(Civil.Ge) — The Ukrainian authorities have put the ex-President of Georgia and the leader of the Movement of New Forces party in Ukraine, Mikheil Saakashvili, on wanted list following their failed attempt to arrest him on December 5.

The Prosecutor’s Office announced on December 6 that Mikheil Saakashvili is wanted under three articles of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – Article 15 § 1 – criminal attempt; Article 28 § 2- criminal offense committed by a group of persons upon prior conspiracy; and Article 256 § 2 – assistance to members of criminal organizations and covering up of their criminal activity committed by an official or repeated.

According to Larisa Sargan, spokesperson of Ukrainian Chief Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko, investigation over the case will be carried out by the National Police and the Security Service of Ukraine.

The Ukrainian Security Service, which temporarily detained the ex-President yesterday, had informed earlier that the case against Mikheil Saakashvili was launched under  Article 256 § 1 of the Criminal Code of Ukraine – assistance to members of criminal organizations and covering up of their criminal activity.

Speaking about the details of Saakashvili’s case on December 5, Ukrainian Chief Prosecutor Yuriy Lutsenko said the ex-President of Georgia planned protest rallies to seize power in Ukraine with the help of Serhiy Kurchenko, a Ukrainian businessman, who, according to the Chief Prosecutor, is a “member of the criminal organization of” ex-President Victor Yanukovych.

The Chief Prosecutor added that one of Saakashvili’s affiliates – a Ukrainian citizen of Georgian origin, who was allegedly mediating between Kurchenko and Saakashvili – was arrested on December 4 when the latter was trying to flee abroad. Lutsenko also released 30-minute-long audio recording, which, according to the Prosecutor’s Office, confirmed that Kurchenko was financing Saakashvili’s activities.

Mikheil Saakashvili, who has remained in a tent camp near the Ukrainian Rada, told his supporters earlier today that he does not plan to appear to the Chief Prosecutor’s Office, but added that he would be willing to receive an investigator in his tent.

Armenia has not been included in the European Union’s blacklist of tax havens, released by the EU’s ECOFIN Council on Tuesday, December 5.

Earlier reports suggested that the 28-member block might include the country on such a list alongside Turkey, Serbia, Cook Islands, the Marshall Islands, Panama and Tunisia.

The EU said Armenia, alongside 22 other countries, failed tax transparency standards but made sufficient commitments to improve the area of fair taxation.

The EU’s final blacklist list includes 17 countries: American Samoa, Bahrain, Barbados, Grenada, Guam, Korea (Republic of), Macau, the Marshall Islands, Mongolia, Namibia, Palau, Panama, Saint Lucia, Samoa, Trinidad and Tobago, Tunisia, and the United Arab Emirates.

Armenia and the EU signed the Comprehensive and Enhanced Partnership agreement in late November. Although the deal lacks trade component, it will nevertheless boost economic ties between the country and the bloc.

Supermassive black holes lurk at the centers of many galaxies. While some — like the black hole at the center of our own Galaxy — live quiet lives, occasionally snacking on a star or two, others feed voraciously, consuming gas and stars and growing rapidly in mass.

A Record-Breaking Quasar

To understand when supermassive black holes first appeared, astronomers scan the skies for actively-feeding black holes (known as “quasars”) from the Universe’s distant past. The latest discovery, by a team led by Eduardo Bañados (Carnegie Observatories) and published today in the journal Nature, is a record-breaker: J1342+0928, the most distant quasar known.

The new quasar is spotted at a redshift of 7.54, when the Universe was only 690 million years old, or 5% of its current age. The Universe was rapidly changing at this time. The first galaxies were appearing, and their energetic radiation had begun to ionize the surrounding intergalactic gas, illuminating and forever transforming the Universe from neutral to ionized. The discovery that the new quasar resides in a primarily neutral Universe places it solidly in this era, at the edge of cosmic dawn.

A Behemoth Black Hole

Despite its young age, the quasar harbors a whopper of a black hole, 800 million times the mass of the Sun.

For coauthor Xiaohui Fan (University of Arizona), it is amazing to discover so massive a black hole so early in cosmic history. “The new quasar is itself one of the first galaxies, and yet it already harbors a behemoth black hole as massive as others in the present-day Universe!” he remarked. The discovery challenges our understanding of the early growth of supermassive black holes and their host galaxies.

NOAO and Gemini Data Critical to the Discovery

Quasars like J1342+0928 are rare. The study that revealed the existence of J1342+0928 searched one-tenth of the entire sky, yielding only one quasar at this epoch. To pick out these rare sources from the millions of sources in the sky, the research team employed a clever selection technique. They used archival data to search for sources that are bright in the infrared (beyond 1 micron) but undetected in the z-band (just shortward of 1 micron).

Deep z-band data covering a large swath of sky was therefore critical to the study. Luckily just such a data set is now available from the DECam Legacy Survey (DECaLS) that is being carried out with the Dark Energy Camera on the Blanco 4-m telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory. The research team also used infrared data sets from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), and the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) Large Area Survey. Spectra taken with the near-infrared spectrograph on the Gemini North Telescope were used to measure the mass of the black hole.

“Paradoxically, the non-detection of this source in the DECaLS data is what makes it so interesting and identifies it as a very distant object,” explained David Schlegel (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, the other co-lead of the DECaLS survey.

Commenting on the research team’s use of the archival DECaLS data, Arjun Dey (National Optical Astronomy Observatory), the other co-lead of the DECaLS survey, remarked, “DECaLS was designed from the ground up as a public project, so it is wonderful to see the data enabling exciting discoveries that are pushing the boundaries of the known Universe.”

“A significant discovery like this is the hoped-for result of NSF Astronomy’s investment in facilities, major surveys, and extraordinary investigator teams with targeted follow-up,” said Richard Green, Director of the NSF’s Division of Astronomical Sciences. Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory is part of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory (NOAO). Both NOAO and Gemini are funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).

From a Precocious Youth to Staid Middle Age?

Coauthor Fan speculates that the new quasar, as remarkable as it is, is “probably just an early bloomer. If it is located in a denser than average part of the Universe, it could get an earlier start in life and grow more quickly.” Fan suspects that despite its precocious youth, J1342+0928 eventually settled down to life at a more measured pace, becoming a more typical supermassive black hole at the center of a large elliptical galaxy.

What’s Next?

The reported result is part of a longer term search for the earliest quasars. The research team is adopting a similar strategy in its exploration of a larger area of sky to track down and study the earliest quasars. How long will J1342+0928 remain the record holder? Only time will tell!

Scientists have long sought to unravel the molecular mysteries that make the human brain special: What processes drove its evolution through the millennia? Which genes are critical to cognitive development?

A new study provides insight on the matter by demonstrating that a gene controlling our biological clocks also plays a vital role in regulating human-specific genes important to brain evolution. The findings from the O’Donnell Brain Institute open new paths of research into how CLOCK proteins produced by the CLOCK gene affect brain function and the processes by which neurons find their proper place in the brain.

“People have been searching for genes that are important for brain evolution, within the context of our larger, folded brains,” said Dr. Genevieve Konopka, a neuroscientist with UT Southwestern’s Peter O’Donnell Jr. Brain Institute. “We now have evidence that CLOCK regulates many genes outside of circadian rhythms, so we can place it as a key point in the hierarchy of important molecular pathways for human brain development and evolution.”

Human brains are notably bigger than the brains of our closest relative, the chimpanzee. But because size alone doesn’t account for cognitive abilities – mammals such as whales and dolphins have larger brains – scientists have sought to understand what makes the human brain smarter.

CLOCK Genes

• Nobel: Circadian breakthroughs
• Brain Mapping: Human Cell Atlas
• Video: IDing memory genes
• Research: Konopka Lab

Dr. Konopka’s research has focused on the neocortex, an area of the brain with distinctive folds that is associated with sight and hearing and considered the most recently evolved part of the cortex. Her lab released a study in 2012 that found CLOCK has increased expression in the human neocortex compared to other primate brains. The findings prompted further questions about what these body-clock proteins were doing in a neural region that is not traditionally considered a hub for circadian rhythm function.

The new study published in Genes & Development offers some answers:

• CLOCK regulates a set of genes important to brain evolution that have differences in terms of where and how much they are expressed compared to other primates.
• CLOCK regulates genes linked to cognitive disorders, and has an important role in human neuronal migration – the process by which neurons born in other parts of the brain travel to the appropriate neural circuits. Defects in this migration process lead to a range of cognitive disorders.

The findings suggest there may be much more to learn about various functions controlled by CLOCK, identified in 1997 by UT Southwestern’s Dr. Joseph S. Takahashi. His groundbreaking discovery expanded on Nobel Prize-winning fruit fly research by showing biological clocks exist in mammals. Multiple studies since Dr. Takahashi’s finding have suggested links between CLOCK function and health issues such as cancer, cognitive disorders, and depression.

Dr. Konopka’s study – which used postmortem brain tissue and human neurons in culture – is the first to examine CLOCK’s role in the human neocortex.

“A novel function of the CLOCK gene in the brain not directly related to circadian rhythms is unexpected, and its possible role in the evolution of the human neocortex is very exciting,” said Dr. Takahashi, a corresponding author on the new study, Chairman of Neuroscience at UT Southwestern, Investigator for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and holder of the Loyd B. Sands Distinguished Chair in Neuroscience.

The Konopka Lab will seek to expand on the findings by studying brain organoids – essentially mini human brains grown in a dish – to understand the specific targets that CLOCK regulates.

The team will manipulate CLOCK in these tissues and document changes in function, such as defects in neuronal migration or the development of other cell types. Dr. Konopka’s research will also involve “humanized mice,” which have been given a boost of CLOCK in their neocortex. The lab will monitor for various changes in brain development and behavior.

“There is so much we don’t know about human brain development and evolution,” said Dr. Konopka, Associate Professor of Neuroscience and the Jon Heighten Scholar in Autism Research. “We’re putting more pieces of the puzzle together to understand which genes are connected to others.”

Logging of the largest trees in the Sierra Nevada’s national forests ended in the early 1990s after agreements were struck to protect species’ habitat.

But new research reported Dec. 6 in the journal Diversity and Distributions by University of Wisconsin-Madison ecologists shows that spotted owls, one of the iconic species logging restrictions were meant to protect, have continued to experience population declines in the forests.

Department of Forest and Wildlife Ecology graduate student Gavin Jones, Professor Zach Peery, senior scientist R. J. Gutiérrez, and their colleagues say the owls in the area may still be paying an “extinction debt” that was created by historical logging of large trees. These large, old trees the owls rely on are slow to grow back, meaning the owl population could still be showing the effects of logging that ended decades ago.

Compared to nearby national parks, which were never extensively harvested, national forests in the area were more extensively logged until the 1992 restrictions on harvesting large trees and logging near owl habitat took effect. The new study shows that spotted owl populations are stable in national parks. But in the more recently logged national forests, the researchers suggest historical logging of the largest trees may be contributing to the continued declines in owl populations they observed.

Diagnosing causes of decline is difficult, says Peery, and factors responsible for owl declines are likely complex. “Other factors we didn’t measure could have contributed to declines too, including contamination of owl prey from rodenticides used as part of illegal marijuana cultivation,” he adds, which has been recently observed in other species in the region like the Pacific fisher, a weasel relative. However, the researchers say owl declines were consistent with observations expected in forests with a deficit of large trees.

The findings could indicate parallels among other species and other habitats around the world. The results also have the potential to inform policy decisions about how to continue protecting sensitive habitats, since existing regulations may require more time to pay off in bolstering species’ populations.

“The spotted owls’ habitat contains the most economically valuable trees,” says Jones, who is the lead author of the new study. He explains that the ideal spotted owl habitat includes trees that could be more than 6 feet wide and hundreds of feet tall. These giants are often centuries old.

Combined with the owls’ long lifespan, the slow regrowth of very large trees means that population declines caused by habitat loss may both take time to appear and last long after protections are put in place. That lag between cause and effect is termed an “extinction debt.”

To determine whether spotted owls were paying off this debt, Peery’s group traveled to four sites that included three national forests — which had been logged — and two national parks, Kings Canyon and Sequoia, which were left intact. Beginning in 1993, after logging restrictions were established, they surveyed the number of owls each season. That requires a bit of performance from the researchers.

“We wander through the woods at night hooting to ourselves,” Jones says of the surveys they conduct, which attract owls with vocalizations. They can then band individual owls they encounter to track them from season to season. Jones was only 4 years old when the surveys began. “I’m the beneficiary of decades of work,” he says. They also used satellite information to determine the area covered by trees and relied on a new set of data on the size of trees recorded by other scientists.

While the habitat was stable in the once-logged national forests as a result of habitat retention guidelines implemented by the U.S. Forest Service, these areas are characterized by a large-tree deficit. Jones and his colleagues found that the owl populations in these areas had continued to decline — evidence of an extinction debt. In contrast, the nearby national parks hosted stable owl populations, even though their habitat wasn’t actively improving. High-quality owl habitat was about four times more common within owl sites in the national parks as in the national forests.

“There is a shortage of very large, old trees that support spotted owls that take decades to centuries to regenerate,” explains Jones. “Owl populations could stabilize in their forests with a large-tree deficit, but it will take time to regrow the trees they rely on.” He says spotted owls aren’t unique in their plight. “Any species can continue to experience decline after you remove habitat,” he says.

The takeaway, says Jones, is that stabilizing, and even increasing, spotted owl populations might require more than just halting habitat loss. It likely requires restoring the large, ancient trees they rely on to the landscape — and patience.

The Spanish Tax Office, working closely with the Guardia Civil, have completed the biggest seizure of cocaine in Spain for 18 years, with a total of 5,883 kilograms of the drug being found in the Port of Algeciras. The drug was hidden in a container that according to its Customs documentation should have been carrying bananas from the Colombian city of Medellin, with the final destination being El Prat de Llobregat in the province of Barcelona.

So far three people have been arrested in the operation: one heading the company importing the container that transported the cocaine and two close accomplices.

“Operation Nativity” began with investigations carried out by the Sub-Directorate General of Operations of the Department of Customs and Excise of the Spanish Tax Office. Following on from these prior actions, the final phase of the operations was decided on and implemented by the Risk Analysis Unit (Spanish acronym: UAR) of the Customs of Algeciras, a joint unit in which officials from the Tax Office work together with the Guardia Civil under orders from the Customs authority.

Prior investigations

The operation began when the Sub-Directorate General for Operations of Spanish State Tax Office (Spanish acronym: AEAT), based on information available in the AEAT databases and other information obtained by it, detected a suspicious shipment and applied the usual investigative techniques used by the Agency to determine the risk potential of the freight.

Based on this risk analysis, and examination of the commercial and maritime documentation that accompanied the shipment, a suspicious container was selected that according to the accompanying documentation was transporting a shipment of bananas aboard the ship Banak with its final destination being El Prat, after docking at Algeciras.

Once selected, the Sub-Directorate of Operations of the Tax Office requested the Customs Authorities in Algeciras to inspect the merchandise in the container physically as there were well-grounded suspicions that the container could contain cocaine.

The timely alert received by the Customs was submitted to the Risk Analysis Unit, which carried out the check and confirmed the existence of drugs in the previously selected container.

The check was carried out on 28 November in the port of Algeciras. It revealed a total of 5,883 kilograms of cocaine in packets of one kilogram each, marked in the usual way by drug smugglers to identify shipments to different destinations or organisations.

A historic seizure

The seizure in Algeciras is the biggest of cocaine by the Spanish police in 18 years, the largest amount seized in a container in Spain and the second biggest in the history of drug smuggling in our country in any means of transport. The biggest was the seizure made on the high seas in 1999 (7.6 tons) by the National Police Force and the Customs Service of the Tax Office.

As a result of the seizure, investigations are being carried out at present, under the direction of the Investigating Judge of Court No. 1 of Algeciras (Cadiz), in coordination with the Special Drugs Prosecutor, for the purpose of identifying those responsible for the operation.

Arrests

So far, three people have been arrested. One is the head of the banana importing department of the company importing the container that transported the cocaine. He was also responsible for the purchase, sale and logistics of the fruit.

One Honduran and one Portuguese national have also been arrested. Both are resident in Barcelona, and are people trusted by the head of imports, with power to make decisions in relation to the logistics, sale and shipment of the banana containers from Colombia.

The three individuals have been arrested for the crime of alleged membership of a criminal organisation, as well as crimes of smuggling and drug trafficking. Investigations are continuing and further arrests have not been ruled out.

The prolonged pretrial detention of the leader of a parliamentary opposition party in Turkey challenges basic democratic principles and is part of a wider pattern of repression against government critics, Human Rights Watch said.

The trial of Selahattin Demirtaş, leader of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP) is scheduled to begin in the Sincan prison campus courthouse in Ankara on December 7, 2017, 11 months after he was indicted. Demirtaş has been in pretrial detention since November 2016. The HDP, known as a pro-Kurdish party, is the second-largest opposition party in the parliament.

“Holding the leader of a major opposition party in pretrial detention for over a year on flimsy charges is another example of the political abuse of the criminal justice system we are repeatedly seeing in Turkey,” said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. “Keeping Demirtaş in jail for months on end not only denies his right to political association, participation, and freedom of expression, but it disenfranchises those who voted for him and his party.”

The 500-page indictment against Demirtaş accuses him of being a leading member of the armed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK/KCK), of spreading terrorist propaganda, and of praising crimes and criminals. It accuses him of inciting enmity among the population and inciting the population not to obey laws and to commit crimes, and of organizing, participating in, and provoking unauthorized demonstrations. The charges came eight months after a May 2016 decision to strip him and other members of parliament from his party of their immunity from prosecution. If convicted, he could face a 142-year prison sentence.

The evidence cited against Demirtaş relies heavily on his speeches. In addition, many pages of transcripts of wiretapped calls and intercepted conversations are used as evidence to suggest Demirtaş’s association with a nongovernmental group in Diyarbakır, in Turkey’s predominantly Kurdish region, called the Democratic Society Congress (DTK). The prosecutor alleges that the group is part of the PKK/KCK, though none of the information seems to point to anything approaching criminal activity.

The evidence also includes a public statement by the HDP on October 6, 2014, calling for protests against the Turkish government’s approach to the Islamic State (also known as ISIS) assault on the northern Syrian town of Kobane. The prosecutor describes this statement as incitement to armed insurrection, although the statement did not call for violent protest. The indictment lists in detail the consequences of these protests, which resulted in up to 50 fatalities in towns throughout the southeast and widespread destruction of property.

While the authorities have a duty to investigate the deaths and any criminal activities that occurred, there is no evidence that the violence was the result of the HDP call for protest or that the party could reasonably have been expected to foresee the violent events that would unfold.

Other HDP members of parliament face similar charges, and eight others are currently held in pretrial detention while the cases against them are heard. In March, Human Rights Watch issued a report on the crackdown on the HDP and a related local party, The report examined the criminal charges and dismissals affecting elected representatives and assessed the resulting rights violations.

“The evidence against Selahattin Demirtaş consists largely of his political speeches and lacks any compelling evidence of criminal activity,” Williamson said. “It’s hard to conclude otherwise than that the case against him is the Turkish government’s politically motivated attempt to undermine the parliamentary opposition.”

The current opioid epidemic is destroying lives, families, and communities. Medication is widely considered to be the most effective treatment, but far too few people who could benefit are actually treated.

Two medications, buprenorphine and naltrexone–representing pharmacologically and conceptually opposite approaches–are available for office-based treatment, yet until now, patients, families, and providers have had no data to help guide their choice of treatment. New and consistent findings from two studies comparing these approaches will help.

Buprenorphine is a partial opioid agonist; it partially activates opioid receptors involved in pain relief and reward, and can block some of the effects of other opioids such as heroin. Treatment with buprenorphine can be started while a patient is still dependent on opioids, but patients taking buprenorphine remain opioid dependent and will experience withdrawal symptoms when it is discontinued. Buprenorphine can be abused or diverted and, in the US, can only be prescribed by providers with special waivers.

Naltrexone, in contrast, is a full opioid antagonist; it has no stimulating effects of its own, but blocks the effects of other opioids such as heroin. Because it blocks opioid receptors, naltrexone treatment cannot be initiated until a patient is fully detoxified, as it will precipitate sudden withdrawal symptoms. Patients using naltrexone are not opioid dependent and will not experience withdrawal when it is discontinued. Naltrexone is not abused or diverted and can be prescribed by any provider.

Dr. John Rotrosen at New York University School of Medicine and Dr. Lars Tanum at the University of Oslo and Akershus University Hospital in Norway each led trials that enrolled participants from community detoxification units and randomly assigned them to naltrexone or buprenorphine. The US study involved 570 participants treated for up to 24 weeks; the Norwegian study included 159 participants treated for up to 12 weeks.

The results indicate that once started, buprenorphine (a daily sublingual film) and naltrexone (a monthly extended-release injection) are equally effective in preventing relapse, retaining patients in treatment, and reducing illicit opioid use. Other than mild to moderate injection site reactions with naltrexone, adverse events including fatal and non-fatal overdoses were similar.

For patients who are actively using opioids, naltrexone is more difficult to initiate as many patients quit detox programs before completion. In the US study this “detox hurdle” precluded approximately one in four patients randomly assigned to naltrexone from starting treatment. The Norwegian study enrolled patients only after they had completed detoxification so there was no “detox hurdle.”

The researchers say more work is needed to overcome the detox hurdle and facilitate a smooth transition from active use of illicit opioids to naltrexone, and to improve treatment retention for both medications. In the interim, the consistent findings from these two trials should help people choose–on the basis of their lifestyle, goals and preferences–between these two-distinct office-based therapies.

In his remarks on the recent International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women – see ‘Violence Against Women is Fundamentally About Power’– United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres inadvertently demonstrated why well-meaning efforts being undertaken globally to reduce violence against women fail to make any progress in addressing this pervasive crisis.

Hence, while the UN might be ‘committed to addressing violence against women in all its forms’ as he claimed, and the UN might have launched a range of initiatives over the past twenty years, including awarding $129 million to 463 civil society initiatives in 139 countries and territories through the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against women, his own article acknowledges that ‘Attacks on women are common to developed and developing countries. Despite attempts to cover them up, they are a daily reality for many women and girls around the world.’

And, without realizing it, the Secretary-General effectively nominated (by omission) why so little progress has been made on this vital issue: ‘As Prime Minister of Portugal, one of my most difficult battles was to win recognition that family violence and especially against women was a serious issue’. The omission here is appalling and yet few reading the line will be able to identify it.

While I want to acknowledge the commitment of those within and outside the UN who work on this critical issue, it is simply the case that if we do not understand the cause of violence against women then any ‘strategy’ to address the problem must fail, as the record in recent decades (since the issue gained a significant profile in response to feminist agitation) demonstrates.

In fact, of course, if we do not understand the fundamental cause of violence, then attempts to address it in any context must either fail outright or meet with only limited success.

So what is the cause of violence, including violence against women?

Perpetrators of violence learn their craft in childhood. If you inflict violence on a child, they learn to inflict violence on others. The terrorist suffered violence as a child. The political leader who wages war suffered violence as a child. The man who inflicts violence on women suffered violence as a child. The corporate executive who exploits working class people and/or those who live in Africa, Asia or Central/South America suffered violence as a child. The racist or religious bigot suffered violence as a child. The individual who perpetrates violence in the home, in the schoolyard or on the street suffered violence as a child.

If we want to end violence against women then we must finally end our longest and greatest war: the adult war on children. And here is an additional incentive: if we do not tackle the fundamental cause of violence, then our combined and unrelenting efforts to tackle all of its other symptoms must ultimately fail. And extinction at our own hand is inevitable.

How can I claim that violence against children is the fundamental cause of all other violence? Consider this. There is universal acceptance that behaviour is shaped by childhood experience. If it was not, we would not put such effort into education and other efforts to socialize children to fit into society. And this is why many psychologists have argued that exposure to war toys and violent video games shapes attitudes and behaviours in relation to violence.

But it is far more complex than this and, strange though it may seem, it is not just the ‘visible’ violence (such as hitting, screaming at and sexually abusing) that we normally label ‘violence’ that causes the main damage, although this is extremely damaging. The largest component of damage arises from the ‘invisible’ and ‘utterly invisible’ violence that we adults unconsciously inflict on children during the ordinary course of the day. Tragically, the bulk of this violence occurs in the family home and at school. See ‘Why Violence?’ and ‘Fearless Psychology and Fearful Psychology: Principles and Practice’.

So what is ‘invisible’ violence? It is the ‘little things’ we do every day, partly because we are just ‘too busy’. For example, when we do not allow time to listen to, and value, a child’s thoughts and feelings, the child learns to not listen to themselves thus destroying their internal communication system. When we do not let a child say what they want (or ignore them when they do), the child develops communication and behavioral dysfunctionalities as they keep trying to meet their own needs (which, as a basic survival strategy, they are genetically programmed to do).

When we blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie to, bribe, blackmail, moralize with and/or judge a child, we both undermine their sense of Self-worth and teach them to blame, condemn, insult, mock, embarrass, shame, humiliate, taunt, goad, guilt-trip, deceive, lie, bribe, blackmail, moralize and/or judge.

The fundamental outcome of being bombarded throughout their childhood by this ‘invisible’ violence is that the child is utterly overwhelmed by feelings of fear, pain, anger and sadness (among many others). However, mothers, fathers, teachers and other adults also actively interfere with the expression of these feelings and the behavioral responses that are naturally generated by them and it is this ‘utterly invisible’ violence that explains why the dysfunctional behavioral outcomes actually occur.

For example, by ignoring a child when they express their feelings, by comforting, reassuring or distracting a child when they express their feelings, by laughing at or ridiculing their feelings, by terrorizing a child into not expressing their feelings (e.g. by screaming at them when they cry or get angry), and/or by violently controlling a behavior that is generated by their feelings (e.g. by hitting them, restraining them or locking them into a room), the child has no choice but to unconsciously suppress their awareness of these feelings.

However, once a child has been terrorized into suppressing their awareness of their feelings (rather than being allowed to have their feelings and to act on them) the child has also unconsciously suppressed their awareness of the reality that caused these feelings. This has many outcomes that are disastrous for the individual, for society and for nature because the individual will now easily suppress their awareness of the feelings that would tell them how to act most functionally in any given circumstance and they will progressively acquire a phenomenal variety of dysfunctional behaviors, including some that are violent towards themselves, others and/or the Earth.

From the above, it should also now be apparent that punishment should never be used. ‘Punishment’, of course, is one of the words we use to obscure our awareness of the fact that we are using violence. Violence, even when we label it ‘punishment’, scares children and adults alike and cannot elicit a functional behavioural response. See ‘Punishment is Violent and Counterproductive’.

If someone behaves dysfunctionally, they need to be listened to, deeply, so that they can start to become consciously aware of the feelings (which will always include fear and, often, terror) that drove the dysfunctional behaviour in the first place. They then need to feel and express these feelings (including any anger) in a safe way. Only then will behavioural change in the direction of functionality be possible. See ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

‘But these adult behaviors you have described don’t seem that bad. Can the outcome be as disastrous as you claim?’ you might ask. The problem is that there are hundreds of these ‘ordinary’, everyday behaviors that destroy the Selfhood of the child. It is ‘death by a thousand cuts’ and most children simply do not survive as Self-aware individuals. And why do we do this? We do it so that each child will fit into our model of ‘the perfect citizen’: that is, obedient and hardworking student, reliable and pliant employee/soldier, and submissive law-abiding citizen.

Moreover, once we destroy the Selfhood of a child, it has many flow-on effects. For example, once you terrorise a child into accepting certain information about themselves, other people or the state of the world, the child becomes unconsciously fearful of dealing with new information, especially if this information is contradictory to what they have been terrorized into believing. As a result, the child will unconsciously dismiss new information out of hand.

In short, the child has been terrorized in such a way that they are no longer capable of learning (or their learning capacity is seriously diminished by excluding any information that is not a simple extension of what they already ‘know’). If you imagine any of the bigots you know, you are imagining someone who is utterly terrified. But it’s not just the bigots; virtually all people are affected in this manner making them incapable of responding adequately to new (or even important) information. This is one explanation why some people are ‘climate deniers’ and most others do nothing in response to the climate catastrophe.

Of course, each person’s experience of violence during childhood is unique and this is why each perpetrator becomes violent in their own particular combination of ways. This explains, for example, why the violence of some men against women manifests as sexual violence, including rape.

So what is happening psychologically for the rapist when they commit the act of rape? In essence, they are projecting the (unconsciously suppressed) feelings of their own victimhood onto their rape victim. That is, their fear, self-hatred and powerlessness, for example, are projected onto the victim so that they can gain temporary relief from these feelings. Their fear, temporarily, is more deeply suppressed. Their self-hatred is projected as hatred of their victim. Their powerlessness is temporarily relieved by a sense of being in control, which they were never allowed to be, and feel, as a child. And similarly with their other suppressed feelings. For example, a rapist might blame their victim for their dress: a sure sign that the rapist was endlessly, and unjustly, blamed as a child and is (unconsciously) angry about that.

The central point in understanding violence is that it is psychological in origin and hence any effective response must enable both the perpetrator’s and the victim’s suppressed feelings (which will include enormous fear about, and rage at, the violence they have suffered) to be safely expressed. For an explanation of what is required, see ‘Nisteling: The Art of Deep Listening’.

The world media is full of coverage of today’sannouncement by President Donald Trump that the U.S. will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. We’re hearing from governments throughout the world about their disquiet at the prospect of a conquered city becoming a national capital, in violation of international law and two generations of diplomatic precedent.

But there is something we’re not hearing: a commitment by these governments to take concrete action against this outrageous breach by the U.S. We’re not even hearing of any anticipated actions against Israel itself, except a vague threat by Turkey’s Pres. Erdogan to cut diplomatic ties with Israel.

We’ve heard from France and even Saudi Arabia, which has conducted a covert scorched earth campaign to force Mahmoud Abbas to accept the Trump peace plan. The Saudi foreign minister has dutifully returned to old talking points, in which his country expresses solidarity for the “suffering of its Palestinian brothers” (no “sisters,” this is Saudi Arabia, after all).

Germany’s foreign minister took the unprecedented step of warning Trump and Netanyahu of “the limits of his country’s solidarity” if they choose to take a dive off the deep end.  Germany–ever cognizant of its role as birthplace of Nazism, which destroyed European Jewry and caused the deaths of tens of millions during World War II–almost never says that there is a limit to how far they will go in supporting Israel or the U.S.  So these words are powerful and striking.  But ultimately, what do they mean?  If Trump were any normal president, he would realize that these are ominous words from Germany.  But Trump isn’t an ordinary president.  He’s a leader who is megalomaniacal and pathological.  He is a narcissist oblivious to anything and anyone but himself.  To oppose such sociopathology requires not just strong language, but strong action.

How about all these nations putting their money where their mouths are; recalling their ambassadors from both Tel Aviv and Washington, if they really believe what they’re saying?  If Trump wants to break ranks with the EU and the rest of the civilized world and essentially abandon prospects for a negotiated resolution of the Israel-Palestine conflict, he must pay a price. Like all bullies, if there is no price he will continue with his brutal ways and do far worse in future. If you tell him “No” in no uncertain terms, it will stop him dead in his tracks.

Will the world stand up for its convictions? I wouldn’t bet on it. But if Muslims in their tens of thousands heed Hamas’ call for the Friday worship becoming a Day of Rage, and the protest spreads beyond Jerusalem throughout the Muslim world, then there could be such a groundswell. The Saudis–who only a few days ago seemed prepared to abandon Palestine in order to focus their sights more fully on the Iranian enemy–might realize that following Trump into the maw of Hell may not be the best approach, if they wish to remain Protectors of the (Muslim) Faith.

That is the only way to make Trump and his allies in this ghastly affair back down.

An Israeli security source I consulted told me that he expected Palestinian protests throughout this week. But that due to the cold winter weather, he didn’t expect the level of intensity of the July al Aqsa protests against the installation of security cameras outside Islam’s third most holy site.  He may be mistaken.

This article was published by Tikum Olam

By Ray Sherman

A Malaysian official said Tuesday that Prime Minister Najib Razak was not involved in the 1MDB scandal, a day after the U.S. attorney general called the sovereign wealth fund “kleptocracy at its worst.”

Speaking in Washington at the Global Forum on Asset Recovery, Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed that the United States had seized or restrained $3.5 billion (14.2 billion ringgit) tied to corruption, of which, nearly half was from Department of Justice (DOJ) lawsuits connected to 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB).

“Allegedly corrupt officials and their associates reportedly used the funds for a lavish spending spree,” the top American law official said.

In Kuala Lumpur, Abdul Rahman Dahlan, the minister in the Malaysian Prime Minister’s office, said Najib had no role in the 1MDB scandal.

“Well, I have been saying all the time that the civil suit has nothing to do with the prime minister,” he told reporters.

The debt-laden 1MDB is the target of money-laundering investigations in at least a half-dozen countries, including the United States, Switzerland and Singapore, but no legal action has been taken in Malaysia. Najib established the fund in 2009 to promote economic development in Malaysia.

In July 2015, his name was tied to the scandal when reports emerged that nearly $700 million in 1MDB-linked money was deposited into his private bank accounts. The prime minister denied any wrongdoing, saying the money was a “personal donation” from Saudi Arabia’s royal family.

Sessions’ allegations

As he opened the three-day forum in Washington on recovering assets tied to corruption, Sessions pointed to huge amounts of 1MDB-tied money that were spent in the United States: $200 million (812 million ringgit) was spent on real estate in California and New York; $130 million (528 million ringgit) for artwork; $100 million (406 million ringgit) for a music company; and $265 million (1 billion ringgit) for a yacht.

The DOJ has filed a series of lawsuits, the most recent in June, seeking to seize assets valued at $1.7 billion (6.9 billion ringgit) and allegedly purchased with stolen funds.

“In total, 1MDB officials allegedly laundered more than $4.5 billion (18.2 billion ringgit) in funds through a complex web of opaque transactions and fraudulent shell companies with bank accounts in countries ranging from Switzerland and Singapore to Luxembourg and the United States,” Sessions said in prepared remarks. “This is kleptocracy at its worst.”

“Today, the U.S. Department of Justice is working to provide justice to the victims of this alleged scheme,” he said.

Malaysian investigation

Malaysian Attorney General Apandi Ali, who had cleared Najib of wrongdoing regarding 1MDB and noted that Najib was not named in DOJ lawsuits, could not be reached for comment on Tuesday.

However, the prime minister is a person referred to in the U.S. suits as “Malaysian Official 1,” according to a U.S. government source.

On Saturday, Deputy Prime Minister Ahmad Zahid Hamidi issued a written statement that Malaysian police had resubmitted its 1MDB investigation report to the attorney general.

“Police have carried out (additional) investigations as instructed by Apandi and have referred the investigation paper back to the Attorney General Chambers (AGC),” he said. “The police are awaiting further instructions from AGC.”

Malaysian police have not assisted the U.S. investigation because it is not a criminal case.

Meanwhile, Malaysian electoral watchdog Bersih responded to Sessions’ comments.

“Surprisingly, there is pin-drop silence by the prime minister, cabinet minister and the ministry of finance on the pointed allegations made by the U.S. attorney general.

“We reiterate our call to all international communities to continue to support our effort on assets recovery of the stolen 1MDB funds and for it to be returned to what is rightfully the money of every Malaysian,” Bersih said in a statement.

Hata Wahari and N. Nantha in Kuala Lumpur contributed to the report.

By Theodoros Papadopoulos

The tobacco industry has enjoyed something of a charmed life in Europe. After initially implementing tobacco laws in the early 1990s, the EU’s subsequent approach to the issue has been sluggish, taking one step forwards and three to the side. Now, however, signs suggest that the seeds of real change are finally being sown.

A raft of court cases against Big Tobacco and calls to censor cigarettes on the silver screen are encouraging signs in the fight against smoking, but the biggest weapon in Europe’s anti-tobacco arsenal is perhaps its impending Track and Trace (T&T) system. With an implementation deadline of May 2019, the European Commission is under pressure to finalise plans for the rigorous monitoring system, but must ensure it guards against the complacency of letting the industry in by the back door… or its best-laid plans could go up in smoke.

A date in court

Suing for damages is traditionally the remit of American plaintiffs, but the British public health charity Action on Smoking and Health has opened the door to further European litigation by lobbying the Director of Public Prosecutions to bring charges against tobacco firms. In a total of nine European states, in fact, activists are shuffling papers and presenting cases against such giants of the industry as Philip Morris International (PMI), British American Tobacco (BAT), and Japan Tobacco International (JTI). In one particularly eye-catching case, a 43-year-old mother of four is suing the companies in the Netherlands after being diagnosed with lung cancer. She began smoking at the age of 15.

Among other accusations, the industry stands charged with adding chemicals with the specific intent to induce addiction, which, the prosecutors allege, amounts to nothing short of attempted murder and/or manslaughter. While it’s unlikely that the cases will be successful, they still make a moral statement and test-drive new tactics to be used against the industry.

At the same time, the industry’s marketing strategies are also coming under attack. On top of strict packaging rules that came into force in 2016, France – in a new bid to shed its reputation as one of Europe’s smokiest countries – is now leading the charge against displays of tobacco on the silver screen. The European Commission has voiced its support for a plan, already backed by Minister of Health Agnès Buzyn, to ban cigarettes altogether in French films – 70% of which feature at least one scene with someone lighting up. Buzyn, who agreed that such displays serve to normalize smoking in the eyes of youth, said she had no idea why it was “so important” in French cinema.

Even tighter regulation on the horizon

At the EU level, the European Commission is also mounting an expanded attack on Big Tobacco, for which it reserved particular venom in its annual health report. Calling for member states to enact “fundamental reforms,” European Commissioner for Health Vytenis Andriukaitis pointed out that while 80% of health budgets are spent on treating diseases, a mere 3% goes towards their prevention, and urged states to do more against smoking.

In an interview following his presentation of the report, Andriukaitis laid out in detail the charges against Big Tobacco, which he stated have been doing their utmost to avoid their obligations under the Tobacco Products Directive (TPD) that came into force in May 2016. He claimed that tobacco companies have been using a variety of tricks, such as displaying packets on their side, to avoid showing distasteful images and health warnings.

But perhaps the biggest point of contention in relations between Big Tobacco and the Commission is the EC’s proposal for a T&T system, a component of the directive.

The T&T system will involve affixing an identification code to every packet of cigarettes produced and sold in the EU, with verification of the pack required at every stage of the supply chain. This is intended to curb the huge problem of illegal trading, which involves 48 billion cigarettes in the EU, Norway and Switzerland – equivalent to 9% of the total market – and has cost European governments a cumulative €10.2 billion in taxes.

Much to the industry’s distaste, the Commission’s T&T plan is intended to comply with the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) of the World Health Organisation. The FCTC requires that tobacco manufacturers be completely excluded from the decision-making process, according to the logic that allowing those you wish to regulate to carry out the regulation could prove problematic.

Concerns as to the integrity of the tobacco industry are certainly well founded. On the surface, illegal smuggling of its products should be a thorn in the side of Big Tobacco, but there is extensive evidence that companies have actively promoted the illegal trade to avoid official taxation, with corporations like BAT subject to major lawsuits for attempts to flood the market with illicit goods – for their own profit.

Shut that back door

At present, the draft regulations as submitted by the European Commission would involve an interoperable system whereby each member state would draft its own codes of up to 50 digits, which are then integrated into a tax stamp and used to distinguish each packet. However, some critics have raised concerns that the industry could manipulate these identifiers for their own benefit, and that any proposed scheme should prevent them from participating on any level. Due to the system’s inherent complexity, the tobacco industry has been able to insert itself in the decision-making process and significantly water down the initial aims of the T&T system.

While the EU has been showing signs of finally taking the tobacco industry to task – both legislatively and litigiously – it must ensure that industry lobbyists don’t allow the integrity of its crowning regulation to be compromised. It’s all very well and good barricading the entranceway with bans, censorships and court cases, but if the back door becomes unguarded, Big Tobacco will let themselves in and make themselves at home.

The opinions, beliefs, and viewpoints expressed by the authors are theirs alone and don’t reflect any official position of Geopoliticalmonitor.com.

By Dr. Sanjay Badri-Maharaj*

The Category 5 storm, Hurricane Maria, struck the tiny Caribbean island of Dominica on September 18, 2017. The Commonwealth of Dominica, with a population of a mere 72,000, was devastated by the storm. 27 people were killed and 90 per cent of all structures were either destroyed or damaged, including vital communications links.1 Prime Minister Roosevelt Skerrit described the damage as “mind-boggling” and noted that even he had to be rescued from his official residence which was now without a roof and completely flooded.2 The scale of the disaster and damage to crucial infrastructure and communications overwhelmed the ability of the small Commonwealth of Dominica Police Force (CDPF), which has some 460 personnel.3

However, in a display of regional solidarity, Dominica’s fellow CARICOM members rallied to her aid. The effort was coordinated by the Caribbean Disaster Emergency Management Agency (CDEMA), an inter-regional network of the disaster management agencies of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM) member states. The defence forces of Trinidad & Tobago, Jamaica and Barbados spearheaded the relief effort, which was later assisted by an invaluable contribution from the Bahamas.

Beyond the military assistance, the Dominican Government received contingents of police officers from Trinidad, Barbados, Grenada, Saint Lucia and Jamaica to reinforce the beleaguered CDPF. Grenada additionally dispatched a team from its police Special Services Unit which joined a team of communication and logistics personnel which were sent to assist the CARICOM Disaster Relief Unit. In addition, Saint Lucia sent fire service personnel specializing in urban search and rescue as well as disaster assessment officials.4 CDEMA played a pivotal role in assessing Dominica’s needs and requesting appropriate assistance.

The Regional Military Aid Effort

Jamaica

The Jamaica Defence Force (JDF) dispatched a dedicated 120-man strong Disaster Assistance Response Team (DART). Elements of the DART are still deployed in Dominica and are tasked with the following activities:5

• security and distribution of relief supplies;
• provision of limited medical care;
• basic engineering work with light tools and equipment (inclusive of debris removal and construction of improvised shelters);
• logistics management;
• conducting damage assessments and;
• recovery planning.

The JDF provided additional assistance by providing one of its two Damen SPa 4207 patrol vessels (the largest in its fleet) to assist the Dominica Coast Guard. The HMJS Middlesex conducted extensive patrols around the Dominica coast and was successful in intercepting and apprehending illegal migrants in addition to seizing illegal weapons.6

Barbados

The Barbados Defence Force used the Damen SPa 4207 vessels, HMBS Leonard C. Banfield and the HMBS Rudyard Lewis, to ferry relief supplies and personnel and officers from the Barbados fire service to Dominica. The two vessels made repeated trips, evacuating casualties, transporting supplies and ferrying medical and disaster management specialists to Dominica.7

Trinidad and Tobago

The Trinidad and Tobago Defence Force (TTDF), aided by the National Helicopter Services Limited (NHSL), provided the largest material contribution to the initial relief effort. Two S-76 helicopters from NHSL provided critical support for transporting emergency personnel and assessment teams to remote villages to survey damage, evacuate the injured and stranded, and to deliver emergency supplies.

The Trinidad and Tobago Coast Guard deployed no fewer than three vessels to the Dominica relief effort. The first vessel was the Damen SPa 5009 vessel TTS Moruga which transported “food, water, generators and a 21-member disaster relief team” which assisted in securing and managing the distribution of relief items.8 Additional TTDF personnel were dispatched by civilian aircraft along with medical teams. Subsequently, the Damen FCS 5009 TTS Brighton was dispatched with 23.3 tonnes of relief supplies. In addition to the crew, a team from the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment along with five civilian medical personnel was also aboard to provide additional medical services and assist in relief distribution.9 Soldiers from the Trinidad and Tobago Regiment were deployed alongside the CDPF to control the orgy of looting that followed the disaster. Finally, on October 23, 2017, the largest patrol vessel in any CARICOM Coast Guard, the TTS Nelson, departed Port of Spain to provide further disaster relief to Dominica.10

Bahamas

The Royal Bahamas Defence force vessel, HMBS Lawrence Major, a Damen 5612 landing craft, reached Dominica on October 29, somewhat later than the other Caribbean Coast Guard vessels. This vessel is the only landing craft operated by CARICOM Coast Guards, and has specialized disaster management packages. One of these, a mobile galley, can prepare up to 1,000 meals per day, marking a substantial improvement in the facilities available, as photographs earlier showed TTDF and JDF personnel trying to cook under makeshift sheds. The HMBS Lawrence Major has a carrying capacity of approximately 14 x 40 foot containers or 28 x 20 foot containers of equipment and supplies. The vessel can also transport 50,000 gallons of potable water and 22,000 gallons of fuel, making it a vital asset to the relief effort.11

Capability Gaps Revealed

Despite their undoubtedly essential contribution to the Dominica relief effort, capability gaps were revealed during the course of operations. First among these was a continuing lack of air transport assets for disaster management teams. Both the Jamaican DART and the TTDF had to charter civilian aircraft to transport their personnel to Dominica. Both the TTDF and JDF once possessed viable air transport capabilities but Jamaica’s aircraft are now out of service and of the TTDF’s two aircraft, only one is airworthy at any point in time and is assigned to maritime patrol duties.

Helicopter support was also deficient. The only two helicopters deployed were the NHSL’s S-76s – the use for which the Trinidad and Tobago Government will have to pay the company. The JDF’s helicopter fleet – four Bell 407s and two Bell 412EP – was not deployed, perhaps due to serviceability issues while the TTDF’s fleet of AW139 helicopters is currently grounded owing to the inability of the government to pay for their maintenance. The absence of the TTDF helicopters was particularly significant as they are specially equipped for search-and-rescue operations.12

Of the coast guard vessels committed to the Dominica relief operation, only the HMBS Lawrence Major was able to transport specialized disaster relief modules which proved to be invaluable. While other vessels could transport considerable quantities of supplies, they lacked the containerized modules of the RBDF vessel. In recognition of this, it was mooted that Trinidad and Jamaica jointly acquire a vessel, with Canadian support, to be used specifically for disaster assistance.13 It remains to be seen whether any progress will be made in respect of a jointly-owned vessel. Budgetary constraints would appear to preclude any acquisition of vessels of a similar type to the HMBS Lawrence Major despite the undoubted utility of additional vessels with such capabilities.

The armed forces of CARICOM’s member states performed well in the Dominica relief efforts and neither their response time nor their commitment can be faulted. However, while there is clearly a desire on the part of CARICOM’s armed forces to be at the forefront of disaster response efforts, there is little emphasis given to preparing the respective armed forces for a more active role in disaster relief. Training of personnel in disaster relief is minimal and disaster planning is largely an academic exercise.

While some specialized disaster relief units such as the JDF DART and the TTDF 3rd (Engineering) Battalion exist, these are limited in their equipment holdings as well as in their ability to move their equipment within the region. It was noticeable that both the JDF and TTDF teams deployed to Dominica had little by way of heavy engineering equipment despite both militaries holding stocks of the same. Deficiencies in transport, therefore, remain a major issue to be addressed if CARICOM’s armed forces are to achieve their potential as disaster response forces.

It is unfortunate that it is unlikely that this lacuna will be rectified in the near future with the consequent result that while the region’s armed forces will spearhead any disaster relief effort, they will never be able to bring their full capabilities to bear outside their home countries. Inevitably, the burden of such efforts falls on the larger defence forces in the region – those of Jamaica, Trinidad & Tobago, the Bahamas and Barbados. Unless these forces are provided with the ability to deploy, not just their personnel but their equipment regionally, their impact will be below their potential. It is hoped that the Dominica experience will provide renewed focus on capability gaps in equipment and deficiencies in planning and training of personnel for disaster relief operations will be plugged. Should this not be done, the consequences in the future could be dire.

Views expressed are of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the IDSA or of the Government of India.

About the author:
*Dr. Sanjay Badri-Maharaj was a Visiting Fellow at IDSA. He is an independent defence analyst and attorney-at-law based in Trinidad and Tobago. He holds a PhD on India’s nuclear weapons programme and an MA from the Department of War Studies, Kings College London. He has served as a consultant to the Trinidad and Tobago Ministry of National Security.

Source:
This article was published by IDSA

Notes:

• 1. Ashifa Kassam, “Dominica in tatters weeks after Maria: ‘We saw everything totally destroyed’” The Guardian 4 October 2017 athttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/03/hurricane-maria-dominica-recovery (Accessed 27 November 2017)
• 2. Kirk Semple &Azam Ahmed, “Hurricane Maria Does “Mind-Boggling” Damage to Dominica , Leader Says”, New York Times, 19 September 2017 at https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/19/world/americas/hurricane-maria-caribbean.html (Accessed 27 November 2017)
• 3. Dominica Country Profile, The International Security Sector Advisory Team (ISSAT) 12 January 2015 at http://issat.dcaf.ch/Learn/Resource-Library/Country-Profiles/Dominica-Country-Profile (Accessed 27 November 2017)
• 4. “CARICOM says Dominica getting strong regional support”, Stabroek News 25 September 2017  at https://www.stabroeknews.com/2017/news/regional/09/25/caricom-says-dominica-getting-strong-regional-support/ (Accessed 5 December 2017)
• 5. “JDF disaster assistance team deployed to Dominica”, Jamaica Observer 26 September 2017 at http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/JDF_disaster_assistance_team_deployed_to_Dominica?profile=1228 (Accessed 5 December 2017)
• 6. “JDF DART in Dominica” Jamaica Defence Force Facebook Page 10 October 2017 at https://www.facebook.com/jdfsoldier/videos/10154798333461384/(Accessed 5 December 2017)
• 7. Julia Rawlings-Bentham, “A long road to recovery for Dominica” Caribbean News Now 28 September 2017 at http://wp.caribbeannewsnow.com/2017/09/28/long-road-recovery-dominica/ (Accessed 5 December 2017)
• 8. Sasha Harrinanan, “Coast Guard provides swift aid to Dominica” TrinidadNewsday 22 September 2017 athttp://newsday.co.tt/2017/09/22/coast-guard-provides-swift-aid-to-dominica/(Accessed 5 December 2017)
• 9. “T&T Coast Guard vessel leaves for Dominica with relief items” Loop TT 5 October 2017 athttp://www.looptt.com/content/tt-coast-guard-vessel-leaves-dominica-relief-items(Accessed 5 December 2017)
• 10. “TTS NELSON II LEAVES FOR DOMINICA” Trinidad and Tobago Facebook Page, 10 October 2017 at https://www.facebook.com/pg/Trinidad-Tobago-Coast-Guard-621931181194075/photos/?tab=album&album_id=1480087155378469 (Accessed 5 December 2017)
• 11. “HMBS Lawrence Major arrives in Dominica” Royal Bahamas Defence Force website 29 October 2017 athttp://rbdf.gov.bs/hmbs-lawrence-major-arrives-in-dominica/(Accessed 5 December 2017)
• 12. Ryan Mason, “Dominica suffers widespread destruction after Maria – TTAG SAR aircraft sit idle as political debate on cost continues”Heliweb October 2017 athttp://www.heliweb.com/dominica-suffers-ttag-still-grounded/(Accessed 5 December 2017)
• 13. “Jamaica, T&T in dialogue to acquire ship” Jamaica Observer 20 September 2017 at http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/latestnews/Jamaica,_T%26T_in_dialogue_to_acquire_ship?profile=1228 (Accessed 5 December 2017)

A closer analysis of the dynamics within the Shiite community in Malaysia would suggest that its failure to present a united front in dealing with the discrimination towards the community is an important factor that continues to negatively affect the position of Shiites.

By Mohamed Nawab Osman*

In October 2017, more than 200 Iraqi nationals were arrested in Selangor for taking part in the Ashura mourning. The Iraqis, most of them postgraduate students and diplomats from the Iraqi embassy were attending a 10th Muharram ceremony, a major date in the Islamic calendar which, among others, marks the martyrdom of the grandson of the Prophet, Imam Hussain.

The persecution of the Shiites in Malaysia has been extensively discussed by close observers of Malaysian affairs such as Ahmad Fauzi, Farid Alatas and Faizal Musa. However, little has been said about the ways in which Shiites are using the legal space provided by the Malaysian constitution to resist the attempts by the state religious bureaucracy to curtail their rights.

Current Legal Frameworks Restricting Shiites

Even though the federal constitution guarantees religious freedom, the dual track legal system whereby state Islamic courts regulate religious affairs can severely restrict the liberties of non-Muslims and Muslim minorities to practise their religion. The increasing state-led Islamisation and expansion of state religious bureaucracies following Dr Mahathir Mohamad’s premiership resulted in the standardisation of Islamic practice to the point that Muslim minorities, such as the Ahmaddyia sect and the Shiites, were proscribed and declared deviant.

In this context, religious freedom became highly contested within a legal framework that adopted both the secular constitutional law and Islamic law. A significant legal development was the 1988 constitutional amendment of Article 121, which thereby denied the federal government’s civil courts jurisdiction over matters pertaining to the Shariah courts. Even though federal courts can review the decisions of religious authorities that might call into question constitutional rights, the process is rather lengthy and ineffective.

This strengthened the autonomy of Islamic courts, which have reinforced orthodox Sunni Islam (Ahl al-Sunnah wa al-Jama’ah) through the enactment of several fatwas by state Muftis. Islamic teachings that fell outside of the Sunni orthodoxy were banned and even criminalised under the Shariah Criminal Offences Act.

In 1996, the National Fatwa Council issued a fatwa or religious edict that defined the anti-Shiite stance in Malaysia, prohibiting the practice of Shiite Islam and denounced the possession and distribution of Shiite literature as a crime. In addition to this, the federal government made use of the 1960 Internal Security Act (ISA) to arrest and detain Shiite Muslims. As a consequence, several anti-Shiite crackdowns followed and anti-Shiite sentiments and discrimination heightened.

Intra-Shiite Contestation

Since 2012, a group of Shiites headed by Mohd Kamil Zuhairi Abdul Aziz, leader of the Malaysian Shiite Association (MSA), and its secretary Mohd Nasir Sahari, have encouraged members of their community to make a Statutory Declaration professing to be Muslims of the Shiite denomination. The association believes that there is little that the state religious bureaucrats can do to prosecute these individuals after the statutory declaration has been made as the state Islamic ordinances could not supersede the civil law in Malaysia.

As such, regardless of any fatwa stating that the Shiites are deviant, they cannot be persecuted as they can exercise their right to religious freedom. A case in point is a group of 13 men from the Hussainiah Darul Mustafa community centre in Johor Bahru who made such a declaration and submitted them to the Prime Minister’s Office.

They were subsequently summoned by the Johor State Religious Department and questioned under Section 9 and 12 of the state Shariah Criminal Act of 1997 for contempt or defiance of religious authorities and expressing an opinion contrary to an Islamic edict. While they have been made to wait indefinitely for the outcome of this investigation, there is little that the state authorities can do to challenge this.

This new posturing by the Shiite leadership is not necessarily welcomed by a group of Shiite leaders in the country. In an interview with the authors, Hassan Alatas, a key Shiite community figure, felt that the attempt by the MSA to challenge the state religious authorities is not necessarily a wise move as it is likely to exacerbate the conflict between the community and the government. Such attempts will also increase the gulf between the Sunni and Shiite communities in Malaysia.

He prefers that the community adopt the traditional taqiyyah approach where community members conceal their beliefs and forego ordinary religious duties due to the persecution they faced in Malaysia. This failure on the part of the Shiite community to present a united front to the authorities has in fact impacted its ability to deal effectively to protect the interests of the Shiites in Malaysia.

Lack of Unified Approach

At the moment, the ban on Shiite Islam is enforced in 11 out of the 14 states in Malaysia. The number of Shiite Muslims in Malaysia is contested and fluid, given the influx of students and professionals from countries like Iran, Pakistan and Iraq. Shiite communities are inclusive and embrace the cultural diversity evident in their ritualistic practice.

Nonetheless, their clandestine celebrations become a target for crackdown. The arrests are even more problematic since the anti-Shiite legislation seems to apply indiscriminately to non-citizens as well as Malaysians who are bound by the Shariah courts. Not only does the ban on Shiite Islam violate the federal constitution of Malaysia; it also contravenes several international agreements.

Whereas the distinction between civil and Islamic law in Malaysia provides a legitimate space for contestation and resistance against Shiite persecution, the apparent lack of a unified approach among Shiite community leaders remains a factor of weakness in combating anti-Shiite discrimination in Malaysia.

*Mohamed Nawab Osman is Coordinator of the Malaysia Programme at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Iulia Lumina is a Research Analyst at RSIS.

The Caribbean island of Barbuda was a paradise before hurricane Irma struck in September. Not only was it a place of scenic beauty but the system of government for its 1,800 people gave it a measure of equality that is rare in the world. There is no private land ownership in Barbuda. All property is held in common and one local leader explains the result. “There’s no great inequality in Barbuda.”

Of course, a natural disaster is a great opportunity to make changes, in this case changes that will not benefit the people. Barbuda is governed by the nearby island of Antigua, and prime minister Gaston Browne sees an opportunity to up-end a system that he and others have long wanted to do away with.

Browne describes Barbudans as “squatters” and their communal land system as “welfare.” He proposes giving them the right to purchase property for $1. This may sound like a good deal but Barbudans are rightly suspicious that ultimately their paradise of equality for all will be taken away in favor of capitalist predation. They see no reason to live under the system that makes life precarious for people all over the world.

Barbudans are to be commended for defending their rights and for not being easily fooled. The seemingly good deal of cheap private ownership will eventually lead to a system of haves and have nots. As of now “A cleaner and a doctor can both have ocean front property” but that would end with the establishment of private property.
The island has already been targeted for private development. The government in Antigua gave a consortium run by actor Robert DeNiro and an Australian billionaire the rights to lease land for a resort. Called Paradise Found, it was destroyed along with every other structure on Barbuda but the precedent it set was not a good one.

The entire island’s population was evacuated to Antigua in the wake of the hurricane and infrastructure such as schools are still unrepaired . Antigua claims that it cannot rebuild unless Barbudans accept the proposal for private ownership. The cost of rebuilding is estimated to be $250 million. Browne dangles the offer of $1 property to convince Barbudans to accept disaster capitalism as the only way to restore their homeland.

Barbudans have only to look at New Orleans and Puerto Rico to see their fate. There is nothing like literal displacement to whet the capitalist appetite. A devastating blow from nature can accomplish in one fell swoop what they scheme to do over a period of years.

Paradise has a literal meaning of a beautiful location. But Barbuda is also a haven of equality and the people’s resolve is proof that most of humanity do not want to live amid dog eat dog competition. Most of the world would look like Barbuda if more of us had the good fortune to live under such a system.

Prime Minister Browne exhorts Barbudans to accept cruise ships and airports as an inevitability that will benefit them. The development that is offered to them is of dubious benefit. Some of them will win and some of them will lose. They are right to be skeptical.

The system they are told to embrace has done precious little for other people in the region. The United States colonies of Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands also sit unrepaired and devastated. Private property does little to help people in a time of crisis.

It is simply untrue that capitalism is the only out for Barbuda and Puerto Rico and the Virgin Island and all of the other devastated Caribbean islands. The model for restoration is socialist Cuba, which not only cares for its people when disaster strikes but devotes its resources to return people to their homes and repair infrastructure.

Not many people even knew of Barbuda’s existence, much less the fact that it has such a successful system of governance. Throughout history there have been wars and revolutions waged in efforts to gain what people on this tiny island already have.

The prime minister may dismiss their devotion to their way of life as “foolishness” but Barbudans know better. They see the foolishness that controls the rest of their region and hold on to their system for a good reason. Their story should be better known and they must be supported in their efforts. They can clearly see the hand writing on the wall. “If we’re not careful, it’s going to be uninhabitable for us, but habitable for somebody else.”

By Pieter-Jan Dockx*

Iran’s opposition to Iraqi Kurdistan becoming independent stems not merely from the fear of a similar move from Iran’s own Kurdish minority, but is more multi-faceted. There is an old Kurdish saying, that the Kurds “have no friends but the mountains.” However, the Kurds do have a friend, Israel, and an independent Kurdistan would mean having an Israeli ally sharing a border with Iran. While this perspective is underappreciated in public discourse, the longstanding political, economic, and military relations between Iraqi Kurds and Israel are a significant concern for Tehran.

Conventional wisdom holds that Iran’s opposition to the Iraqi Kurds’ quest for independence is to avoid a similar pursuit by Iran’s own Kurdish minority population. This hypothesis was seemingly confirmed by a section of Iran’s Kurdish minority who took to the streets to celebrate the independence referendum in Iraq. However, despite sporadic attacks on Iranian targets by the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), a strong political movement defending the rights of Kurds – such as those in Turkey, Syria, and Iraq – is yet to develop in Iran. Since they are exiled in Iraqi Kurdistan, the main representatives of Iran’s Kurds, the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), have been unable to link the party to the general public. Their actions are further constrained because their host government, the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), maintains cordial relations with Tehran. Iran’s brutal repression of opposition, such as the regular hangings of Kurdish dissidents, prevents the formation of an indigenous resistance movement. Therefore, the theory that Tehran’s hostility towards the plebiscite is born merely out of its own Kurdish population’s quest for independence seems improbable.

Tehran’s antagonism for the Iraqi Kurds’ drive for self-determination is better explained by the latter’s historical ties to Iran’s regional foe, Israel. This argument has been heatedly made by Iran’s former Foreign Minister and incumbent Foreign Policy Advisor to the Supreme Leader, Ali Akbar Velayati, who has accused Massoud Barzani, the President of the Kurdish Regional Government (KRG), of being “a middleman for Zionists.” Although Velayati’s criticism was especially aimed at Barzani and his dominant Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), Iraqi Kurdistan’s second party, the PUK, too has ties – albeit less clear – to Israel. While the PUK has traditionally been closer to Iran, their former leader, Jalal Talabani, publicly shook hands with Israel’s then defence minister Ehud Barak at a conference in 2008, which led to outrage in Iraq’s national parliament. The Israeli press also reported that, in 2004, former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had a secret meeting with both Barzani and Talabani, indicating contact between the Israelis and both parties.

As all regional and international players such as Turkey, the US and the EU opposed the referendum, Israel was the only country that declared support. Invoking the notions of a shared Arab enemy and a common quest for a national homeland, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as well as the wider Israeli political establishment avowed the right to attain Kurdish statehood. These messages were warmly welcomed by Kurds who flew Israeli flags at pro-independence rallies across the globe.

This friendship between Iraqi Kurds and Israel can be traced back to the 1960s, when Israel supported Barzani’s father, Mustafa Barzani, in his battle for independence during the first Iraqi-Kurdish war of 1961-70. Along with other material backing, Israel sent personnel to aid Barzani’s lightly armed fighters. In 1966, during the battle of Mount Handrin, the vastly outnumbered Israeli-Kurdish alliance ambushed a 5000-strong Iraqi army, a monumental event in Kurdish history. In the 1960s, persecution worsened for Jews in Iraq, who increasingly chose to flee the country. Many were assisted by Kurds who reportedly helped some thousand Jews reach Israel.

According to Israeli military sources, advisors remained in Iraqi Kurdistan at least until 1975, where they trained the Peshmerga, the Kurdish military force, and provided guns, ammunition, and artillery. In 1980, this military backing was confirmed by then Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, indicating that clandestine activity continued over a longer period of time. Furthermore, during the 1990-91 Gulf War, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir called on the US to protect the Kurds in Iraq and provide them with humanitarian assistance. Pro-Israel lobby organisations also lobbied around the globe for the Kurdish right to self-determination.

After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, hundreds of Israeli agents travelled to Iraqi Kurdistan to train and assist the Peshmerga, and Israel-KRG relations became more overt. In 2006, Barzani declared it not a crime to have relations with Israel and in 2014 Netanyahu called for the creation of an independent Kurdish state allied with Israel. The friendship also extended into the economic sphere. Ever since the KRG began exporting its own oil through Turkey, one-third of that oil is transported to Israel, which accounts for 75 per cent of Israeli oil imports. This has provided the KRG with a source of funding independent from the central government in Baghdad, which would be crucial in the formation of an independent Kurdish state.

To conclude, as the most important mobilising actor in Iran, the KDPI, is exiled and constrained by its host government, the PUK, and is thus unable to sufficiently organise its constituencies. Iran does not face an immediate threat to its territorial integrity from its own Kurdish population. Rather, the driving force behind Iran’s opposition to Iraqi Kurdistan’s quest for independence is the KDP’s enduring ties with Israel and the apprehension of an Israeli ally as its neighbour.

* Pieter-Jan Dockx
Research Intern, IReS, IPCS

By Howard G. Coombs*

The CARBG [Canadian Airborne Regiment Battle Group] was not operationally ready, from a training point of view, for deployment to Somalia for Operation Deliverance. — “Chapter 21 – Training,” “Dishonoured Legacy” (1997)1

Introduction

In late-1992, the Canadian Airborne Regiment Battle Group deployed to Somalia, during which time a series of negative incidents took place. These events far overshadowed any of the successes attained by the Battle Group in fulfilling their mandate. The best known of these undesirable happenings occurred in 1993 while the Regiment was based around the town of Belet Huen. The situation was desperate among the civil population in that area. There had been many attempted thefts from the Canadian camps, and orders were given to apprehend, and in some cases, to abuse intruders. Subsequently, on 16 March, one such intruder was captured, tortured, and murdered by Canadian soldiers. This killing of Somalian teenager Shidane Arone sent shock waves throughout Canada, and resulted in not only the punishment of the perpetrators, but also to the still-debated disbandment of the Canadian Airborne Regiment.2

It must be noted that these occurrences were not the only unfortunate experiences associated with Canadian Armed Forces (CAF)3 deployments during this period of time. Separate occurrances in Rwanda and the disclosure of incidents at Bacovici in the former Yugoslavia during 1993-1994 created a great amount of public and private introspection in Canada regarding the nature of both the profession of arms and of peacekeeping in general. In all cases, when details of the aforementioned events were made public, they negatively affected Canadian support for its military.4

Nevertheless, it was the incidents in Somalia that received the greatest attention. They resulted in the “Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of the Canadian Forces to Somalia,” or, as it is more popularly known, the “Somalia Inquiry” (1993-1997). The Somalia Inquiry reaffirmed that in a tumultuous security environment, general-purpose combat training (GPCT) was the foundation of peacekeeping training. This statement was tempered with the ideas that (1) Canadian peacekeepers would need to be trained and educated in functions applicable to a cross section of peace operations, (2) centralized oversight and direction was required for pre-deployment training, and (3) Canada needed to assist with peace operations training in other countries as part of its’ contribution to peacekeeping.5 These thoughts, along with direction that had already been put in place by the Department of National Defence and the CAF to maneuver in a changing operational environment, irrecoverably changed how the Canadian military would prepare for peace, and other, operations. In turn, they would also lead to a re-professionalization of the CAF.6

Given the current Canadian government’s renewed commitment to United Nations (UN) peace operations, most recently evidenced in the Defence Policy Review, how the CAF prepares to conduct 21st Century operations continues to be a subject of debate.7 Indeed, some, such as peacekeeping researchers Walter Dorn and Joshua Libben, have questioned the ability of Canadian military units to effectively train and educate for peacekeeping. They argue that the CAF has become focused upon non-peacekeeping operations, and this operational perspective has been matched by a diminuation of peacekeeping specific professional education and training. Along with this are few opportunities for CAF members to study peacekeeping as an academic subject.8 For that reason, to better comprehend the lessons of the last 25 years that enable the CAF to conduct more effective peace and other operations, it is necessary to understand what has taken place since Canada’s military was first committed “in the service of peace,” and the subsequent changes wrought by the “Somalia Affair.”9

Public Perceptions

Even today, when Canadians visualize ‘peacekeeping,’ they tend to picture an iconic image of soldiers wearing the UN ‘blue beret’ interposing themselves between warring factions to bring a peaceful resolution to ongoing conflict.10 In 2010, Canadian academics, Jocelyn Coulon and Michel Liégeois argued that this image has, in part, been created by the public rhetoric of successive Canadian governments who utilized it as an element of national identity; they actively reinforced the national myth that “…Canada is a country of peacekeepers.”11 While one can argue that this idea did not have as much prominence during Canadian deployments to Afghanistan, this mythic image has been brought back and reinforced by the current government.12 Despite the popular national perspective of peacekeeping and ‘blue berets,’ the past few decades have been characterised by activities that are more challenging and complex than ‘traditional’ peacekeeping. These modern peace operations are normally non-permissive, favour one side or another, and might not be limited in their use of force. On top of this, a political resolution is not always easily attainable.

This public perception of peacekeepers developed from the missions produced by the relatively stable international system produced by the Cold War, and relied upon the Westphalian notion of the primacy of the state. In this context, states are the arbiters of conflict and are allowed to pursue any means to ensure the stability of the international system.13 These concepts were firmly rooted in a post-Second World War international system based upon balance of power relationships that allowed for peacekeeping in a UN setting grounded in Chapter VI mandates.14 One can contend that these ideas persisted until the end of the Cold War, and the fragmentation of the relative stability established within the bi-polar balance of power relationship between East and West. Today there is no doubt that operations are conducted in a post-Westphalian world. In this setting, the sources of conflict and power wielded are not limited to state actors, and consequently, threats to peace are difficult to detect, discern, and resolve.

The peace operations of the Cold War were typically carried out under the auspices of the UN. These missions were divided into categories corresponding to the relevant articles of the UN Charter, either Chapter VI “Pacific Settlement Of Disputes,” or Chapter VII “Action With Respect To Threats To The Peace, Breaches Of The Peace, and Acts Of Aggression.” The purpose of Chapter VI missions was the resolution of disputes endangering international peace and security. Generally, under this chapter, military contingents are deployed once negotiation, mediation, or arbitration have led to some form of agreement, and the parties involved in the conflict agree to allow a UN force to monitor the agreement. Canadian examples of such Chapter VI operations include contributions to the UN Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus (UNFICYP) (1964 – present), and the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) (1974 – present), located in the Golan Heights. Those participating in Chapter VI deployments wear the blue beret to visibly demonstrate their status as peacekeepers.

Chapter VII of the Charter allows for actions pertaining to threats to stability, transgressions of an established peace, or in reaction to acts of aggression. This chapter allows the UN to impose or enforce peace, by any means required – both military and non-military – with the goal of these activities bringing about the restoration of international peace and security. Examples of Canadian participation in Chapter VII operations include the Unified Task Force (UNITAF) in Somalia (1992 – 1993); the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)-led Implementation Force in Bosnia (IFOR) (1995 – 1996); the International Force in East Timor (INTERFET) (1999 – 2000); the NATO organized International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan (2003 – 2014); and Mission des Nations unies pour la stabilisation en Haïti [UN Stabilization Mission in Haiti] (MINUSTAH) (2004 – present).15

Somalia

The mission in Somalia commenced with a desire by the UN to assist with humanitarian aid in a country torn by civil war and famine. This changed over time into an attempt to help stop the violence and rebuild the country into a functioning nation-state. The United Nations Operation in Somalia I (UNOSOM I) was initiated on 24 April 1992 to meet the initial goals of the UN, and grew from its originally small commitment of 50 observers, to thousands of troops. This included a commitment from Canada to provide an infantry battalion. By July 1992, this role was assigned to the Canadian Airborne Regiment, which had already been earmarked and prepared for a previously-postponed UN mission in the Western Sahara (Operation Python).16 The unit started to prepare anew for the Somalia mission almost immediately, and training commenced in ernest during September 1992 after the posting cycle, reorganization, and initial equipping with armoured vehicles. The latter proving to be an ongoing and problematic process.

During this period, support of UN activities could not be gained from key Somalia warlords and turmoil continued, impinging upon relief efforts. Consequently, on 2 December, UNOSOM I was temporarily suspended. Almost immediately, the United States-led multi-national coalition Unified Task Force Somalia (UNITAF) was approved by the UN Security Council to create a secure environment and to facilitate UN humanitarian operations. The United States invited Canada to participate in this coalition. After Cabinet debate on 4 December by the ad hoc Committee of Ministers, utilizing advice from the Department of National Defence and External Affairs, it was decided to switch the Canadian commitment from UNOSOM I to UNITAF. By the end December, the CARBG was deployed and enmeshed in operations. With this change, the CARBG deployment in Somalia changed from a Chapter VI to a Chapter VII mandate. After months of operations, the unit returned to Canada in June 1993, leaving behind a sector that was considered “stable.”17

While many flaws were found in the training of the CARBG, the Somalia Inquiry noted that GPCT had been the foundation of all deployments of the Cold War. The Inquiry went on to observe that general purpose combat training still constituted part of the core training, but not exclusively so, for peace operations. GPCT provided soldiers and units the ability to successfully complete a wide variety of combat functions, and to integrate them collectively to meet larger operational requirements. These individual skills included proficiency in weapons, fieldcraft and communications, protection against biological and chemical agents, first aid skills, and the attainment of an acceptable level of physical fitness. These individual skills, once mastered, were combined in collective training scenarios at successively higher levels until the desired objective was achieved. This, along with some mission-specific training, formed the basis of Cold War peacekeeping preparations. There was a philosophy that peacekeeping would require the same skills as combat, but to a lesser degree. It was believed that training specific to the mission could be achieved in the time between the mission notification and deployment. Regrettably, this did not transpire with the CARBG and the Somalia mission.18

Indeed, that is how the separate services of the Canadian military visualized and trained for peacekeeping during the Cold War. From the beginning, there was a steady stream of Canadian casualties, starting with Brigadier-General Harry Angle in 1950, killed while serving with the UN Military Observer Group in India and Pakistan.19 The omnipresent danger of violence during peacekeeping likely made defaulting to a training framework based upon GPCT self-evident, particularly for a military that had just participated in the Second World War (1939 – 1945), and later Korea (1950 – 1952). Reinforcing that service was successful involvement in the first large-scale UN mission of this period, known as UN Emergency Force I (UNEF I) (1956 – 1967). After the 1956 Suez Crisis, then-Secretary of State for External Affairs Lester B. Pearson put together a Canadian proposal for an interim UN force to supervise the withdrawal of French, Israeli, and British forces, and to also monitor a cease-fire between Egypt and Israel. This initiative resulted in Pearson receiving a Nobel Peace Prize and being perceived as the ‘architect’ of UN peacekeeping. Significantly, UNEF defined how the Canadian public and its military came to visualize ‘peacekeeping,’ in related but different fashions.20

UNEF I affirmed that the core of peacekeeping training was the military skills of GPCT. Due to the deployment rapidity, the Canadian contributions had no specialized peacekeeping training. While challenges were cited regarding this Middle East peacekeeping mission, training was not discerned as one of them.21 This idea was maintained in the decades that followed. At a Department of National Defence sponsored conference in 1964, representatives from the Royal Canadian Navy (RCN) and the Royal Canadian Air Force (RCAF) opined that the involvement of their services in peacekeeping differed little from normal operations. From a Canadian Army (CA) perspective, it was opined that the main requirements of the Canadian UN standby battalion were that it “…be lightly equipped, fit and hard and highly adaptable to adverse conditions.”22 Two years later, in 1966, a study of Canadian military operations supporting the UN re-affirmed that RCN and RCAF training for these types of military activities “…is to some extent consistent with other operational commitments.” It noted that for the Canadian Army, “the transition from other types of operations to UN operations is not great.”23

Successive Chiefs of the Defence Staff, Generals Jean Victor Allard and Paul Manson, reaffirmed this idea. Allard testified as follows to the House of Commons Defence Committee in 1966:

In any future peacekeeping or peace restoration mission, we must ensure the most judicious application of our forces is made…The deployment of strong, highly organized multi-purposed forces to an area of trouble does not mean that force will be used; it merely means that a deterrence to more serious types of conflict will have been achieved.

Over two decades later, in 1989, Manson supported the requirement to train as “soldiers first” to deal with the complexities of peacekeeping.24

While GPCT was deemed appropriate for peace operations, it was evident from the Somalia Inquiry and other studies that it needed to be coupled with appropriate education and training. The requirement for professional and educated military leadership identified during the Inquiry was further delineated by a succession of initiatives that had been coalescing either concurrently or subsequent to the Inquiry. Not the least of these enterprises was Minister of National Defence Doug Young’s 1997 Report to the Prime Minister on the Leadership and Management of the Canadian Forces. This report, along with the monitoring and implementation committees that surrounded it, created a significant paradigm shift. The tools of academic education and professional education were made relevant to 21st Century Canadian military professionals. The new policies ranged from the need for a ‘degreed’ officer corps and emphasis upon higher level education, to a succession of new senior staff courses to provide higher level professional competencies. Educational requirements, both professional and academic, were reviewed, and new requirements were put in place. Furthermore, the initiatives extended beyond the officer corps. Today, the Non-Commissioned Member Professional Development program located in St-Jean, Quebec, educates the Non-Commissioned Officers of the Forces. Also, to provide institutional support to both education and training recommendations, the Canadian Defence Academy (CDA) was created in 2002, and in 2004, it was given an official mandate “…to act as the institutional champion of Canadian Forces professional development.” 25

It can be argued that ‘peace operations education,’ as a subject of study, is not given emphasis within these initiatives. Despite that, this professional education has equipped the officer corps, as well as senior non-commissioned sailors, soldiers, and aviators, with the cognitive competencies to understand and formulate appropriate military responses in a complex modern security environment. Education is not just specific expertise, but includes developing the ability to think critically and creatively, as well as expanding the intellectual breadth required to design and conduct military activities in all types of situations.26

In addition to greater education requirements, more emphasis was placed upon training appropriate to peace operations. A Senate Report of 1993 acknowledged GPCT as the basis for this training, and it suggested that “…the best trained peacekeeper is a well-trained soldier, sailor or airman, one who knows his or her trade.” At the same time, this Senate Report also identified that the current military training could be “…improved by adding to the curriculum subjects which are not necessarily military in character,” such as mediation.27 The Somalia Inquiry recommended that, along with GPCT, generic peacekeeping training (UN processes and common peace operations tasks), in addition to mission-specific training (theatre particular) be taught. Additionally, due to the quantity and general applicability of these topics, they needed to be integrated into the general training system.28 Concurrently with the Inquiry, the Canadian military put into place systemic oversight of peacekeeping missions and standards through a series of Deputy Chief of Defence (DCDS) staff instructions and mandated training evaluation of pre-deployment peacekeeping training at the individual and collective levels. This supervision continues today with Canadian Joint Operations Command.29

With DCDS direction, along with the Somalia Inquiry and other recommendations, peace operations training became mandated. GPCT still forms the foundation of mission preparedness, and over the years, it has been broadened out with areas of general and specific training that today includes, but is not limited to: cultural, religious, and historical awareness; use of force; rules of engagement; refugees and internally-displaced persons; civil affairs and language; communications, command structure and logistics; dealing with international organizations, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), and regional organizations; public affairs; environment specific medical training; tactical training in operations; information gathering; mediation; negotiation; use of technology; and gender integration. Ethics material is imbued within much of this training, as is the need to support vulnerable populations. This includes people who, individually or collectively, are at greater risk than the general population of being harmed or of having a lower quality of life imposed upon them.30 Upon considering this list, which is constantly evolving, one could also argue that these skills are demanded by most 21st Century military operations, not just peace operations. On top of this, CAF peace operations doctrine created since the Somalia Report and updated within the last decade or so is still relevant and regularly scrutinized.31

The recommendations of the Somalia Inquiry pertaining to the institutionalization of peace operations training in Canada and assisting with peace operations training capacity in other countries were addressed through the establishment of the Peace Support Training Centre (PSTC) in 1996. The Somalia Inquiry Report lauded the formation of the PSTC, and its’ connection to the Lessons Learned Centres established by the Canadian Army. It highlighted: “…that they should help to satisfy the need for co-ordination of training, the production of training material, and the updating of training content and standards in a more systematic manner than has been true in the past.” The PSTC was mandated to not only deliver pre-deployment peace operations training, but also to provide peace operations training assistance to Canadian and other foreign organizations. Since then, the role of the PSTC has enlarged to give “…specific, individual [peace operations] training to prepare selected members of the Canadian Forces, Other Government Departments and foreign military personnel.” As elements of this training, the PSTC increases foreign peace operations capacity through (1) active participation in foreign and domestic conferences, (2) dispatching instructors to other countries to support their training and build capacity, and (3) training foreign instructors and students in Canada. The training they provide is closely linked to Government of Canada objectives, and reflects both UN and North Atlantic Treaty Organization requirements. For instance, the “United Nations Military Experts on Mission” course is the signature course of the PSTC, and it reflects UN core pre-deployment training knowledge. This course has been certified with the UN since the late-1990s, with re-certification occurring every five years, to ensure the training reflects directed UN requirements. Additionally, the PSTC is the Centre of Excellence for Canadian peace operations training, as well as having the added responsibilities of Influence Activities – Information and Psychological Operations, as well as Civil-Military Cooperation. A small unit of about 60 personal that utilizes significant CA augmentation in support of its courses, the PSTC provides enormous joint institutional capacity that far outweighs its size.32

The current Commandant of the PSTC, Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Healey, eloquently summarized the complexity of the changes, particularly with respect to CAF education and training for peace operations, that have occurred since Somalia when he observed, “The days of simply taking off your helmet and putting on your blue beret are gone.”³³ In the security atmosphere of the 21^st Century, countries not only have the domestic responsibility, but also the international responsibility to anticipate, prepare for, and deal with myriad crises and conflicts. Military capabilities and forces must be used to counter a broad range of threats and requirements, from conventional to asymmetric warfare, in addition to the gamut of peace operations. As a result, Healey’s words resonate now more than ever. The CAF must be an adaptive and responsive military force that is able to work domestically or abroad in the multi-agency context required for integrated military operations. The structures developed in the wake of the Somalia Affair for education, training, and capacity building have far greater relevance than simply addressing the needs of peace operations, but give the capability to design and execute relevant security options for Canadians and their Government while conducting all types of military activities. Despite arguments to the contrary, the changes to education and training that have occurred over the last 25 years have enabled the CAF to better deal with the ill-defined and complex problems posed by peace and other operations in the current and future security environment.³⁴ The re-professionalization of the Canadian military and its recent experiences in Afghanistan and Iraq have produced skillfully led forces who adeptly represent Canada at home and abroad.

I would like to thank Colonel Tod Strickland CD, Lieutenant-Colonel Colin Magee CD, Ph.D., Dr. Chris Kilford CD, and Ms. Lindsay Coombs for their review and advice with this article.

About the author:
*Colonel Howard G. Coombs, OMM, CD, Ph.D., retired from full-time duty with the Canadian Armed Forces in 2003 and transferred to the Canadian Army Reserve, where he continues to serve on a part-time basis with the Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Command Headquarters, in Kingston, Ontario. He is currently an Assistant Professor of History and the Associate Chair War Studies Program at the Royal Military College of Canada. Coombs has a number of operational deployments to the former Yugoslavia and Afghanistan as a military officer on regular and reserve duty. In addition, he deployed to Kandahar Province, Afghanistan from September 2010 to July 2011 as a civilian advisor.

Source:
This article was published by the Canadian Military Journal, Volume 17, Number 4, Page 35.

Notes:

1. Canada, “Dishonoured Legacy: The Lessons of the Somalia Affair, Report of the Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia, Volume 2,” [ 5 vols.]. (Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1997), p. 613.
2. See David Bercuson, Significant Incident: Canada’s Army, the Airborne and the Murder in Somalia (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Inc., 1996.)
3. The name “Canadian Forces” (CF) was changed to “Canadian Armed Forces” (CAF) in 2013.
4. See Donna Winslow, “Misplaced Loyalties: The Role of Military Culture in the Breakdown of Discipline in Two Peace Operations,” in Journal of Military and Strategic Studies, Vol. 6, No. 3 (2004), pp. 345-367.
5. Allen G. Sens, “Somalia and the Changing Nature of Peacekeeping: a study prepared for the Commission of Inquiry into the Deployment of Canadian Forces to Somalia” (Ottawa: Public Works and Government Services Canada, 1997), pp. 110-111; Canada, “Dishonoured Legacy, Volume 1,” pp. 151-153; and, Canada, “Dishonoured Legacy, Volume 2,” pp. 557-652.
6. See David J. Bercuson, “Up from the Ashes: The Re-Professionalization of the Canadian Forces after the Somalia Affair,” in Canadian Military Journal Vol. 9, No. 3 (2009), pp. 31-39, at: http://www.journal.forces.gc.ca/vo9/no3/doc/06-bercuson-eng.pdf, accessed 4 July 2017.
7. Canada, Department of National Defence (DND), Strong, Secure, Engaged: Canada’s Defence Policy (June 2017), pp. 54-55, 84, and 91-92 at: http://dgpaapp.forces.gc.ca/en/canada-defence-policy/docs/canada-defence-policy-report.pdf, accessed 6 June 2017.
8. See A. Walter Dorn and Joshua Libben, “Unprepared for Peace? The Decline of Canadian Peacekeeping Training (and What to Do About It)”(Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives and Rideau Institute on International Affairs, February 2016), at: http://walterdorn.net/pdf/Unprepared-for-Peace_Cdn-Pkg-Trng_Dorn-Libben_2016.pdf, accessed 14 February 2017; and Murray Brewster, “Canadian military ill-prepared for modern peacekeeping: Report – The Trudeau government has promised to get Canada back into peacekeeping,” CBC News – Politics (2 Feb 2016 9:14 AM ET), at: http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/canadian-military-ill-prepared-for-modern-peacekeeping-report-1.3429938, accessed 4 July 2017, n.p.
9. “In the Service of Peace” is struck on the reverse of the standard UN Medal. The medal ribbon from which the medal hangs is unique to a specific mission.
10. Peacekeeping consists of activities, normally undertaken by military personnel, predicated on “consent, impartiality and the minimum use of force” and aimed at creating a durable and lasting peace. While peace operations consist of a broad range of actions in which expeditionary military and police forces undertake to “prevent, limit and manage violent conflict as well as rebuild in its aftermath.” Alex J. Bellamy and Paul D. Williams with Stuart Griffin, Understanding Peacekeeping, 2^nd ed. (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2010; reprint, 2011), respectively pages 173-175 and 18.
11. Jocelyn Coulon and Michel Liégeois, “Whatever Happened to Peacekeeping? The Future of a Tradition,” (Calgary, AB: Canadian Defence and Foreign Affairs Institute, January 2010), p. 41.
12. The present government’s commitment to peacekeeping was evident in the months after its election victory in 2015, “‘We’re back’ says Justin Trudeau at Ottawa rally,” The Canadian Press video, 1: 31, 20 October 2015, at: http://www.sachem.ca/videopopup/5970582?popUp=true, accessed 4 February 2017; Canada, Prime Minister, “Minister of National Defence Mandate Letter,” (released 13 November 2015) at: http://pm.gc.ca/eng/minister-national-defence-mandate-letter, accessed 11 January 2016, n.p.; and Canada, Governor-General, “‘Making Real Change Happen,’ Speech from the Throne to Open the First Session of the Forty-second Parliament of Canada,” (Canada: Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, 2015), at: http://www.sachem.ca/videopopup/5970582?popUp=true, accessed 4 February 2017, p. 7; also, see Canada, DND, Strong, Secure, Engaged: Canada’s Defence Policy (June 2017), at: http://dgpaapp.forces.gc.ca/en/canada-defence-policy/docs/canada-defence-policy-report.pdf, accessed 6 June 2017, pp. 54-55, 84, and 91-92.
13. Henry Kissinger, World Order (New York: Penguin Press, 2014), pp. 1-48; and, Henry Kissinger, Diplomacy (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1994), pp. 21, 58-59, 65, and 806.
14. Canada, DND, Directorate of Heritage and History (DHH), “Operations Database,”at: http://www.cmp-cpm.forces.gc.ca/dhh-dhp/od-bdo/index-eng.asp, accessed 4 February 2017, n.p.
15. United Nations, “Charter of the United Nations” (1945), at: https://treaties.un.org/doc/publication/ctc/uncharter.pdf, accessed 5 February 2015, pp. 8-11; and, Canada, DND, DHH, “Operations Database,” n.p. Also, Chapter VIII of the UN Charter provides for supporting regional arrangements to maintain peace. While Canada has had little to do militarily with Chapter VIII missions in the wake of the western involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq the idea working alongside, in partnership or through regional organizations instead of creating western led intervention may gain popularity in many quarters. United Nations, “Charter of the United Nations,” p. 11.
16. Operational names described in this article, like Python, are Canadian designations. See Canada, DND, DHH, “Operations Database,” n.p.; United Nations, Department of Public Information, The Blue Helmets: A Review of United Nations Peace-keeping, 3^rd edition (New York: United Nations Publications, 1996), pp. 291-297; Canada, “Dishonoured Legacy, Volume 1,” pp. 240-242, and 252-254; and, Canada, “Dishonoured Legacy, Volume 2,” 679-680.
17. Canada, “Dishonoured Legacy, Volume 1,” pp.240-242, 257-259, 285 and 332-334.
18. Canada, “Dishonoured Legacy, Volume 2,” 558-559.
19. See “Casualties in Peacekeeping Operations 1950-1980,” 82/222, DHH Archives, Ottawa (DND); and “BGen Angle DSO Harry Herbert” Roll Call Of Honour, at: http://www.honourthem.ca/masterDetail.cfm?ID=201, accessed 4 July 2017.
20. John A. Munro and Alex I. Inglis, Mike: The Memoirs of the Right Honourable Lester B. Pearson, PC, CC, OM, OBE, MA, LLD, Volume 2, 1948 – 1957 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1973), pp. 244-278; and Canada, DND, DHH, “Operations Database,” n.p.
21. Colonel G.W.L. Nicholson, “Report No. 94, Historical Section Army Headquarters, Canadian participation in UNEF” (Ottawa: Department of National Defence, 1 June 1961), pp. 40-43.
22. See annexes to “CFHQ S 3451-3 (DI Plans) Meeting of Military Experts to Consider the Technical Aspects of Peace-Keeping Operations Ottawa 2-6 Nov 64, 9 Nov 64,” including papers used at the conference, 75/314, DHH Archives, Ottawa (DND), quote from the enclosure entitled “Organization and Training of the Stand-By Battalion,” p. 5.
23. Enclosure, “‘Papers From Contributors to the Study of Professionalism in the Canadian Forces,’ ‘Annex B Canada’s Military Involvement in United Nations Peace-Keeping Activities in the Seventies,’ Leland M. Goodrich, Department of International Studies, University of Toronto, May 1971,” to “NDC 1150-1/2 CDS Study Seminar – 14-16 Oct 71 Fort Frontenac, 19 August 1971,” Vol. I, 87/25, pp. 10-12.
24. General Jean Victor Allard testimony to “House of Commons Standing Committee on Defence – June 21, 1966,” 306, cited in Dan G. Loomis, The Somalia Affair: Reflections on Peacemaking and Peacekeeping, rev. ed. (Ottawa: DGL Publications, 1997), p. 35; and General Paul D. Manson, “Peacekeeping in Canadian Foreign and Defence Policy,” in Canadian Defence Quarterly, Vol. 19, No. 1 (Summer 1989), p. 8.
25. See Canada, DND, Canadian Officership in the 21st Century (Officership 2020): Strategic Guidance for the Canadian Forces Officer Corps and the Officer Professional Development System (February 2001), I; “Foreword,” Allan English, Understanding Canadian Military Culture (Montreal & Kingston: McGill Queen’s University Press, 2004); Canada, “Meeting New Challenges: Canada’s Response to a New Generation of Peacekeeping, Report of the Standing Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs” (February 1993), 94/183, DHH Archives, Ottawa (DND), pp. 70-75; Canada, Deputy Chief of Defence Staff, “4500-1 Training Requirements for Peacekeeping Missions, 29 December 1993,” 94/18, DHH Archives, Ottawa (DND); and see also discussion in Bercuson, “Up from the Ashes,” pp. 31-39; quote from Canada, DND, Minister of National Defence, “Direction for the Establishment of the Canadian Defence Academy (The Charter of the Canadian Defence Academy) March 2004,” p. 1.
26. See Dorn and Libben, “Unprepared for Peace?”
27. Canada, Senate of Canada, “Meeting New Challenges,” p. 11.
28. Canada, “Dishonoured Legacy, Volume 2,” pp. 559-561.
29. At that time, the Deputy Chief of Defence Staff was responsible for overseeing all CF operations. In 2006, this management of and responsibility for all operations was transferred to Canadian Expeditionary Forces and Canada Commands. The former took charge of international activities and the latter became responsible for domestic operations. Later, in 2012, these two commands were unified within the current Canadian Joint Operations Command (CJOC), which is responsible for all operational force employment. The RCN, CA, RCAF, and other force providers, are responsible to generate trained military contributions for CJOC. See Colonel Bernd Horn and Dr. Bill Bentley, with a foreword by Romeo Dallaire, Forced to Change: Crisis and Reform in the Canadian Armed Forces (Toronto: Dundurn, 2015); and, Trista L. Grant-Waddell, “‘Soldiers First’: The Evolution of Training for Peacekeeping in the Canadian Forces, 1956-2000” Ph. D diss., University of Western Ontario, London, 2014, at: http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3438&context=etd , accessed 16 February 2017.
30. Canada, DND, Army Lessons Learned Centre, Dispatches: Training for Operations Vol. 3, No. 1 (February 1996); Canada, DND, Army Lessons Learned Centre, Dispatches: Training for Operations Vol. 3, No. 2 (April 1996); Canada, DND, Army Lessons Learned Centre, Dispatches: Operations in the Former Yugoslavia Vol. 4, No. 1 (September 1996); Canada, DND, Army Lessons Learned Centre, Dispatches: Law of Armed Conflict, Peace Operations and You Vol. 4, No. 2 (March 1997); Canada, DND, Peace Support Training Centre, “CAF Peace Support Operator Course Curriculum In Comparison To UN CPTM” (September 2013); Canada, DND, Canadian Army Training and Doctrine Centre Headquarters, “Briefing Note For Commander CADTC How the Peace Support Training Centre Trains Soldiers So They Are Prepared To Support Vulnerable Populations,” (7 March 2017), 1; and, Lieutenant-Colonel Brian Healey, interview with author, Peace Support Training Centre (PSTC), Kingston, Ontario, 9 June 2017.
31. See Canada, DND, Canadian Army Doctrine and Training Centre Headquarters, “Briefing Note For Comd CADTC: Assessment Of CA Peacekeeping Doctrine” (16 March 2016); and Healey interview.
32. Canada, “Dishonoured Legacy, Volume 2,” p. 626; Canada, DND, “Peace Support Training Centre: PSTC_History, History of the Peace Support Training Centre” (10 June 2015), at: http://acims.mil.ca/trg/PSTC/SitePages/PSTC_History.aspx, accessed 27 January 2017, n.p.; and the Pearson Peacekeeping Centre, which was established during the same period to train civilians, military and police together was closed in December 2013 due to a cessation of federal funding. Dorn and Libben, “Unprepared for Peace?”, p.7; Canada, Senate of Canada, “The Standing Senate Committee On National Security And Defence – Evidence” (21 September 2016), at: https://sencanada.ca/en/Content/Sen/committee/421/secd/52754-e; accessed 6 July 2017, n.p.; and Healey interview.
33. Healey interview.
34. For discussion of conflict environments see recent articles by Matthew Fisher, “For Trudeau, a UN mission in Africa appears ever more daunting: The Liberals could not have picked a worse time to be considering a blue beret — or more accurately, a blue helmet — mission in Africa,” in National Post (5 July 2017 4:00 PM EDT), at: http://nationalpost.com/g00/news/world/matthew-fisher-for-trudeau-a-un-mission-in-africa-appears-ever-more-daunting/wcm/b020a62c-fad5-4892-ae14-72109591a7d8?i10c.referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2F , accessed 6 July 2017, n.p.; and, Lew MacKenzie, “Looking for a sweet peacekeeping spot in Africa? Don’t do it” RCMI SITREP: The Journal of The Royal Canadian Military Institute, Vol. 76, No. 6 (November/December 2016), at: < http://www.rcmi.org/Library-and-Museum/Publications/SITREP/SITREP-2015_(1)/2016-06_Sitrep.aspx> , accessed 6 July 2017, pp. 7-8.

In November 2017 Latin America begins a long and intense electoral period that will last until 2019 and during which 14 countries will hold presidential elections. At stake is the adjustment of the region’s economies to the new international context and the confirmation –or not– that Latin America is experiencing a general change in political tendency.

By Rogelio Núñez*

The elections that will take place in Latin America between November 2017 and the end of 2019 will serve to determine whether or not the current change in political scenarios and equilibriums will be consolidated (the so-called ‘shift to the right’ –or to the centre-right– that has been referred to often since 2015), and if the new governments arising from the polls will possess sufficient strength and political will to tackle the structural economic reforms necessary for the region to adapt to the newly emerging global scenario, that of the 4th digital revolution.

Together with corruption and the need for higher levels of transparency, the axis of the political debates in the Latin American elections of the coming three years will focus on the struggle between those parties and leaders who advocate reform and those who embody alternatives opposed to such changes and transformations.

The Latin America of the coming decade will take shape, politically and economically, over the course of these elections in which the predominant ideological tone of the region will be defined, along with its capacity, or lack of it, to face these new global scenarios and their concomitant economic and commercial challenges.

Analysis

Latin America is now immersed in an electoral triennium (2017, 2018 and 2019) that will be decisive in determining the future political and economic course of the region in the coming decade. During these three years there will be presidential elections in Chile and Honduras (2017), Costa Rica, Paraguay, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela (2018), and El Salvador, Panama, Guatemala, Argentina, Uruguay and Bolivia (2019). In 14 of the 18 countries where democratic and pluralist elections exist, the Head of State will be renovated via the poll booths. In addition, in Cuba it is believed that Raul Castro will step down from the presidency in February 2018.

The Latin America of the 2020s will be shaped over the course of the coming triennium (2017-19). After the ‘neoliberal’ consensus of the 1990s, the ‘turn to the left’ of the past decade (a heterogeneous and diverse shift that did not occur in the same way in all countries involved), Latin America could be entering a moment of transition, and experimenting with ‘another shift’ –this time in the direction of the right (or, to be more precise, to the ‘centre-right’)– with a pragmatic and reformist character, of which Mauricio Macri and, perhaps, Sebastian Piñera could be considered representative examples.

This redesigning of the Latin American political map coincides and overlaps with the current regional economic crossroads and the numerous challenges it poses for adapting institutions and economies to the new world now taking shape, that of technological change and the 4th digital revolution. The governments that arise from the polling booths and the parliaments that come together as a result will need to undertake profound modifications and structural changes in search of stronger competitiveness and higher productivity for their economies now trapped in a double downward spiral of weaknesses: economic (due to weak GDP growth) and political (governments, in the majority of cases, lacking strong social backing, sufficient legislative support and political will to give impulse to a reform agenda).

Latin America: elections, economy and reforms

The reforms of the 1980s and 90s gave way to Latin American economies that were stronger, more trustworthy and more stable. Nevertheless, the reformist push exhausted itself during the last decade (hibernating, perhaps, during the economic bonanza) and in the current situation the risk is that the region will become trapped in chronic stagnation (or very weak growth, which the bonanza foreshadowed), undermining the gains in poverty reduction made in recent years. According to the IMF, Latin America and the Caribbean will collectively grow 1% in 2017 and 1.9% in 2018; this is, beyond a doubt, a recovery with respect to the negative growth of 2015 and 2016 and, at the same time, a moderate expansion (excessively moderate). Latin America benefits from the recovery of Argentina and Brazil but, as the chief economist of the IMF for the Western Hemisphere, Alejandro Werner, recognised, ‘the march resumes again, but at a slow speed’.

The numbers confirm the present trend since 2013: most countries (excepting the prolonged and progressive collapse of the Venezuelan economy or moments of deep recession, limited in time, as in Brazil, Ecuador and Argentina) do not find themselves immersed in economic crisis (not even in a progressive growth slowdown) but rather they are trapped in a dynamic of weak or low growth. From the economic point of view, Latin America has experienced a five-year period of economic inertia out of which it has not been able to pull itself given it has failed to undertake internal structural reforms. Between 2003 and 2013 Latin America experienced undeniable economic bonanza: rapid growth until 2008, negative growth in 2009 and slow deceleration or stagnation in the current decade. From 2012 the region has had four years of slow growth (2012, 2013, 2014 and 2017) and two of negative GDP growth, or contraction (2015 and 2016).

In the present economic situation (2017-19), the central problem of the region is not that it is growing negatively (growth has been positive and will continue to be so) or that growth is slowing down (it is increasing with respect to past years). The real problem is weak regional expansion, which lags far behind the figures that would make possible a significant reduction in poverty and inequality, which would require, in addition to efficient public policies, GDP growth of around 5%. Yet the weak expansion is on its way to transforming into a structural characteristic. Without reforms to make the region more competitive and productive it is highly unlikely that the longed-for acceleration will ever take place (beyond only temporary recovery spurts), leading, in the best of cases, to a Latin America perennially trapped on an insufficient growth path (slightly above 1% but far below the desired 5%).

Into this delicate moment flow the political-electoral and economic dynamics of the coming triennium. The change in the economic cycle through which Latin American countries are now passing has had as one of its principal consequences the exposure of the region’s weaknesses, which remained hidden during the bonanza (2003-13). The boom was not taken advantage of in its totality (despite socioeconomic gains) to resolve the many pending tasks Latin American countries still face.

To break the tendency towards stagnation or mediocre economic growth implies putting in place structural reforms with a wide political consensus to guarantee their sustainability and continuity over time. Reforms are needed to improve competitiveness and productivity through public policies which favour investment in physical (infrastructures and logistics) and human capital (education) and the diversification of production and export markets, while at the same time providing incentives for innovation and entrepreneurship to add more value to exports.

To implement such a reformist plan requires political will and strength. From this point of view, another problem facing the region is the lack of consensus on what reforms to adopt and how to implement them. The growing political polarisation and de-legitimisation and fragmentation of political parties does not contribute to the forging of wide consensus around the type of required structural reforms. The opposite is occurring and, for this reason, the political struggle in the coming three years will pivot and turn upon those forces, parties, movements and leaderships that propose the beginning or continuation of such transformations and those who oppose their implementation. The electorate, finally, will have to choose, in the majority of cases, between these two options: those that are disposed not only to conserve but also deepen the reforms pushed to date by governments like those of Enrique Peña Nieto in Mexico, Mauricio Macri in Argentina or Michel Temer in Brazil; or those who aspire not only to stop this reformist process but even to roll it back. This is the case of Andrés Manuel López Obrador in Mexico, the PT and part of the left in Brazil or the Kirchnerism of Argentina.

The electoral axis of reformism versus anti-reformism

What occurred in the recent legislative elections in Argentina, and the moves which were followed by the government of President Macri, after a clear victory of the coalition supporting him, are a sample of what is to come in the elections now underway and in those which are on the way: the implementation of a reformist program or its blocking.

The campaign for the legislative elections in Argentina coincided with the exhaustion of the reform impulse that the Macri government had begun in 2015 and continued during 2016. Such reform projects were partially sacrificed for the best results in the elections last 22 October. The Cambiemos (‘let’s change’) coalition was victorious in these polls and the strong backing that Macri’s executive received opened up the possibility of a second wave of reforms with very defined characteristics. First, this has implied a reinforcement of the continuity of the gradual reformism in Argentina: since December 2015 the government has opted for a gradual transformation to avoid tensions and further outbreaks of social protest. Secondly, the electoral victory has favoured the launch of four new reforms affecting: (1) the labour market (increased flexibility); (2) fiscal matters (adjustment of the State and provincial government budgets); (3) pensions (including an increase in the retirement age); and (4) education (focused on the secondary level).

As in Argentina, along with the issue of corruption, the axis upon which the political-electoral struggle of the coming three years will turn will be the reform/anti-reform debate. This will define the dynamic of the elections in the two regional giants, Brazil and Mexico. The different forces that competed in the Mexican elections of July 2008 will position themselves again in favour of, or against, the reform programme (and its possible deepening and continuity) that has been pushed by Enrique Peña Nieto (the ‘Pact for Mexico’ which reached reform zenith between 2012 and 2014). The project will be defended –and proposed for an extension and a broadening of scope– by the candidate of the PRI, especially if the current Secretary of Finance, José Antonio Meade, is chosen as the candidate to embody this model of change and transformation. But other opposition parties, like the centre-right PAN and the social-democratic PRD (now allied with the Citizens Front), will also support the reforms. These groups have been allies of Peña Nieto in the reform process and they will likely not diverge too much (particularly those of the PAN) from what has been the central objective of the current administration.

In contrast to the continuity of the reform programme represented by the PRI, the PAN and to a large degree also the PRD, the MORENA party of Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) embodies a diametrically opposed position: anti-reformism and a reversal of the changes either introduced in the current six-year mandate, or initiated somewhat timidly during the period of the former PAN President, Felipe Calderón (2006-12). The energy reform is a particular target of the MORENA leader who up until now has been ahead in the polls. AMLO aspires to review the legislation which opened the energy markets to foreign investment and has promised to hold a referendum on the reversal of this reform.

In Brazil, the corruption issue (crystallized in the Lava Jato case and its offshoots) will hang over and permeate the presidential election campaign of 2018. But the debate will also embrace the possible defence or rejection of the reform plans of President Temer (reforms which, ironically, were begun in a more moderate way by the government of Dilma Rousseff). Temer has pushed a package of structural transformations to regain the confidence of investors and to put the country back on the path of growth after two years of recession. First, the government chose to freeze public spending to contain the deficit; then it approved a package of flexible labour laws in order to stimulate labour market; and now it seeks to modify the pension system. This programme has been backed by the legislature and, from within the government, by the PSDB, the party now emerging as the favourite to dispute the second round of the presidential elections with Geraldo Alckmin (Governor of São Paulo) or with João Doria (Prefect of São Paulo), the two most likely challengers.

Against the continuity of Temer’s reforms, now in the hands of the PSDB, Lula da Silva is attempting to become a candidate, although the weight of the scandals surrounding him and his implication in current judicial proceedings will possibly block his candidacy. If this happens, his party, the PT, will claim Lula’s legacy of prosperity and bonanza as a counterpoint to the austerity of Temer. When the former President has appeared in the streets to support the protests against the current administration, the sensation he has generated, and not in vain, is that he will raise the banner of anti-reform, as suggested by his own words: “We want not only for Temer to leave, but also to stop the reforms put into place by his government, and that the people elect their president at the polls”.

In Chile, on the other hand, what is at stake in the elections of November/December 2017 is a struggle between two different strains of reformism. One is embodied by the official Fuerza de Mayoría (Force of the Majority), with Alejandro Guillier as its candidate, and aspires to carry forward and deepen the changes introduced under the management of Michelle Bachelet, which injected a social element into the liberalised Chilean economy (fiscal reform, free university education, constitutional reform and reform of the public pension system). On the other side, the centre-right opposition, linked to the Chile Vamos alliance and led by the former President Sebastián Piñera, is pushing a more ‘liberal’ reform package, include a cut in public spending, in search of economic efficiency to recover the lost path of strong expansion and to undertake a profound modification to the transformative principles pursued during the Bachelet period (2014-18).

Guillier has tried to revive the fear of the right as the vehicle of a ‘neoliberal’ programme that will suppress the ‘social benefits’ produced by the current government’s reforms. In the words of Guillier: ‘If we only get economic growth, this will accentuate the concentration of property, wealth and income, and this could generate even more social mobilisation’. For his part, Piñera has focused his government programme on pursuing fiscal austerity through the ‘budgetary reassignment’ of ‘poorly evaluated programmes’, which supposedly will lead to budget savings of US$7 billion, a foundation upon which to promote solid economic growth.

One way or another, the rest of the presidential elections of the triennium now underway (2017-19) will implicitly pit reformist programmes against anti-reform postures. In Costa Rica (February 2018) the centre of the debate will turn upon the transformations required to combat the high levels of fiscal deficit that have weighed upon the country’s development since the beginning of the century. In the same way, in Colombia (May 2018) there will be much discussion in the campaign of the FARC peace process which has polarised the country, as revealed by consultative vote in 2016. But sooner rather than later the candidates and the forces backing them will have to put on the table specific projects for reactivating an economy which has still not taken off. In fact, the IMF has just reduced its Colombia growth projection for 2017 from 2.3% to the currently expected 2%. In 2019 the Argentina that has just given an important vote of confidence to Macri will have to re-evaluate the reformist programme of the President, who will very possibly seek re-election.

Conclusions

Latin America is about to experience three years (2017-19) of high intensity electoral politics with elections scheduled in 14 countries. These include a number of important election dates, along with some of special significance (like Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and Argentina) in a double sense (political and economic).

From the political point of view, the elections of this triennium could confirm, nuance or belie the so-called ‘turn to the right’ (to the centre-right would be more exact) that the region began in 2015 when Macri defeated the Kirchnerist candidate Daniel Scioli in the Argentine presidential election, and when the MUD won the legislative elections in Venezuela. This new political-electoral trend was strengthened by the defeat of Evo Morales in the February 2016 referendum and by the removal of office of Dilma Rousseff in Brazil. Still, electoral victories like that of the Ortega block in Nicaragua in 2016 or of Alianza País in Ecuador in 2017 have transformed this supposed ‘turn’ into more of a centre-right predominance than into a global, generalised Latin American transformation. The possible victories of Piñera in Chile and Juan Orlando Hernández in Honduras, of the PRI in Mexico and of some toucan (of the PBSD) in Brazil could confirm this change in tendency towards the centre-right. Nevertheless, it also cannot be ruled out that the populist left (of Andrés Manuel López Obrador, for example, in Mexico) might win some elections, or that the ‘Bolivarian left’ will be re-elected in Venezuela and Bolivia, or that certain marginal ‘outsider’ candidates will emerge who are extremely critical of the status quo (like Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil), in a development similar to that which occurred in the US with Donald Trump.

From the economic point of view, at stake in these election is the future –or lack of one– for broad and deep structural economic reforms in the countries of the region that would prepare Latin America for the new international context in which commercial success, economic expansion and social improvements (reduction of poverty and inequality) come to those economies with the higher levels of productivity and competitiveness, and in which efficient and efficacious states and administrations put into place public policies that incentivise innovation and diversification, devote investment to physical and human capital, and work for the insertion of Latin American countries into global value chains.

About the author:
*Rogelio Núñez, Journalist specialising in Latin America

Source:
This article was published by Elcano Royal Institute

By George W. Croner*

(FPRI) — As the calendar has turned to December, a fifth bill addressing the reauthorization of Section 702[1] of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act has been introduced in Congress. This past week, Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, introduced the “FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017” (the “HPSCI bill”) and, if the title sounds familiar, it mimics most of the significant features of the “FISA Amendments Reauthorization Act of 2017” (the “SSCI bill”) introduced by Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Richard Burr in late October.

The two bills have more than their titles in common, and their similarity in content suggests that, on an otherwise crowded legislative calendar as the year draws to a close, a consensus may be building on the terms for a renewal of the collection authority found in Section 702, which otherwise will lapse on December 31. To be sure, other FISA-related bills[2] remain extant in Congress, but with the introduction of the Nunes legislation last week, both chambers’ Intelligence committees have now reported out bills reauthorizing Section 702 on substantially similar terms.

By way of example, both the Burr and Nunes bills use fundamentally the same approach in addressing “about” collection.[3] Both bills require that, prior to any resumption of “about” collection, the Director of National Intelligence (DNI) and the Attorney General must notify Congress of their intent to resume such collection and, absent emergency circumstances, that notice triggers a 30-day period in which, according to the HPSCI bill, the Judiciary Committees and the Intelligence Committees in each chamber “shall, as appropriate, hold hearings and briefings and otherwise obtain information in order to fully review [the written notice provided by the DNI and the Attorney General].” In essence, the objective of the two bills seems to be to insure that “about” collection, a practice that continues to draw substantial fire from critics despite its abatement by the National Security Agency (NSA) earlier this year, will not resume without Congress at least having the opportunity to act on the practice. Given this similar approach, it appears unlikely that any renewal of Section 702 will emerge from Congress without some form of restriction on “about” collection.

Significantly, both the HPSCI and the SSCI bills include provisions that regulate “querying,” which is the practice by which intelligence analysts search the database of “raw” communications acquired pursuant to Section 702 certifications approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC). Both bills would amend Section 702 to require that the DNI and the Attorney General adopt “querying procedures,” and would make those “querying procedures” subject to judicial review by the FISC. Both bills also would require that these new “querying procedures” include a “technical procedure whereby a record is kept of all queries using a known United States person identifier.”[4] Here again, the substantive similarities in the bills regarding this feature indicate that any final reauthorization of Section 702 is likely to require the adoption of “querying procedures” and a technical means for recording and preserving the use of U.S. person identifiers to query the Section 702 database.

Despite the broad similarities, there are some variations in the two bills’ approaches to querying, and these differences are notable, especially as they relate to the FBI because each approach appears directed to the “backdoor search” issue; i.e., the charge by critics that searching the Section 702 database using U.S. person identifiers seeking evidence of a crime violates the Fourth Amendment. Although neither bill acknowledges this issue as one of constitutional dimension,[5] the SSCI bill, for example, includes a provision requiring that the FBI inform the FISC (within one business day) of any query that “returns information that concerns a known United States person.” The FISC shall examine such queries “for consistency with the Fourth Amendment,” and information responsive to any query that “is not consistent with the Fourth Amendment” shall not be used in any court proceeding. Moreover, even where the query is found to satisfy the Fourth Amendment, the SSCI bill would limit the use of responsive information only to judicial proceedings that the Attorney General has determined involve national security or certain specified serious felonies.

The HPSCI bill takes a somewhat different route. There is no requirement that any form of individual query be cleared by the FISC; however, in those instances where a query of the Section 702 database is not designed to extract foreign intelligence information (i.e., is undertaken for law enforcement inquiries), the HPSCI bill furnishes the FBI with the option of applying for an order from the FISC with such application evaluated pursuant to traditional law enforcement probable cause standards. If the FISC concludes that there is sufficient probable cause to support the issuance of an order, the FBI may then use the responsive information elicited by the query in any law enforcement proceeding. In the absence of probable cause, the use of any responsive information is, as provided in the SSCI bill, limited solely to court proceedings that the Attorney General determines involve national security or certain specified serious felonies.

Both proposed statutes would increase the penalty for the unauthorized removal and retention of classified material. The SSCI proposal raises the maximum penalty to ten years imprisonment, while the HPSCI bill provides a maximum punishment of five years. Both bills also propose several legislative adjustments that are designed to facilitate the operations of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board.

As the most recent piece of FISA legislation, the HPSCI bill shares several features found in some of the other FISA measures previously introduced while also introducing a few new wrinkles of its own. Like the USA Liberty Act (H.R. 3989) initiated in the House Judiciary Committee,[6] the HPSCI bill would require the DNI, in consultation with the Attorney General, to conduct a declassification review of any minimization procedures used in connection with the handling of Section 702 data so that such procedures could be made publicly available to the greatest extent practicable consistent with security needs. Conceptually, the objective is to make more broadly available to the public the procedures used by the Intelligence Community in its handling and use of the communications acquired through Section 702-authorized collection, including those incidentally collected communications of U.S. persons.

The HPSCI legislation also mirrors the USA Liberty Act’s direction that the Comptroller General conduct a study of the classification system of the United States and the problem of unauthorized disclosures. As I previously wrote regarding the USA Liberty Act, at the risk of appearing cynical, if some form of this mandate becomes law and the Comptroller General actually produces meaningful reform of the classification system used by the U.S. government, it will represent an accomplishment that has evaded nearly every Congress and presidential administration of the past 50 years.

Both the HPSCI bill and the USA Liberty Act address the issue of protecting U.S. person identities in intelligence reporting. As noted in my earlier review in October, the USA Liberty Act would mandate specific procedures regulating the “unmasking” of U.S. person identities as part of a broadening of existing statutory minimization requirements. The HPSCI bill, on the other hand, proposes to amend the National Security Act by adding a new section establishing procedures to regulate “covered requests”[7] seeking the disclosure of U.S. person information. Moreover, both of these legislative proposals emanating from the House of Representatives add virtually identical requirements addressing the use of U.S. person identifiers that would become part of the reporting included in the annual submission to Congress required by Section 107 of FISA (50 U.S.C. § 1807).

Alone among the proposed statutes, however, the HPSCI bill also amends the long-standing FISA definitions for “foreign power” and “agent of a foreign power” to address the issue of “malicious cyber activity” such that FISA surveillance would now be authorized against foreign governments or organizations (or those acting on their behalf) engaged in “international malicious cyber activity.”[8] In this regard, the HPSCI bill is the only piece of pending FISA legislation that addresses the cyber activity that has become such a focal point of the investigations surrounding the 2016 presidential election.

Finally, there is the question of the length of reauthorization provided for Section 702 in any renewal. It seems clear that the Intelligence Community will not receive the permanent authorization sought by the DNI and the Attorney General since every FISA bill introduced has some temporal limit on a reauthorization: the SSCI bill proposes an eight-year extension; the USA Liberty Act proposed nearly six years (until September 30, 2023); while the HPSCI bill introduced last week would limit the renewal to four years.

As noted at the outset, the new HPSCI bill shares many of the same features found in the SSCI bill introduced in the Senate in late October. Concurrently, however, several topics addressed by the HPSCI bill are unmentioned in the SSCI legislation, but appear in the USA Liberty Act first introduced in the House Judiciary Committee in early October, suggesting an effort by the HPSCI to promote some level of consensus with its colleagues on the House Judiciary Committee.

Four weeks remain for Congress to fulfill its responsibilities regarding the reauthorization of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act before its December 31 expiration date. These time constraints dictate that there is realistically no chance that there will be extended debate of this legislation, either in an open forum or even in closed session, and that is unfortunate because this is the first genuine opportunity for extended discussion in the context of renewing Section 702 since the 2013 disclosures made by Edward Snowden. Nonetheless, there is enough shared ground in the bills advanced out of the two Intelligence Committees to suggest that a consensus can be reached to forestall the calamitous possibility that the Intelligence Community will need to terminate collection on over 100,000 targets and lose the information that underlies at least 25% of the nation’s counterterrorism intelligence reporting. The clock ticks on, but the outlines of a renewal compromise seem to be taking shape.

About the author:
*George W. Croner previously served as principal litigation counsel in the Office of General Counsel at the National Security Agency. He is also a retired director and shareholder of the law firm of Kohn, Swift & Graf, P.C., where he remains Of Counsel, and is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

Notes:
[1] Section 702 (50 U.S.C. § 1881a) is that section of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) providing the authority by which the National Security Agency targets and acquires the communications of foreigners located abroad without the need to show probable cause or obtain a particularized warrant. A full description of the Section 702 collection program is found in “The Clock is Ticking: Why Congress Needs to Renew America’s Most Important intelligence Collection Program,” FPRI E-Notes, September 29, 2017.

[2] Previous reviews of other FISA legislation have appeared in FPRI E-Notes: “What’s To Be Found in the USA Liberty Act,” FPRI E–Notes, October 20, 2017; and “Congress Skirmishes Over FISA Section 702: Will it Preserve the Intelligence Community’s ‘Crown Jewel’ or Neuter It?,” FPRI E-Notes, November 1, 2017.

[3] “About” collection refers to the practice of acquiring communications that are to, from, or about a particular target. This form of collection has been a particular focus of critics who contend it improperly expands the universe of U.S. person communications incidentally acquired as part of Section 702 collection activity. The NSA, the Intelligence Community component responsible for Section 702 collection, discontinued “about” collection earlier this year, but there currently is no legislative prohibition against its resumption.

[4] This is the language used in the SSCI bill. The HPSCI bill mandates “a technical procedure whereby a record is kept of each United States person query term used for a query.”

[5] To the contrary, the website of the HPSCI takes pains to note that, “When the Government looks into its own database of lawful collection using U.S. person information, it is not a Fourth Amendment ‘search.’ The Government is not collecting any new information. Rather, the Government is simply reviewing the database of foreign communications it already has in its possession.” https://intelligence.house.gov/uploadedfiles/uspq_faq_2017_clean.pdf (emphasis in original).

[6] A discussion of the USA Liberty Act appears in FPRI E-Notes, “What’s to be Found in the USA Liberty Act of 2017?” October 20, 2017.

[7] A “covered request” is a request by a “requesting element” (a component of the U.S. government receiving an Intelligence Community report) to an “originating element” (a component of the Intelligence Community disseminating an intelligence report) for nonpublic identifying information with respect to a known, unconsenting U.S. person that was omitted from (or “masked” in) the initial report issued by the originating element.

[8] “International malicious cyber activity” is defined as activity on or through an information system (as defined in the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act) originating from, or directed by, persons located outside the United States, that seeks to compromise or impair the confidentiality, integrity, or availability of computers, information systems, or communications systems or networks.

By Kishore Jayabalan*

Talk long enough to European conservatives and they will eventually remind you that the communists in the western and eastern parts of the Old Continent have never been held accountable for their crimes. Certainly nowhere near to the extent that Nazi party members were following World War II. This lack of accountability has meant that communism was never made completely disreputable on the political left, so some variant of communism/socialism was bound to re-surface, despite the insurmountable evidence of its human cost and abject failure.

I’ve often wondered why communists have never had to pay a price for their sins and grievous errors of moral judgment. Perhaps victorious liberal democrats were too eager for reconciliation after the Cold War, too forgiving to punish the malefactors. Or maybe these same liberal democrats didn’t believe they actually won the Cold War, rather than the other side simply failing on their own accord, due to some kind of unforced error. Liberals seemed to refrain from gloating over what they thought was an undeserved triumph. Did they ever really believe in the superiority of their beliefs to begin with?

Whatever the reason, the failure to discredit communism and socialism has come back to haunt us. The popularity of Bernie Sanders, the only openly socialist politician in the US Congress, among young Americans along with their dislike of capitalism would have been unimaginable just ten years ago. Millennial religious conservatives at places like First Things are okay with calling themselves Christian socialists.

Two older and wiser religious conservatives, First Things editor Rusty Reno and Acton president Fr. Robert Sirico, recently debated the merits of the free market. In my obviously biased view, Fr. Sirico won the debate hands-down, especially since Reno seemed to defend capitalism by the end of it. But then again, I’ve never been attracted to socialist ideas and have always thought most criticisms of market economics to be exaggerated or misplaced; I’m a child of the 1980s, after all.

Growing up with Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Pope John Paul II as my heroes, it is no surprise that I have such high regard for religiously-informed, liberal democratic capitalism. The Millennial generation went through adolescence during the Clinton presidency and entered adulthood with the 9/11 attacks, still-inconclusive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the sub-prime mortgage financial crisis, the resignation of Pope Benedict XVI, and the legalization of same-sex marriage. The certainties I grew up with seemed to have vanished into thin air.

It’s therefore easy to understand why millennials are so jaded and now flirting with discredited and even inhumane ideas. But if we children of the Reagan-Thatcher-JPII era are true to our beliefs, we must reject this overly-historicist reading of the present time. Don’t we still possess reason and free will, aren’t we still able to see, judge and decide among the alternatives before us? If so, we have to look at current realities to renew our defense of liberal democracy.

It’s true, after all, that we don’t have a fully capitalist economy in the West; the size of government has drastically reduced the scope of economic freedom over the last several decades, regardless of which party has been in power. But the US and every other prosperous country in the world are definitely more capitalist than socialist. If you don’t want to believe sources such as the Index of Economic Freedom, just look at countries (more like prisons) such as North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela. Look at international migration flows and you’ll see a fundamental difference between countries that try to keep people in and those that have to limit the number they take in. It’s a cliché but still a true one: people vote with their feet and they overwhelmingly choose liberal democracy over socialism.

Perhaps these migrants don’t know what they are choosing? Maybe they’re attracted to the tall, shiny buildings and the seductive opulence of the West, only to be exploited and marginalized by the corrupt plutocrats who thrive on cheap labor? This has always been the intellectual’s argument against the promise of economic opportunity. Maybe the problem is that capitalism has actually succeeded in bringing what used to be reserved to the upper classes within the reach of all.

The intellectual case has been as much about the “bourgeois (i.e. vulgar) culture” of democratic capitalism as it is about economics. Our good friend Alberto Mingardi has been discussing Gertrude Himmelfarb’s 1952 essay “American Democracy and Its European Critics” and cites this nice passage:

“When Coca-Cola, comic books, and Raymond Chandler murder mysteries invaded Europe, penetrating even into the British stronghold, radicals set up a great cry against American capitalism. What they chose not to see is that the real offender is not capitalism so much as the European masses, who have given an enthusiastic reception to these supposedly degenerate products of American capitalism. Europe’s real complaint against America is not that America is exporting capitalist culture, but that it is exporting popular culture.”

So rather than give in to despair about the future or rely on a naïve hope in historical progress, we liberal democrats ought to redouble our efforts because fundamental reality is on our side. It may not always be edifying or ennobling, but it has the great advantage of being true. I’ll close by reminding younger right-wingers of a bold assertion attributed to one of those ‘80s politicians, “The facts of life are conservative.”

About the author:
*Kishore Jayabalan is director of Istituto Acton, the Acton Institute’s Rome office. Formerly, he worked for the Vatican’s Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace as an analyst for environmental and disarmament issues and desk officer for English-speaking countries. Kishore Jayabalan earned a B.A. in political science and economics from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In college, he was executive editor of The Michigan Review and an economic policy intern for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. He worked as an international economist for the Bureau of Labor Statistics in Washington, D.C.

Source:
This article was published by the Acton Institute