we hear today is oversold. While ISIS may have lost territory, it still very much exists on the ground.

This article originally appeared in Asia Times.

“Once a submariner, always a submariner.” -— Douglas Renken, Canadian submariner, CBC, Nov 26, 2017

A certain type of grief and moroseness accompanies deaths at sea. Not being naturally adapted to living in water, humankind has braved the aqueous environment, seeking to conquer it and tame its residents. At sea, the great battles of mythology are waged, its stories echoed in literary canons. Captain Ahab will pursue with fanatical fury Moby-Dick. Between sea and humanity, there will be a reckoning.

The vanishing act of the Argentine diesel-electric submarine ARA San Juan with its 44 crew would have sent a shudder of communal feeling through the navies of the world. The fate of the Russian nuclear-powered cruise missile submarine Kursk in 2000 and its 118 sailors, along with the bungles, the habitual secrecy and the cruelties of the aftermath, supplied an unwanted parallel.

The international commitment to identifying the missing sub was instant and genuine. Teams were assembled; crews deployed. Thirty ships and planes operated by 4,000 personnel from 13 countries have found their way into the mission to discover the whereabouts of the San Juan.

The Russians duly sent an Antonov An-128 cargo aircraft which arrived in Argentina on Friday, equipped with an unmanned submersible known as the Pantera Plus, capable of conducting sonar scans to depths of 1,000 metres. In addition to the Pantera Plus are deep sea divers and a diving doctor.

The US Navy’s Undersea Rescue Command has deployed a ship from Comodoro Rivadavia at Chubut’s port in the hope that its remotely operated mini-sub will be available to rescue any survivors.

The tale is unfolding as one between contesting truths and unresolved questions. The agony is dragged out. The odds keep being stacked. Supporters outside the Mar de Plata Naval Base sport placards of desperation in the face of crushing enormity: “We are with you, brave ones of the ARA San Juan.” Daily reports suggest the prospect of faintest survival – even after days, tinctures of hope are held out for sailors. Despite only having a week’s supply of air, the Navy publicity machine is intent on keeping spirits up. The prospect of culpability is also lurking.

Weather challenges in identifying the missing submarine are announced with regularity. This is humanity versus nature, human-made endeavour frustrated by the elements of a broody Mother Nature. “The bad weather conditions really are adverse,” claimed navy spokesman Enrique Balbi to a news conference.

This is far from all. The authorities reported a sound (US sources deemed it a “hydro-acoustic anomaly”) near the last recorded position of the San Juan on November 15 itself, suggesting that the submarine might well have suffered implosion. The source of this account came from the Vienna-based Comprehensive Nuclear-Test Ban Treaty Organisation (CTBTO), which detected an “abnormal, singular, short, violent, non-nuclear event” in the South Atlantic.

This very fact piqued the curiosity of those wondering, notably among the relatives of the crew members, whether the San Juan was up to scratch in the safety department. Tragic negligence, an often fatal human trait in matters of military equipment, was suggested.

The account was also laced with unwanted, agonising suspense. The submarine had surfaced momentarily on returning from a standard mission to Ushuaia Naval Base to report a “short circuit” of its batteries occasioned by the entry of water into its snorkel. The questions began accumulating with grief and menace: Was the San Juan equipped with torpedos? Was it fit for service, having been commissioned in 1985 and refitted in 2014?

As with any institutional response to tragedy, bureaucrats, even in the navy, must assume that procedures were followed. Rarely is a confession ever made at first instance that this was not done. “The submarine doesn’t sail,” claimed Babi, if its entire operating system is not checked. “If it set off… it was because it was in a condition to do so.” The power of presumption.

Despite the unfolding calamity, Balbi maintains a posture of mild confidence moderated by fatalism, one he describes as “a stage of hope and hopelessness” – the worst of emotional twilight zones. “We’ve been searching for 11 days but that does not remove the chance that they could still be alive in an extreme survival situation.” In this state, the Navy remains committed to identifying the “firm evidence” necessary in detecting the San Juan.

Most terrifyingly of all, and most crushingly, is the numbing uncertainty, the impairing contingency. Relatives are divided between what might be a premature acceptance of death, and the sliver of a chance for miraculous survival. This piece of machinery, which risks, if it already has not become so, assuming the form of a 65-metre long mausoleum in the sea, may well entomb its residents for years to come.