(RFE/RL) — Ukrainian opposition leader Mikheil Saakashvili appeared at the Prosecutor-General’s Office in Kyiv on December 18 but refused to answer questions from investigators.

Ukrainian authorities have accused the former Georgian president and ex-Ukrainian governor of abetting an alleged “criminal group” led by former President Viktor Yanukovych, who fled to Russia after his ouster in February 2014. They also have suggested that protests led by Saakashvili are part of a Russian plot against Ukraine.

Saakashvili has strongly denied all the charges.

Outside the Prosecutor-General’s Office in the Ukrainian capital, Saakashvili told reporters he would give testimony only when the case is handed over to the Ukrainian Security Service, “as required by law,” Interfax reported.

A spokesperson for the prosecutor-general said Saakashvili had “disrupted the investigative procedure” by failing to be questioned by the investigator who summoned him, according to Interfax.

Meanwhile, Western diplomats have expressed concern after Saakashvili supporters briefly attempted to seize a public building in Kyiv during a rally to demand the impeachment of Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.

Saakashvili’s followers marched through Kyiv on December 17 and then rallied with him on Independence Square to call for Poroshenko to be officially removed from office.

During the rally, Saakashvili suggested setting up a headquarters for the protest in the October Palace, a performing arts and conference center overlooking the square.

People in the crowd shattered windows and tried to break the doors down to the building but were prevented by police from getting inside.

At the time, hundreds of children were reported to be attending an event in the October Palace.

The attempt to seize the building drew rebukes from some Western diplomats.

On Twitter, Canadian Ambassador Roman Waschuk said that “attempts to seize and damage public buildings are an abuse of the right to peaceful protest.”

British Ambassador Judith Gough seconded his assessment.

The U.S. Embassy in Kyiv joined in later on Twitter.

“We agree with our colleagues from Canada and the U.K. Attempts to capture and destroy public buildings are an abuse of the right to peaceful protest,” it wrote.

After the protesters’ attempts to enter the building failed, Saakashvili said he wanted to “rent two rooms there” and that the clashes were “President Poroshenko’s game and provocation.”

“I denounce any [attempts] to break windows, because once there are millions of us, these doors and these windows will open themselves. We don’t need to break them, people,” Saakashvili added in an interview with RFE/RL’s Ukrainian Service.

Kyiv police said at least 32 security officers were injured in confrontations with protesters near Independence Square — the site of the monthslong 2013-14 protests that led to the ousting of Yanukovych.

With police looking on, the demonstrators on December 17 marched through central Kyiv toward Independence Square.

They urged parliament to adopt legislation on a presidential impeachment and called on Prosecutor-General Yuriy Lutsenko to step down.

Ukrainian police on December 5 tried to detain Saakashvili but supporters crowded around a police vehicle in which he was being held and then freed him.

He was again detained three days later, but a judge on December 11 turned down a request by prosecutors to place him under house arrest.

Lutsenko has said he would appeal the judge’s ruling and that Saakashvili will likely be extradited to Georgia, where he is wanted on charges linked to when he was that country’s president.

“We have an official request from the country, which we do not have the right to refuse,” Lutsenko told reporters on December 15.

However, Russian state-run TASS news agency quoted senior Georgian officials as saying the Caucasus country had issued no such extradition request.

Saakashvili was president of Georgia from 2004-13. He lost his Georgian citizenship in 2015 when he accepted Ukrainian citizenship and took the post of Odesa governor.

Saakashvili resigned the position in November 2016, complaining of rampant corruption, and has since becoming an ardent opponent of Poroshenko.

In an interview with Current Time TV, the Russian-language network run by RFE/RL in cooperation with VOA, Saakashvili said on December 12 that corruption inflicted far greater damage on Ukraine than Russia had.

He added that he has no ambition to become Ukraine’s president, saying the position should always be held by an ethnic Ukrainian.

The authorities “really think that it’s enough to shout ‘Russia’ and ‘agents of the enemy’ and everyone will just buy that. People are not stupid. They didn’t buy it earlier, they’re not buying it now,” Saakashvili said.

After Yanukovych was ousted, Russia illegally annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region in March 2014 and fomented a separatist insurgency in eastern Ukraine that has killed more than 10,300 people since April 2014.

Recent stories in the national media are magnifying fears of a catastrophic eruption of the Yellowstone volcanic area, but scientists remain uncertain about the likelihood of such an event. To better understand the region’s subsurface geology, University of Illinois geologists have rewound and played back a portion of its geologic history, finding that Yellowstone volcanism is far more complex and dynamic than previously thought.

“The heat needed to drive volcanism usually occurs in areas where tectonic plates meet and one slab of crust slides, or subducts, under another. However, Yellowstone and other volcanic areas of the inland western U.S. are far away from the active plate boundaries along the west coast,” said geology professor Lijun Liu who led the new research. “In these inland cases, a deep-seated heat source known as a mantle plume is suspected of driving crustal melting and surface volcanism.”

In the new study, reported in the journal Nature Geosciences, Liu and graduate students Quan Zhou and Jiashun Hu used a technique called seismic tomography to peer deep into the subsurface of the western U.S. and piece together the geologic history behind the volcanism. Using supercomputers, the team ran different tectonic scenarios to observe a range of possible geologic histories for the western U.S. over the past 20 million years. The effort yielded little support for the traditional mantle plume hypothesis.

“Our goal is to develop a model that matches up with what we see both below ground and on the surface today,” Zhou said. “We call it a hybrid geodynamic model because most of the earlier models either start with an initial condition and move forward, or start with the current conditions and move backward. Our model does both, which gives us more control over the relevant mantle processes.”

One of the many variables the team entered into their model was heat. Hot subsurface material – like that in a mantle plume – should rise vertically toward the surface, but that was not what the researchers saw in their models.

“It appears that the mantle plume under the western U.S. is sinking deeper into the earth through time, which seems counterintuitive,” Liu said. “This suggests that something closer to the surface – an oceanic slab originating from the western tectonic boundary – is interfering with the rise of the plume.”

The mantle plume hypothesis has been controversial for many years and the new findings add to the evidence for a revised tectonic scenario, the researchers said.

“A robust result from these models is that the heat source behind the extensive inland volcanism actually originated from the shallow oceanic mantle to the west of the Pacific Northwest coast,” Liu said. “This directly challenges the traditional view that most of the heat came from the plume below Yellowstone.”

“Eventually, we hope to consider the chemical data from the volcanic rocks in our model,” Zhou said. “That will help us further constrain the source of the magma because rocks from deep mantle plumes and near-surface tectonic plates could have different chemistries.”

As for likelihood of a violent demise of Yellowstone occurring anytime soon, the researchers say it is still too early to know.

“Of course, our model can’t predict specific future super-eruptions. However, looking back through 20 million years of history, we do not see anything that makes the present-day Yellowstone region particularly special – at least not enough to make us suspect that it may do something different from the past when many catastrophic eruptions have occurred,” Liu said. “More importantly, this work will give us a better understanding of some of the mysterious processes deep within the earth, which will help us better understand the consequences of plate tectonics, including the mechanism of earthquakes and volcanoes.”

According to a new study by the University of Basel, the European Commission – Joint Research Centre and the Centre for Ecology & Hydrology (CEH, UK), almost 36 billion tons of soil is lost every year due to water, and deforestation and other changes in land use make the problem worse. The study also offers ideas on how agriculture can change to become a part of the solution from being part of the problem

Healthy soil – healthy planet and people

Soil is an essential resource for satisfying human needs, such as food and feed production, fibre, clean air and water. Soil is not an infinite resource though. Human activity and changes in land use lead to increased soil loss, which in turn degrades nature’s recycling system and diminishes land productivity, thus decreasing human wellbeing worldwide.

The most detailed mapping of soil erosion ever

The research findings, “An assessment of the global impact of 21st century land use change on soil erosion”, offer an unprecedentedly thorough, high resolution assessment of global soil loss.

The study quantifies the effects of land use change between 2001 and 2012 and finds that during this period, 35.9 billion tonnes of soil had been displaced due to water (mostly rainfall) annually. This is the equivalent of the weight of the concrete that it would take to build 250 of the world’s largest dam, the Three Gorges Dam in China. Soil loss increased by 2.5% between 2000 and 2012 mainly due to clearing down forests for agricultural purposes.

Soil erosion hotspots

Soil erosion doesn’t strike evenly. Moderate to high soil erosion impacts about 9.3% of Earth’s land surface, and it exceeds the generic tolerable soil erosion threshold for 6.1% of the land surface, or about 7.5 million km2.

The greatest increase in soil loss is estimated for Sub-Saharan Africa, South America and Southeast Asia. This means that countries with less developed economies are estimated to have experienced the highest soil erosion rates.

South America surpasses Africa with an estimated increase of soil erosion of over 10% in 2012. This seems to be driven mostly by deforestation and the large expansion of cropland areas in Argentina (41.6% of its territory dedicated to cropland), Brazil (19.8%), Bolivia (37.8%) and Peru (5.9%). During the same period, soil erosion in Africa increased by 8%, mostly in the Equatorial countries.

The largest and most intensively eroded regions are in China (0.47 million km2, 6.3% of the country’s land area), Brazil (0.32 million km2 or 4.6% the country’s land area) and African Equatorial territories (0.26 million km2, 3.2% of the region).

Conservation agriculture saves soil

Soil erosion can be reduced if soil conservation practices are adopted in agriculture. The study estimates that, if applied correctly, conservation practices could save over a billion tonnes of soil per year. Conservation agriculture currently covers about 15.3% of the observed cropland globally, reducing soil erosion by an estimated 7%. The highest reductions in soil loss due to conservation agriculture are estimated in South America (16%), Oceania (15.4%) and North America (12.5%).

Unique methodology combining space imagining with rainfall data

The study investigates global soil erosion dynamics by means of high-resolution spatially distributed modelling (ca. 250×250m cell size). The geo-statistical approach allows, for the first time, the thorough incorporation into a global soil erosion model of land use and changes in land use, the extent, types, spatial distribution of global croplands and the effects of different regional cropping systems. This, coupled with an improved global assessment of rainfall erosivity dynamics and the latest globally consistent dataset resulted in a state-of-the-art global model based on the Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation or RUSLE.

A “quantum material” that mimics a shark’s ability to detect the minute electric fields of small prey has been shown to perform well in ocean-like conditions, with potential applications from defense to marine biology.

The material maintains its functional stability and does not corrode after being immersed in saltwater, a prerequisite for ocean sensing. Surprisingly, it also functions well in the cold, ambient temperatures typical of seawater, said Shriram Ramanathan, a Purdue professor of materials engineering.

Such a technology might be used to study ocean organisms and ecosystems and to monitor the movement of ships for military and commercial maritime applications.

“So, it has potentially very broad interest in many disciplines,” said Ramanathan, who led research to develop the sensor, working with a team that included Purdue postdoctoral research associate Zhen Zhang and graduate student Derek Schwanz.

Findings are detailed in a research paper appearing online Dec. 18 in the journal Nature. The paper’s lead authors were Zhang and Schwanz, working with colleagues at Argonne National Laboratory, Rutgers University, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Canadian Light Source at the University of Saskatchewan, Columbia University, and the University of Massachusetts. A complete list of co-authors is included in the abstract.

The new sensor was inspired by an organ near a shark’s mouth called the ampullae of Lorenzini, which is capable of detecting small electric fields from prey animals.

“This organ is able to interact with its environment by exchanging ions from seawater, imparting the so-called sixth sense to sharks,” Zhang said.

The organ contains a jelly that conducts ions from seawater to a specialized membrane located at the bottom of the ampulla. Sensing cells in the membrane allow the shark to detect bioelectric fields emitted by prey fish.

The new sensor is made of a material called samarium nickelate, which is a quantum material, meaning its performance taps into quantum mechanical interactions. Samarium nickelate is in a class of quantum materials called strongly correlated electron systems, which have exotic electronic and magnetic properties.

Because this material can conduct protons very fast, the researchers wondered whether they might develop a sensor that mimics the shark’s organ.

“We have been working on this for a few years,” Ramanathan said. “We show that these sensors can detect electrical potentials well below one volt, on the order of millivolts, which is comparable to electric potentials emanated by marine organisms. The material is very sensitive. We calculated the detection distance of our device and find a similar length scale to what has been reported for electroreceptors in sharks.”

The quantum effect causes the material to undergo a dramatic “phase change” from a conductor to an insulator, which allows it to act as a sensitive detector. The material also exchanges mass with the environment, as protons from the water move into the material and then return to the water, going back and forth.

“Having a material like that is very powerful,” Schwanz said.

Metals such as aluminum, for example, immediately form an oxide coating when placed in seawater. The reaction protects against corrosion but prevents further interaction with the environment.

“Here, we start with the oxide material and we are able to maintain its functionality, which is very rare,” Ramanathan said.

The material also changes optical properties, becoming more transparent as it becomes more insulating.

“If the material transmits light differently, then you can use light as a probe to study the property of the material and that is very powerful. Now you have multiple ways to study a material, electrically and optically.”

The material was tested by immersing it in simulated ocean water environments designed to cover the wide ranges of temperature and pH found across earth’s oceans. In future work, researchers plan to test the devices in real oceans instead and may team with biologists to apply the technology to broader studies.

A technique called neutron reflectometry was performed at NIST. Adding protons to the crystal lattice of the quantum material causes the lattice to swell slightly. Shining a neutron beam on the material allows researchers to detect this swelling and determine that the protons moved into the material.

“Neutrons are very sensitive to hydrogen, making neutron reflectometry the ideal technique to determine whether or not the swelling and huge resistance change is caused by hydrogen entering the material from salt water,” said Joseph Dura, a NIST physicist.

Researchers manufactured the device at Purdue using a method called physical vapor deposition.

Fitch Ratings has revised Armenia’s Outlook to Positive from Stable, while affirming the sovereign’s Long-Term Foreign- and Local-Currency Issuer Default Ratings (IDRs) at ‘B+’.

The economy is experiencing a strong recovery following a large external shock in 2014-15, driven by a structural improvement in export performance, firmer external demand conditions and recovering remittances, and supported by a credible monetary policy framework. Fitch has revised up its growth projection to 4.3% for 2017 from 3.4% previously, as GDP growth averaged 5.3% in 1Q-3Q.

The agency expects growth to average 3.6% in 2018-2019 due to a still favourable environment for remittances and export growth.

Fitch forecasts the general government budget deficit will shrink to 3.3% of GDP in 2017, from 5.5% in 2016, reflecting expenditure restraint and favourable revenue growth. Fitch expects the general government deficit to narrow further to 3% in 2018 and 2.7% in 2019, below the ‘B’ and ‘BB’ medians.

Armenia is exposed to external shocks but has shown a capacity to absorb them, helped by a credible monetary policy framework, Fitch says.

The banking system remains stable with strengthened capitalisation (capital adequacy ratio (CAR) 19.1% in October).

Peruvian officials have charged Chicago area resident Jeffrey Daniels with abuse that occurred while he was part of the Catholic group Sodalitium Christianae Vitae in Peru.

Daniels, who has been living in the U.S. since 2001, was charged along with three other men “with conspiracy to commit sexual, physical and psychological abuse,” according to Peruvian court documents obtained by the Chicago Tribune.

Among the men charged is Luis Fernando Figari, the founder of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae (SCV), as well as Virgilio Levaggi and Daniel Murgui.

The SCV is a society of apostolic life which was founded in 1971 in Peru, and granted pontifical recognition in 1997. Alejandro Bermúdez, executive director of CNA, is a member of the community.

The community has been under investigation after the publication of a book by journalists Paola Ugaz and Pedro Salinas, chronicling years of alleged sexual, physical and psychological abuse by members of the SCV. In addition to Peru, the community operates in Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Ecuador, the United States, and Italy.

In February of this year, a team of independent investigators commissioned by the Sodalitium reported that “Figari sexually assaulted at least one child, manipulated, sexually abused, or harmed several other young people; and physically or psychologically abused dozens of others.”

The report also identified Daniels as a serious offender, accused of abusing at least 12 minors between 1985 and 1997.

The report concluded that “between 1975 and 2000 and once in 2007, five members of Sodalitium, including Figari, sexually abused minors.”

Figari stepped down as superior general of the Sodalitium Christianae Vitae in 2010. In February 2017, the Vatican’s congregation for religious life issued a decree forbidding him from any contact with the religious community, and banning him from returning to Peru without permission from the current superior of the Sodalitium. Figari was also forbidden to make any public statements.

According to reports obtained by the Chicago Tribune, Daniels has confirmed his connection with the SCV but has denied any wrongdoing, and the details of his life in the U.S. remain largely unknown.

U.S. officials have said that Daniels has no criminal record or known allegations in the U.S., but that they have established contact with him and will cooperate with the ongoing investigation.

Peruvian Congressman Alberto de Belaunde said in a statement released to the Tribune that Daniels took advantage of his proximity to minors during his time in the SCV to abuse them, and “has been silent and has chosen to forget. But the victims do not forget and neither will a country with dignity. In addition to ensuring that justice is served, it is important to ensure that there are no more victims.”

A criminal investigation against the four accused men began in January 2017. Last week, a Peruvian prosecutor requested incarceration for the men while the investigation continues. Peruvian law permits judges to remand suspects of criminal activity to incarceration while they are being investigated, if they are considered flight risks, or a risk to pose grave danger.

Travel restrictions have also been requested for Ricardo Treneman and Oscar Tokumura, two other members of the community.

By Michael Lelyveld

Despite two years of cuts, China’s steel industry remains stuck in a trap of high production and pollution, leading to environmental damage at home and trade conflicts abroad.

As the producer of half the world’s crude steel, China has responded to international pressure with pledges to cut its vast manufacturing overcapacity, which has been blamed for unfair competition and job losses for a decade or more.

In January 2016, Premier Li Keqiang first promised to reduce China’s annual steel production capacity by 100-150 million metric tons, without saying when.

Days later, the cabinet-level State Council said the cuts would take place over five years. Still later, the time frame was modified to “three to five years,” raising expectations that the goal would be met by 2020.

At first, the industry moved slowly to meet the annual reduction target of 45 million tons for 2016, prompting government warnings and a speedup in shutdowns in the second half of the year.

In the end, the industry claimed it had exceeded the target, eliminating 65 million tons of capacity by the close of 2016.

But the abrupt cuts coincided with a surge in demand for steel, spurred by the government’s own economic stimulus and infrastructure programs.

Steel prices climbed, causing closed mills to reopen. A study sponsored by the environmental group Greenpeace East Asia found that 54 million tons of capacity had restarted, raising doubts about what was achieved.

The spike in steel output was also blamed for last winter’s outbursts of coal-fired smog.

This year, similar forces have been at work as the industry achieved its 2017 target to close 50 million tons of excess capacity.

By midyear, shutdowns had reached 42.39 million tons, according to the China Iron and Steel Association (CISA). The annual goal for closures was reached by the end of August, the official English-language China Daily said.

But the capacity cuts have done little to restrain China’s crude steel production, which set a series of monthly records over the summer, hitting 74.59 million tons in August, even as the shutdown goal was achieved.

In fact, the government-driven capacity cuts have had a contrary effect on production, by creating the appearance of a tightening market, pushing up prices and encouraging more output.

“Prices are rising in 2017 due to government effort [sic] to close small mills that churn out low-quality steel made from scrap metal. As a result, a batch of money-losing producers begin to make a profit,” said CISA’s executive vice-chairman, Gu Jianguo, as quoted by the official Xinhua news agency on Nov. 27.

On Monday, CISA said that steel export prices in October were the highest since February 2014, Xinhua reported. In the first 10 months of 2017, prices were up 43.1 percent from a year before, although exports were down 30.4 percent.

Effect of anti-smog measures

In addition to the profit incentive, the government’s recent anti-smog measures may have inadvertently spurred production by threatening to close northeast steel mills for the entire winter heating season from mid-November to mid-March.

The effect has helped to boost steel prices.

“The war on smog has pushed spot Chinese steel prices to a nine-year high last week amid tighter supplies and unexpectedly healthy demand, especially in east and southern China,” Reuters reported on Dec. 11.

The interruptions may have added to anticipation of a tighter market and forced steelmakers to compensate by adjusting schedules for higher production in the prewinter months.

Through October, crude steel production climbed 6.1 percent from the year-earlier period, the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS) reported.

In November, production of 66.15 million tons fell 8.6 percent from the October level, thanks to the anti-smog shutdowns. But last month’s output still rose 2.2 percent from a year before, Reuters said.

Through 11 months, steel production remains 5.7 percent above the year-earlier period, the NBS said.

The unintended consequences of downsizing are possible because China’s steel production capacity still exceeds output by a wide margin, allowing the government to claim it is cutting while the industry is raising production at the same time.

The exact size of the capacity surplus has been hard to pin down.

Before the 2016 cuts started, overcapacity was widely estimated at 326 million tons, based on a capacity figure of 1.13 billion tons from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) and 2015 production of 803.8 million tons, as reported by the NBS and the World Steel Association.

The huge surplus is more than the combined crude steel output of the second, third and fourth largest producers — Japan, India, and the United States — leaving plenty of room for both production increases and capacity cuts.

Some reports put China’s excess at nearly 400 million tons, based on a CISA capacity estimate of 1.2 billion tons at the end of 2015.

Either way, the promised reduction of up to 150 million tons would do little to curb China’s actual output.

China produced 808.4 million tons of crude steel last year, according to World Steel Association figures.

The country’s domestic consumption is expected to rise 7.7 percent this year to 725 million tons, the China Metallurgical Industry Planning and Research Institute said.

China’s steel demand is forecast to increase 0.7 percent in 2018 to 730 million tons.

Not China’s problem alone

Responding to continued international pressure and the threat of new trade measures, officials have repeated the government’s longstanding argument that the overcapacity problem is not China’s alone.

“Steel overcapacity is a common challenge facing countries across the world, rather than a problem unique to one country,” Assistant Minister of Commerce Li Chenggang told a press conference at a steel conference in Berlin on Dec. 1, according to Xinhua.

China’s high production levels have been a major source of tension with trading partners in Europe and the United States.

In April, U.S. President Donald J. Trump ordered an investigation under the rarely-used Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act of 1962 to determine whether steel imports from China pose a national security risk.

U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross has until mid-January to complete the probe, Reuters said.

In a posting for the Peterson Institute of International Economics in Washington earlier this year, research analyst Zhiyao Lu examined the questions of how much spare capacity China needs to respond to increases in demand or operational issues and how much is real overcapacity.

Lu concluded that nearly 200 million tons of spare capacity is “within the reasonable range” for China’s industry, based on 2015 figures, leaving some 130 million tons as excess.

But the analysis also found that official reports on capacity have mixed iron and steel together in their totals, making it hard to know how much crude steel capacity has really been cut.

“In order to clearly track the progress of capacity reductions and implement effective policies to tackle the issue more efficiently, the Chinese government should separate the two sectors, set clear goals for each of them, and supervise each industry independently,” Lu said.

Putting questions of data manipulation aside, it could be argued that China’s steelmakers are only responding to market forces by producing more when rising prices signal an increase in demand.

But Derek Scissors, an Asia economist and resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, rejected the idea that the Chinese steel industry is engaged in any meaningful reforms.

Local governments are “still heavily subsidizing their steel firms so that some other province’s firm will be the one to reduce output,” Scissors said by email.

The central government is also “heavily subsidizing the companies it has chosen to be the surviving players in the consolidation that never happens,” he said.

“Everyone wants someone else’s firms to die and the central government has manifestly failed to impose any lasting discipline,” Scissors said.

Drones can facilitate terrorism and crime. As maritime technologies particularly aquatic drones progressively grow, it is a matter of time before new threats emerge.

By VS Suguna*

The application of drones for tactical purposes was the preserve of security agencies. As technology becomes increasingly commercialised for myriad purposes, malicious non-state actors such as terrorists and criminals could circumvent international trade regimes that restrict the transfer of potentially dual-use technologies including drones.

Terrorists have reportedly retrofitted aerial drones to conduct attacks and surveillance. The proliferation of aquatic drones may plausibly widen the terrorists’ capabilities and opportunities for attacks to coastal cities.

Drone Tech Proliferates

A report on “Jihadist Terrorism 16 Years After 9/11” by New America highlighted the use of armed (aerial) drones as a growing threat as exemplified by reports of ISIS building drones from scratch in Iraq. In Southeast Asia, the Maute Group reportedly deployed commercial off-the-shelf drones to gain a tactical advantage in urban warfare in Marawi city, Philippines.

While the misuse of aerial drones (UAVs) for urban terrorism is a current security concern, it would also be of strategic importance to monitor the developments of aquatic drones for surface and underwater operations. Although aquatic drones have not proliferated at the speed of aerial drones, the technology is increasingly being explored for security and commercial purposes. For example, the Australian start-up Abyss is developing aquatic drones with data-collection capabilities for industries. In Singapore, the Police is exploring the use of unmanned surface vehicles (USVs) for autonomous coastal patrols.

Over time, the aquatic drone technology would expectedly become more commercially viable and affordable. In highly digital societies (such as smart cities), rogue individuals with access to the Internet and commercially available hardware would be able to assemble aquatic drones with relative ease and speed.

Next Tide of Tech-Enabled Terror

In the foreseeable future, terrorists could deploy aquatic drones similar to how aerial drones are exploited for malicious purposes. This possibility would mark an emergent concern for vibrant coastal cities with busy waterways for two primary reasons.

Firstly, aquatic drones could shift the maritime terrorism landscape by reducing terrain challenges and enhancing terrorists’ capability to launch seaborne attacks. Such attacks could be aimed at strategic and soft targets such as civilian passenger vessels, port facilities, tourist and sea sports hubs, and large-scale public events by the sea. For example, the targeting of USS Cole in October 2000 at the port of Aden demonstrated the terrorist intent to hit strategic maritime targets. The 2005 Al Qaeda-inspired plot to attack Turkey-bound Israeli cruise vessels using explosive-laden small boats demonstrated the terrorist intent to hit soft maritime targets.

Secondly, past attacks underscored the importance of coastal cities in the terrorist playbook even if the incidents did not begin at sea. For example, the 2008 Mumbai attack demonstrated terrorists’ exploitation of the sea as a staging point to evade security forces on land. The attacks on Barcelona, Spain (August 2017) and Nice, France (July 2016), although land-based, pointed to the attractiveness of coastal cities as soft targets given the wider opportunity for attack due to vibrant tourism scene and a high number of vulnerable civilian targets.

Attack Outcomes

Essentially, the use of aquatic drones by terrorists to target coastal cities could lead to substantial human casualties as well as economic and environmental damages to the coast. Several scenarios are possible but some are perhaps more noteworthy.

First, aquatic drones could be retrofitted to function as remotely controlled or autonomous waterborne improvised explosive devices (WBIEDs). These drones could then be discreetly launched against civilians at sea (such as during sea sports events) or against important port and coastal facilities. Second, the aquatic drones could be deployed for hostile surveillance against critical infrastructure at sea such as marine transportation networks, military and law enforcement installations, and water desalination plants.

Third, aquatic drones could constitute unconventional threats to critical water resources located inland such as reservoirs and other water catchment areas. They could be deployed to disperse harmful chemical and biological agents thus contaminating water supplies, or to cause physical damage to dams. The impact of such threats could be fatal and will challenge the psychological and social resilience of the affected communities.

Prevention and Response

Strategies to prevent threats involving aquatic drones should factor in how the technology undergoes advancement and commercialisation. In this respect, it would be crucial for security agencies to plan and prepare for possible terrorist (and criminal) scenarios involving the use of not only aerial but also aquatic drones. This step requires the anticipation of plausible risks – known and new – that could emanate from the confluence of drone technology and maritime terrorism.

In addition, security agencies would have to assess the regulations necessary to ensure safe and responsible use, giving security agencies the powers to monitor and interdict potentially rogue aquatic drones. Certain considerations (e.g. operating range, weight and restriction zones) in existing efforts to regulate the ascending aerial drone economy may be useful for the regulation of aquatic drones too.

Strategies to respond to threats involving aquatic drones require both technical capabilities and coordination among the maritime agencies. While security agencies currently have surveillance and offensive tools – unmanned surface vehicles (USVs), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and coastal closed-circuit television (CCTV) cameras – to guard against coastal intrusions, the tools should also include capabilities to detect and intercept small aquatic drones moving surreptitiously on the waters. Inter-agency procedures should be in place to facilitate collaborative investigations and coordinated response following aquatic drone-related incidents.

Overall, strategies for prevention and response to threats involving aquatic drones would require public-private cooperation in anticipating the challenges in regulating the technology’s proliferation and intelligence-sharing between security agencies and other maritime stakeholders.

*VS Suguna is an Associate Research Fellow and Faizal A. Rahman is a Research Fellow with the Homeland Defence Programme at the Centre of Excellence for National Security (CENS), a unit of the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies (RSIS), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

By Seth Cropsey and Bryan McGrath*

As a maritime nation, naval power is the U.S.’s most useful means of responding to distant crises, preventing them from harming our security or that of our allies and partners, and keeping geographically remote threats from metastasizing into conflicts that could approach our borders. A maritime defense demands a maritime strategy. As national resources are increasingly strained the need exists for a strategy that makes deliberate choices to connect ends (security) with means (money and the fleet it builds). This paper examines the need for a maritime strategy, discusses options, and offers recommendations for policy makers.

After several decades of unchallenged world leadership, the United States once again faces great power competition, this time featuring two other world powers. China and Russia increasingly bristle under the constraints of the post-World War II systems of global trade, finance, and governance largely created by the United States and its allies, systems that the United States has protected and sustained to the economic and security benefit of its citizens and the citizens of other nations. Both China and Russia are demonstrably improving the quality of their armed forces while simultaneously acting aggressively toward neighboring countries, some of which are US treaty allies. Additionally, both nations are turning their attention to naval operations far from their own coasts, operations designed to advance national interests that are often in tension with those of the United States.¹

For the past several decades, US national security strategy has not had to contend with great powers. Instead, it has concerned itself primarily with building alliances designed to manage regional security more efficiently by proxy, while devoting increasingly more resources to homeland defense and intelligence aimed at stemming acts of terror by Islamic radical organizations and their followers. To the extent that the US position of leadership in the world was not threatened, this strategy was reasonable, if imperfectly pursued.

Such a strategy will no longer suffice in a world of great power competition, especially one in which powers of considerable—but unequal—strength are opposed. Unbalanced multi-polarity is an especially unstable condition, and the United States is not effectively postured to manage that instability. Henry Kissinger divides the concept of world order into two parts: a normative system that defines acceptable action, and a ‘balance of power’ arrangement that punishes the breach of such conventions.² As the underlying balance of forces shifts, states with different ideas of international order gain the power to reshape the system. Thucydides’ ancient insight holds true – the rise in power of one actor threatens all others. Where such threat exists and if the balance of power between states or coalitions approaches equilibrium, a “Cold War” between competing ideological camps occurs.

In an unbalanced system, the stronger side is tempted to strike its weaker opponent while the balance of forces is favorable. Unbridled competition for supremacy defined Europe during its bloodiest periods. Europe’s 16th and 17th century religious wars between Catholics and Protestants and the global 20th century struggles between totalitarian ideologies and democracy both represent the natural end-state of unbalanced multipolar systems. Without norms to restrain states and force to uphold these norms, violence is very likely.

Today’s international system is moving toward unbalanced multi-polarity. Unfortunately, the United States is not currently prepared to manage such an international environment. If Americans want to preserve their nation’s secure and prosperous position as the world’s great power, the United States must begin now to prepare strategically for what it will inevitably face. Otherwise, it will ultimately be forced into an increasingly limited number of unattractive options to sustain its position of leadership.

There is little evidence that the people of the United States wish to see our position in the world diminished. The 2016 Presidential Election raised important questions about the degree to which globalization has served the interests of everyday Americans (and their perceptions thereof), while the two dominant US political parties have moved toward more protectionist policies, at least as articulated by their nominees. Opinion polling indicates the divided nature of the American public on issues like free trade and sustained foreign commitments.³ However, Americans remain cognizant of threats to the United States, and favor maintaining America’s position as a great power by sustaining a strong military.⁴ Moreover, it would be difficult to identify meaningful numbers of Americans who would sacrifice national security in favor of increased social spending, despite the continuing rise in non-discretionary spending in the federal budget. Americans understand that the US position of world leadership benefits the nation’s economy, its security, its allies, and the international order that has been the object of US foreign and defense policy for over a century. They know that their lives would be diminished if this position of global leadership were surrendered to an adversary or group of them. The paradox of the American experience is that the US is not simply a great power – it is an exceptional power, for which ideals count as much as strength. The American public, despite its aversion to foreign commitments, can rise to the occasion and respond to clear threats, as it has in both World Wars, the Cold War, and after September 11th. The job of the policymaker, therefore, is to ensure America remains a great power, so that when the occasion arises, it can act as an exceptional power.

It is critical then, for US political leaders to begin thinking more strategically about protecting and advancing America’s position in the face of growing great power competition. This monograph asserts that a strategy to support such a goal would necessarily be maritime in nature, leveraging this nation’s great geographical advantages in the service of its national power.

Sharing land borders with only two nations—both of whom are friendly to the United States—and separated from other great powers by vast oceans, the United States enjoys a security position quite unlike that of any other nation. For over a century, it has been the unspoken (but doggedly pursued) national security aim of the United States to ensure that no power rise to prominence in Asia or Europe so as to occupy a position there as dominant as the United States’ position in the Western Hemisphere. Were this to occur, not only could that nation then lock the United States out of the resources and activity of that region, but it could also then eventually turn its attention to challenging our position in the Western Hemisphere.⁵

Underlying this approach is the reality that most the world’s activity does not occur in our own hemisphere, but in Asia and Europe. American interests in these regions—political, diplomatic, economic, and military—are considerable and growing. Protecting and sustaining those interests must remain a priority of American policy, and maritime strategy is an effective tool in doing so.

Maritime strategy is a subset of grand strategy, and the relationship between the two is ably defined by Professor John B. Hattendorf of the Naval War College:

“In its broadest sense, grand strategy is the comprehensive direction of power to achieve particular national goals. Within those terms, maritime strategy is the direction of all aspects of national power that relate to a nation’s interests at sea. The navy serves this purpose, but maritime strategy is not purely a naval preserve. Maritime strategy involves the other functions of state power that include diplomacy; the safety and defence of merchant trade at sea; fishing; the exploitation, conservation, regulation and defence of the exclusive economic zone at sea; coastal defence; security of national borders; the protection of offshore islands; as well as participation in regional and world-wide concerns relating to the use of oceans, the skies over the oceans and the land under the seas.⁶

It is wholly appropriate for the world’s dominant naval power—separated from its widely-flung interests by thousands of miles of open ocean—to develop and execute coherent maritime strategy. In a time of re-emerging great power competition, it is essential. The nation’s current maritime strategy⁷ is, unfortunately, not up to the task. It focuses insufficiently on great power competition; it does not recognize the rise in importance of conventional forces in deterring great power war; it does not provide a theory of conventional deterrence appropriate to great powers and their likely objectives; it does not suggest a posture for naval forces that acts as an effective deterrent; its derived force structure is too small and short on effective logistic support; it does not place sufficient value on naval partnerships with geographically important nations which may not be traditional partners; and it is silent on the need for the nation to invest in a maritime industrial base that can enable an appropriate strategy.

This monograph urges new thinking about maritime strategy, a strategy compatible with the United States’ responsibilities as the leader of the free world, as well as the world’s premier political, military, economic, and diplomatic power. Such a strategy would seek to protect and sustain those leadership positions in the face of renewed great power competition, competition that largely subsumes other, lesser security concerns. There will be those who view this approach as a return to “Cold War” strategic thinking, and we do not shy from this comparison. The United States acted for decades as a coherent strategic actor when faced with expansionist Soviet totalitarianism, and it must act with equal coherence and resolve to contest China and Russia’s brands of aggressive mercantilism, regional expansion, and contempt for established global order.

There will be those who evaluate our suggestions in this paper and conclude that the nation cannot afford it, that the expense associated with moving to a maritime grand strategy would imbalance the traditional “ends, ways, means” approach to the making of strategy. And while the ends, ways, means approach is generally relevant to military and operational strategy, it is unsuited to the making of grand strategy for one very important reason. Unlike subordinate levels of strategy, grand strategy re-allocates, re-aligns, and re-orients a nation’s “means” to serve strategic “ends”. Military strategy starts with the proposition that there is a certain resource level available to pursue its ends. Grand strategy starts with the sum of the nation’s output capacity, and then determines how it can most effectively be allocated to the achievement of strategic goals.

Short of war itself, there is nothing in American history that causes strategic re-alignment more reliably than a change in Administration, and we wish to be part of that dialogue. We argue here for a new theory of deterrence, one that revises the Cold War approach in which the Soviet Union was deterred from large-scale conventional attack by the threat of nuclear escalation. Under that rubric, one could justifiably say that America’s conventional deterrent was dependent on its strategic deterrent. Today, the decapitating “bolt from the blue” strike is even more remote than it was in the Cold War, and to the extent that nuclear exchange between great powers is conceivable, it is far more likely to flow from conventional conflict that has gone awry. Therefore, to deter nuclear war, we must deter conventional war. No aspect of American military power will be more critical to deterring either nuclear or conventional super-power war than seapower.

American military power must be postured around the world in a more lethal stance, in which forces assigned can delay and deny China or Russia the fruits of limited aggression while raising the cost of trying, rather than (as today) offer some resistance before heavier forces are flowed from garrison or US seaports to reverse gains already made. These forces must be tailored to the regions in which they operate, reflecting sufficient capacity and the specific capabilities necessary to delay or deny the most likely objectives of aggression. The power-projection priority of US naval forces in the post-Cold War world must expand to a more balanced approach in which sea control is equally prioritized, following decades of relative inattention; and the requisite force structure must be planned and acquired to reflect this equality. While American military power can and will work to shape the operational environment, that shaping would be in support of the overall deterrence posture arrayed against China and Russia, and all peacetime pursuits would be subordinated.

A coherent maritime grand strategy would recognize the immense costs of preparing for great power competition, costs that must be consistently borne across decades to achieve the level of strength required to meet the challenge of deterring two major powers. The United States must re-order portions of the economy to achieve grand strategic ends, to include the promotion of industrial trades necessary to serve the maritime industrial base and other diminishing sectors of the defense industrial base. Political leadership must reinforce the symbiotic relationship between military strength and economic strength, and the multiple benefits to the nation of a sustained military build-up should be marshalled, articulated, and emphasized to build public support. The United States derives great benefit from the dollar’s use as the world’s reserve currency, a benefit sustained by the perception of the strength and stability of our government and our influence worldwide. Consumers and manufacturers in the US also benefit from the availability of affordable goods and raw materials that arrive in our ports across free seas guaranteed by our naval power.

A maritime grand strategy must include a re-assessment of our alliances and relationships, to include identifying and fostering those with significant geo-strategic impact, some of which are not currently considered to be militarily important. World trade routes, sea lanes, and maritime choke points all should have defining roles in our diplomacy and international relations.

The United States is a wealthy country, and the resources necessary to implement an effective maritime strategy are well within our reach. However, attaining and maintaining sufficient strength to support US great power goals requires political will, and that will must be matched with determined leadership that can articulate the benefits of action and the costs of inaction. History provides a useful example of a great maritime power that allowed short term fiscal policy to set it on a path to decline.

About the author:
*Seth Cropsey, Director, Center for American Seapower

Bryan McGrath, Deputy Director, Center for American Seapower

Source:
This article was published by the Hudson Institute

Notes:
¹ Andrew Jacobs and Jane Perlez, “U.S. Wary of Its New Neighbor in Djibouti: A Chinese Naval Base,” The New York Times, February 25, 2017, accessed October 17, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/25/world/africa/us-djibouti-chinese-naval-base.html ↝

President Trump has often said that his foreign policy objective was to keep his enemies guessing. If that’s the goal, you could say that he’s doing a good job. The problem is who does he think his enemies are, because the American people are often left guessing as well.

US policy toward North Korea last week is a good example of how the Trump Administration is wittingly or unwittingly sowing confusion among friend and foe alike. In what looked like a breakthrough, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced last Tuesday that the US would be willing to sit down and talk with North Korea “without preconditions.” Previously the US had demanded that North Korea agree to end its nuclear weapons and missile programs before Washington was willing to sit down to formal talks.

The State Department shift toward actual diplomacy with North Korea was quickly quashed, however, when the White House announced that its position on North Korea had not changed. It seemed that the State Department and White House were each pursuing different foreign policies on the Korea issue.

The White House even appeared to belittle Tillerson’s attempt at diplomacy, releasing a statement on Wednesday that talks with North Korea would be “pointless.” No wonder speculation persists that Tillerson is on his way out as Secretary of State.

Then on Friday Secretary Tillerson seemed to do a u-turn on his own policy, announcing at a UN Security Council meeting that a “sustained cessation of North Korea’s threatening behavior” must precede any negotiations with the US. “North Korea must earn its way back to the table,” he said. So, after just three days the offer of unconditional talks with North Korea had been put on and then removed from the table.

There is more than a little hypocrisy in US demands that North Korea cease its “threatening behavior.” Just this month the US and South Korea launched yet another joint military exercise targeting North Korea. Some 12,000 military personnel and 230 aircraft – including stealth fighters – participated in the massive war games. Does anyone think this is not meant to be threatening to North Korea?

It is a shame that the hawks in the Administration continue to dominate. It seems pretty reasonable to open talks with North Korea after a period of “good faith” gestures between Washington and Pyongyang. Why not agree on no US/South Korean joint military exercises for six months in exchange for no North Korean missile launches for the same period and then agree to a meeting on neutral ground? How could it possibly hurt, particularly considering the alternative?

The hawks continue to talk up a US strike against North Korea. Senator Lindsey Graham seemed pleased when he announced that there was a 70 percent chance that the US would attack North Korea if it detonated another nuclear weapon. Does he realize how many people will die? Does he care?

Defense Secretary James Mattis seems skeptical about neocon hysteria, declaring that the North Korean missile program does not pose a “capable threat” to the United States. With that in mind, we can only hope that President Trump will encourage Tillerson to do another about-face and return to the idea of talks without pre-condition. Strategic ambiguity is one thing, sending constantly mixed signals when nuclear war looms is something else.

This article was published by RonPaul Institute.

By P. R. Kumaraswamy*

For a gentile, kafir, infidel and pagan, Jerusalem might be another piece of territory as good or as bad as Alaska. This is, however, not true for the followers of the three Abrahamic faiths, and with valid reasons. Their genealogical trajectory is sequential and closely intertwined and some of their key historical moments are traced to the City of Jerusalem. Religion is an article of faith and hence one either accepts all beliefs and traditions or rejects them altogether; and modernity presupposes that no faith is inherently superior to or supersedes the other.

According to Islamic traditions, between 610 and 623 CE, Jerusalem was the direction of prayer or Qibla until it was changed towards the Ka’aba in Mecca by Prophet Mohammed in February 624. The city is also associated with the Prophet’s ascendance to heaven or the Night-Journey and his Ascension on a winged horse traced to 620 CE. Thus, Jerusalem is the third holiest place in Islam after Mecca and Medina.

The city is also closely linked to Christianity. While Jesus Christ’s birth is traced to a manger in nearby Bethlehem, the central elements of Christianity are linked to Jerusalem. Believers trace the last thirteen steps of Christ in the old city, and the crucifixion and resurrection, the very core of Christianity, is located in the city where the Church of the Holy Sepulchre stands today.

For the Jews, Jerusalem was the home of their two ancient temples, both being destroyed by invading armies; the first by the Babylonian ruler Nebuchadnezzar II in 586 BCE and the second by the Romans in 70 CE. Hence, Jerusalem is the holiest place for the Jews.

Despite all three religions tracing their origins to Abraham, interfaith accommodation over Jerusalem has been limited. Over centuries, Christians have largely diluted and even abandoned their political claims and, until the June War, Jewish claims to the old city and the Western Wall remained dormant. This is, however, not the case for Muslims whose rulers continuously controlled the city since the early seventh century and until 1917, except for the Crusades era.

Holy and Unholy

Regarding theology and historicity, Jerusalem is sacrosanct and intertwined with all the Abrahamic faiths. Politics is, however, a different matter. Even after the Oslo Accords, many Palestinian leaders including Chairman Yasser Arafat had questioned Jewish claims to the city. For a vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, the presence of the Second Temple in the Old City was nothing more than a myth. In their eagerness to reject Israeli claims to that part of Jerusalem, they do not hesitate to reject even Jewish religious claims. This revisionist approach towards Judaism got a boost in October 2016 when UNESCO adopted a resolution that tacitly rejected any Jewish claims to the city. This resolution was repeated twice during 2017.

Recognition of the Jewish claims appears to be so frightening that many Arab and Islamic leaders, scholars and laypersons merely refer to the Christian and Muslim claims and rights to the city and consciously omit the Jewish dimension. Using the present Israeli occupation of Jerusalem as a pretext, even some Indian observers and scholars tend to trace the origin of the city and its religious claims only to the birth of Jesus Christ.

The religious dimension of the city gets complicated if one looks at the evolution of the al-Aqsa mosque within the Walled City. Shortly after his army captured Jerusalem in late 637 CE, Caliph Umar visited the city and offered prayers. The construction of the al-Aqsa mosque began a few years later during the Umayyad period (661-750) and was finalized in 705 CE. The problem lies in its location, namely, upon the ruins of the Second Temple. Thus, al-Aqsa mosque stands atop a pre-Islamic, non-Islamic and unIslamic religious structure. Unfortunately, even scholars on the Middle East rarely flag this central issue of the location of al-Aqsa, lest Islamic claims to Jerusalem become contested and controversial. History can never be revised let alone undone, but a balanced, dispassionate and non-partisan recognition of its trajectory will lessen much of the tension over Jerusalem.

Even without the religious dimension, geographically there are multiple Jerusalems, each with a specific timeframe and political baggage.

How many Jerusalems?

Though all the Abrahamic faiths lay claims to Jerusalem, in the modern political context, the city has different geographic contours. Under the partition plan approved by the UN General Assembly on 29 November 1947, Jerusalem and its surrounding areas including Bethlehem were declared corpus separatum. The UN thereby sought to place the city under an international regime due to the shared and contested religious claims over it.

The Declaration of Independence which announced the establishment of Israel hours before the British departure on 14 May 1948 was conspicuously silent on the country’s capital. Formally giving up Zion (another name for Jerusalem) would have meant the realization of Zionism without Zion. At the same time, a formal declaration of Jerusalem as the capital would have angered many Christian or Christian-majority countries, including the US, whose recognition was critical for the Jewish State. With the partition plan already dividing international opinion, the infant state did not have the luxury of ticking off international opinion at its birth. Its entry into the UN, formalized in May 1949, was another compulsion and hence the otherwise colourful and detailed Israeli declaration of independence was silent on the question of its capital.

Meanwhile, the UN-sponsored Armistice Agreement between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan signed on 3 April 1949 formalized the division of Jerusalem, namely Israeli control of West Jerusalem and Jordanian control and subsequent annexation of East Jerusalem, including the old city and its religious sites holy to all the three Abrahamic faiths. This brought in the concept of West and East Jerusalem into the political discourse of the Middle East. Later that year, Israel declared the Western part of the city as its capital and gradually established or moved all its sovereign institutions, such as the office of the President, the seat of the Supreme Court, Knesset and government offices. By the early 1950s all the ministries except the Ministry of Defence were shifted to West Jerusalem.

West Jerusalem, which Israel declared as its capital has, however, not been recognized by much of the international community. Until President Donald Trump’s sudden announcement, even the US never recognized Israel’s claims to West Jerusalem as its capital. For a while, a few Latin American countries had gone along with Israel but reversed their decision in the wake of Arab political pressure.

Until the June War, East Jerusalem was under Jordanian control and occupation. Their control of the Old City and the third holiest place of Islam was a consolation for the Hashemites who lost Mecca and Medina to the al-Sauds in the 1920s. There were suggestions that the Hashemites were toying with the idea of declaring East Jerusalem as their capital but that they were dissuaded by the British. During this period, a number of Jewish synagogues in the old city were desecrated, damaged or even destroyed and even non-Israeli Jews were prevented from praying in the Western Wall. At the same time, despite international disapproval, the Armistice Agreement of 1949 institutionalized a de facto partition of the city and this status continued until 1967.

During the June War, Israel captured, along with the West Bank, the eastern part of Jerusalem, including the Walled City and since then this has remained under its control. Even as West and East Jerusalems remained high on the international agenda, Israel sought to remove the Green Line (the pre-June armistice lines) on the ground. Through a host of political and legislative moves, it sought to declare Jerusalem to be its ‘united, undivided and eternal capital’. And it also sought to establish this fact on the ground through the construction of settlements beyond the June 1967 border. But the international community, including the US, never recognized the eastern part of the city as a part of Jerusalem or Israeli territory. Thus, East Jerusalem entered the political lexicon of the Middle East after the June War.

Israeli activities since 1967 have led to the introduction of nomenclatures such as Municipal Jerusalem, Greater Jerusalem and Jerusalem security perimeters. Though administrative in nature, they also indicate Israel’s territorial expansion through the annexation and seizure of lands beyond the Green Line. At the height of the Oslo process, the Arab village of Abu Dis in the old city was often suggested as a possible Palestinian capital.

However, the real problem of Jerusalem lay in the Walled City, which houses the ruins of the Western Wall, Holy Sepulchre and al-Aqsa Mosque. Despite its proximity of only a few hundred yards, the Christian holy site can be separated due to it distinct geographical location, but this is not possible for the other two sites. Al-Aqsa and Harem al-Sharif stand on top of the ruins of the Western Wall. Over the years, as noted above, Christian political claims over the city have receded leaving the other two faiths to seek exclusive claims and sovereignty. Besides seeking exclusive control and sovereignty over the Walled City, the Palestinian leadership has no alternate option for Jerusalem.

The Oslo process was possible partly because of the Israeli willingness to discuss contentious issues including Jerusalem during the final status negotiations. But the absence of meaningful progress on the core issues brought the peace process to a halt. At the same time, it is essential to recognize that while other issues are bilateral in character between Israel and Palestine, Jerusalem is special in that not just Arab countries but Muslim societies beyond the Middle East have also acquired a stake and hence a veto in its resolution.

During the Camp David talks between Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in the summer of 2000, President Bill Clinton floated the idea of vertical and horizontal sovereignty over the contested religious space with Jerusalem remaining the shared capital of both the people. This presupposes mutual respect and accommodation, which is absent at present.

Jerusalem is not a legal or political issue. It is an emotional problem that defies reason, logic or evidence. Claims are absolutist with little room for compromise and accommodation. The issue is so vast and complicated one can easily pick up a particular issue, timeframe or logic and make a passionate case for it. As it is said, everyone is right to the extent of their knowledge.

Occupied Jerusalem

There is near unanimity among scholars and laypersons alike that Jerusalem, especially the Walled City, is an occupied territory. But who is the occupying power? It is often forgotten that this has been the case for centuries and that only the occupying powers have been different. Israeli occupation began with the June War of 1967, but the question of ‘occupation’ did not begin then. Until it lost the West Bank to Israel, Jordan had occupied the old city of Jerusalem. During the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, the Arab Legion of the Hashemite Kingdom captured the old city including the holy sites of all the three Abrahamic faiths and subsequently annexed it along with the West Bank. This was not accepted by much of the international community just as it did not recognize Israeli actions beyond the pre-June 1967 borders.

Prior to the Jordanian move, Jerusalem and the wider Palestine came under British control during the First World War after the allied army led by General Edmund Allenby entered the city on 9 December 1917. This was weeks after the Balfour Declaration which expressed British support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Until then, Jerusalem was under Islamic control and sovereignty following its liberation from the Crusaders by Saladin in 1187. During the previous two centuries, since the Crusaders laid siege to the city in 1099, Jerusalem was under Christian control.

Before that, Jerusalem came under Arab and Islamic control in the year 637 after the armies of the Second Caliph Umar laid a successful siege and captured the city from the Byzantine Empire. For its part, Byzantium had captured the city from the Early Roman Empire. And, as for the Roman Empire, the armies of Pompey the Great laid siege to Jerusalem in 63 BCE and this eventually culminated in the Jewish tragedy of the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE and their dispersal or Diaspora.

In short, Jerusalem came under Roman rule in 63 BCE; Islamic rule in 637 CE; under the Crusaders in 1099; under Saladin in 1187; under the British in 1917; under the Jordanians in 1948 and under Israel in 1967. Hence, the question of ‘occupation’ is entirely subjective and people decide the timeframe of ‘occupation’ in line with their religious beliefs and political convictions.

Trump and Jerusalem

In October 1995, during the heydays of the Oslo process, the US Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act, which demanded the relocation of the American embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and to recognize that city as Israel’s capital. However, citing larger American interests, successive presidents deferred the move. At the same time, since 1967, various US administrations have considered areas beyond the Green Line, including East Jerusalem, to be a part of the Occupied Territories. For example, President Barack Obama’s formulation of May 2011 that the final borders between Israel and Palestine “should be based on the 1967 lines with mutually agreed swap” was legally correct but led to a diplomatic row with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

On 6 December, much to the surprise of the international community, President Trump announced that he had “determined that it is time to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel” and went on to add that, like other sovereign nations, Israel has the right “to determine its own capital”. He located this move within the context of the peace process.

President Trump’s move, which has enraged many US friends, infuriated Muslim allies and spurred massive protests in different parts of the world, has opened a Pandora’s Box and raised many questions than answers. Does it mean that the US has accepted Israeli claims of Jerusalem being its ‘united and undivided’ capital, including the old city? Is it an abandonment of the American position of East Jerusalem being part of the Occupied Territories? If it means recognition of only West Jerusalem, is President Trump merely accepting the pre-1967 Israeli claims without any rights over the old city? Such questions are especially valid in the context of Trump’s call on “all parties to maintain the status quo at Jerusalem’s holy sites, including Temple Mount, also known as Haram al-Sharif.”

Despite the international uproar, the wording of President Trump’s statement indicates that recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is accompanied by a subtle reiteration of partition of the city into West and East Jerusalem, which is not the Israeli position. In that sense, there is no need for Netanyahu to celebrate.

India and Jerusalem

Until 1992, India followed a cautious policy of recognition-without-relations towards Israel for over four decades. Like in the case of many other countries, India’s normalization of relations with Israel was followed by the establishment of a diplomatic mission in Tel Aviv. After the establishment of the Palestine National Authority, New Delhi established a mission in the Gaza Strip in 1996, which was moved to Ramallah in 2003 when Arafat shifted his headquarters to the West Bank. The Indian mission in the Palestinian territories reports directly to South Bloc and not to the embassy in Tel Aviv, thus reiterating the legal separation between Israel and Palestine.

For nearly a decade, incidentally coinciding with UPA rule, India’s support for a Palestinian state was accompanied by an explicit reference to East Jerusalem being the Palestinian capital. If the international community and the UN do not recognize West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, the same holds true for East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital. However, political considerations resulted in a number countries embracing and endorsing the Arab-Islamic position on Jerusalem. This was reflected in multilateral forums such as BRICS and IBSA. During his initial months in office, even Prime Minister Narendra Modi adhered to this position.

However, a major shift became noticeable during the visit of President Mahmoud Abbas in May 2017. With the Palestinian President standing by his side, Prime Minister Modi reiterated India’s support to Palestinian statehood but carefully avoided any direct reference to East Jerusalem. This shift indicated an Indian recognition of the complexities surrounding Jerusalem and the need for a settlement among the parties concerned. Only a few weeks earlier, India had reversed its earlier position and abstained over a UNESCO resolution that denied any Jewish links to the city. Indeed, the absence of any reference to East Jerusalem was also noticeable in the statement that BRICS leaders including Modi issued in Xiamen in September 2017.

The absence of any reference to East Jerusalem as the capital of the future Palestinian state led to suggestions that India was moving towards accepting the city as Israel’s capital. This was flagged when Prime Minister Modi visited Israel in July 2017. While staying at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, he skipped the Palestinian headquarters in Ramallah located only a few miles away.

In the aftermath of President Trump’s Jerusalem announcement, there were media speculations about the Indian stand especially given a non-committal statement issued by the Ministry of External Affairs observing that “India’s position on Palestine is independent and consistent. It is shaped by our views and interests, and not determined by any third country.” This bland statement without any reference to Jerusalem did not, however, satisfy many who felt it was insufficient, vague, anti-Palestinian and even anti-Muslim.

States are less ideological and more responsible than individuals and rhetoric is unsuitable and counterproductive. If one looks at some of its recent positions, it is obvious that the Indian government is aware of the complex religious claims and political contestations over Jerusalem. The city is not Berlin to be divided or Chandigarh to be shared. It is a theological, geographical, historical, archaeological, political and emotional issue with contested claims and overlapping legacies. While it is necessary to simplify the problem, looking for a simple solution is dangerous and irresponsible. From India’s viewpoint, let the parties concerned—Israel, Palestinians and the wider Arab-Islamic world—reach a settlement based on respect, compromise and accommodation. Thus, if India no longer recognizes East Jerusalem as the Palestinian capital, it is also not recognizing West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. Is there a better option?

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:
*P.R. Kumaraswamy is Professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.

Source:
This article was published by IDSA.

Honduras’ electoral authority, the Tribunal Supremo Electoral (TSE), has declared incumbent president Juan Orlando Hernández of the National Party the winner of the November 26 presidential elections, despite a statistical near-impossibility of such an outcome, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR) Co-Director Mark Weisbrot said today.

A statement by Organization of American States Secretary General Luis Almagro also noted an “extreme statistical improbability” ― with regard to variation of participation levels within departments ― as a factor that “make[s] it impossible to determine the winner with the necessary certainty.”

“It is now clear to the experts who have looked at the results that there is no statistically plausible explanation for the sudden and drastic shift in the vote count that took place after the majority of votes were counted,” Weisbrot said. “This election has little credibility, either among most Hondurans, or internationally at this point.”

The TSE’s initial count of 57 percent of tally sheets on election night showed a five-point lead for opposition candidate Salvador Nasralla. The TSE system then mysteriously went offline for over 30 hours, and when it returned, the voting trends sharply reversed, eroding Nasralla’s lead until Hernández ended up with a 1.7-percentage-point lead over Nasralla, with all tally sheets counted. The results contradicted earlier public statements by one of the TSE magistrates, Marcos Ramiro Lobo Rosales, that 70 percent of tallies had been counted, and that Nasralla had an insurmountable lead.

An analysis of the vote tabulation by Dr. Irfan Nooruddin of Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service, prepared for the OAS, found that the sharp change in voting trends following the TSE’s mysterious system failure was improbable: “differences are too large to be generated by chance and are not easily explicable, raising doubts as to the veracity of the overall result.”

Almagro called for new elections in a December 17 press statement, saying: “… the electoral process was characterized by irregularities and deficiencies, with very low technical quality and lacking integrity.”

Deliberate human intrusions in the computer system, intentional elimination of digital traces, the impossibility of knowing the number of opportunities in which the system was violated, pouches of votes open or lacking votes, the extreme statistical improbability with respect to participation levels within the same department, recently printed ballots and additional irregularities, added to the narrow difference of votes between the two most voted candidates, make it impossible to determine with the necessary certainty the winner.

In addition, the partisan composition of the TSE has added to the suspicions of many Hondurans. The TSE is headed by David Matamoros Batson, a former executive secretary and former congressman for the ruling National Party.

“Calls for a new, free, and fair election with credible guarantees and an independent electoral authority have been justified beyond a reasonable doubt,” Weisbrot said. “It is unfortunate that the US government has not joined the OAS secretary general and others in calling for this solution.”

By Dale Steinreich*

December 16, 2017 is the tenth anniversary of the modern Tea Party. That fact will surprise many laypersons who uncritically accept the mainstream narrative that the Tea Party began on February 19, 2009 when Rick Santelli, live on CNBC from the Chicago Mercantile Exchange (CME), declared a rebellion against “socialism” one month into the Obama administration.

But wait a minute: Rick Santelli on establishment NBC lighting the spark of an anti-establishment rebellion? An uprising over mere proposed Obama bailouts of mortgage holders coming four months after silence over (if not a defense of) George W. Bush’s $700 billion TARP bailout of Wall Street?

If the mainstream narrative seems fishy, that is because it is. What really happened ten years ago and how was the Tea Party transformed from a libertarian grass-roots movement to today’s controlled (and just-about dead) establishment version? What are some of the lessons that can be learned?

The Ron Paul Revolution (October 2007)

The ground-zero event in the formation of the Tea Party occurred when supporters of Ron Paul’s first presidential campaign registered the Web address TeaParty07.com on October 24, 2007 (below is Archive.org’s snapshot of the site on November 13, 2007).

Twelve days later, on November 5, Guy Fawkes Night, Paul supporters held the first “money bomb” fundraiser, which (for Internet fundraising) raked in a record $4.3 million. Days after this came the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party. Paul supporters in Boston re-enacted the dumping of tea into Boston Harbor and a newcomer to politics, ophthalmologist Rand Paul, spoke at Faneuil Hall. A second money bomb held on this commemoration of the Tea Party raised over $6 million, shattering the previous record set eleven days before.

What was this schism on the American right about? It was a rebellion against the Bush Republican party’s wars (in particular, the twin disasters of Afghanistan and Iraq), drunken-sailor federal spending (e.g., a $500 billion unfunded expansion of Medicare for a new prescription drug program), and a burgeoning post-9/11 federal spy and police state (e.g., the Patriot Act of 2001, etc.).

From Grass Roots Activism to Big-Money Corporatism (February 2009)

By February 2009, the GOP lay in complete tatters. In addition to its endless wars and domestic spending spree, it had added a $700 billion bailout of Wall Street after the financial crisis of 2008. (Never mind a series of smaller outrages such as a ban on incandescent light bulbs and the TSA, which should have been a private effort, if anything, from the beginning).

On top of all that, instead of nominating Ron Paul in 2008, the GOP had nominated conservative “war hero” John McCain and Alaska governor Sarah Palin. A war-weary public completely rejected the ticket in favor of a younger, articulate Barack Obama who promised peace and a revived economy.

The Santelli rant sparked the conservative and GOP establishments to transform a marketing vehicle that would serve to not only distract the public from their recent colossal policy failures, but also serve as a gold mine of self-enrichment: t-shirts, coffee mugs, bumper stickers, Taxed Enough Already (TEA) yard signs, fluff books from the conservative pundit class, Glenn Beck rallies promoted by the Fox News Channel, Rush Limbaugh iced tea, and children’s books.

As Sarah Palin replaced Ron Paul as the face of the movement, a surreal change in advocacy followed. The anti-interventionist Tea Party, once outraged about the endless occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq, was now wanting the U.S. to attack and invade Iran. Rally chants of “End the Fed” eventually disappeared.

A Tea Party in February?

By 2014, the faux Tea Party’s fifth anniversary, it was clear that the mainstream media were firmly devoted to advancing the new establishment narrative, as 2014 headlines such as “Tea Party Marks Fifth Anniversary” make clear.

Still, glaring inconsistencies remained. The grass-roots Paulist Tea Party began on December 16, 2007, the 234^th anniversary of the original Sons of Liberty protest of 1773. The conservative and GOP forgery of February 19, 2009 was not connected to anything but the advancement of the corporatist interests of Conservatism Inc. and the GOP. Even its supposed founder, Rick Santelli, was quickly pushed offstage while the Fox News Channel, Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and others took center stage.

Epilogue: Decentralization vs. National Politics

While the Ron-Paul Revolution, from the spread of homeschools to Austrian economics, continues on in educating people around the world, the Tea Party is all but completely dead. In the age of Donald Trump its lessons are more vivid than ever.

The two-party U.S. duopoly, which insulates itself from competition and outsiders through regulatory barriers such as ballot-access laws, front-loaded primaries, and super delegates, presents obstacles even to billionaires who wish to challenge it.

Trump was an outsider who promised a less interventionist foreign policy, full repeal of Obamacare, and a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border. The two-party cartel not only sunk these promises that Trump supporters wanted, but installed a special prosecutor to investigate wild allegations of Russian hacking to help elect Trump. Make America Great Again has yielded to bizarre rabbit holes such as bombing Syria and moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.

On the opposite side of the aisle, the Democratic Party’s sinking of Bernie Sanders holds the same lessons. Had progressives pursued decentralization instead of Obama’s empty promises and the mirage of a Sanders presidency, California, Vermont, and Oregon could be much better prepared to separate from the rest of the U.S. and pursue their preferred policies from collectivist health care to sanctuary cities unhindered by the Trump administration.

Decentralization and autonomy is what the U.S., going back to the Articles of Confederation, was originally about. Those paths, instead of trying to wrest control of leviathan, would be far more effective in getting all sides much of what they want. As Brexit has shown, postponing the process only makes it more difficult to implement later on.

About the author:
*Dale Steinreich is an economist and an Associated Scholar of the Mises Institute.

Source:
This article was published by the MISES Institute

Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is a thoroughgoing Muslim Brotherhood adherent, and has been since he first entered politics. During his early years as prime minister, back in the early 2000s, he was careful not to promote too radical an agenda too soon. Despite his Islamist views, he made an official visit to Israel in 2005 to be feted by Israeli prime minister, Ariel Sharon. However it was not long before the previously close relations between Turkey and Israel began to sour. The turning point came in 2009, with the first conflict between Israel and Hamas, which had seized power in the Gaza strip and had been firing rockets indiscriminately into Israel.

In the annual international gathering at Davos that year, Erdogan could not restrain himself. Rounding on Israeli President Shimon Peres, Erdogan called the Israeli operation in the Gaza Strip a “crime against humanity” and “barbaric.” Wagging his finger at Peres, he declared: “When it comes to killing, you know very well how to kill. I know very well how you hit and killed children on beaches.” Then, infuriated by the moderator’s refusal to allow him more time in response to Peres’s emotional rebuke, he stalked off the stage.

Between that first indication of Erdogan’s extreme Islamist stance and his intemperate reaction to the announcement by US President Donald Trump on December 6, 2017 recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, lies the great barren waste of the Mavi Marmara affair – an encounter on the high seas between Israeli soldiers and a Turkish flotilla of six vessels, nominally on a humanitarian mission to relieve what had been described as the siege of Gaza. During the encounter, nine of those on board the Mavi Marama lost their lives.

Erdogan manipulated the event into a rupture of Turkish-Israeli relations lasting six years. But the series of investigations that followed revealed a cynical anti-Israel plot planned with the connivance of Turkey’s ruling AKP party and possibly of Erdogan himself, its leader.

Under the cloak of providing humanitarian aid to Gaza, an operation aimed at instigating a confrontation with Israel was meticulously planned. A six-ship flotilla was organised by western activists working with the Turkish IHH movement, a non-governmental organization supported by the Turkish government with a long track record of gun-running and violence in support of Islamist causes world-wide. The lead ship Mavi Marmara was purchased by the IHH from a major shipping company owned by the Istanbul Municipality, which is run by the ruling AKP party. Far from being crammed to the gunwales with humanitarian aid, three of the six ships in the convoy actually carried no aid at all. Mavi Marmara was one such.

To this end, some 40 armed activists were ushered aboard the leading ship of the flotilla – the Mavi Marmara – at a different embarkation point from the rest of the passengers, and without any of the security checks to which they were subject.  They were led by the head of the IHH.

A Turkish journalist on board the Mavi Marmara said: “The flotilla was organized with the support of the Turkish government, and prime minister Erdogan gave the instructions for it to set sail.”

Israel’s botched military intervention, and the consequent death of nine of the militants, provided Erdogan with a political and diplomatic bonus he could scarcely have hoped for. He was not slow to exploit it, condemning Israel for committing a “massacre”. The involvement of his AKP party in the plot remained largely hidden.

It took six long years of intensive negotiations before the affair was finally put to rest in June 2016. But even though Erdogan publicly slighted Israel on an almost daily basis, Israeli-Turkish trade grew massively over the period. In May 2017 a large Turkish business delegation visited Israel, enthusiastically advocating a 150 percent increase in Turkish-Israeli trade over the next five years.

“We need to change the perception of the Israeli citizens and the Turkish citizens toward one another,” said Mehmet Buyukeksi, chairman of the Turkish Exporters Assembly.

Erdogan’s reaction to the Trump announcement on Jerusalem, however, seemed to presage a replay of the Mavi Marmara situation. Speaking in parliament in Ankara, Erdogan declared: “Jerusalem is a red line for Muslims. This could lead us to break off our diplomatic relations with Israel.”

Three days later he turned his ire on Israel, which he described as a “terrorist state”, vowing to use all means to fight against the US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu decided to give as good as he got in the battle of words. Denouncing Erdogan as a brutal dictator, he declared “I am not used to receiving lectures about morality from a leader who bombs Kurdish villagers in his native Turkey, who jails journalists, who helps Iran get around international sanctions, and who helps terrorists, including in Gaza, kill innocent people.”

Erdogan emerged from the Mavi Marmara episode with greatly enhanced prestige both domestically and more widely in the Muslim world. Now he is again seizing the initiative. He convened a special meeting of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, of which he is currently president. Presenting himself as the Muslim defender of Jerusalem. he condemned Trump’s announcement, castigated the Arab world for its lacklustre response and called on world powers to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine.

Erdogan has three additional reasons for rounding on the United States. First, he hates the assistance America is giving the Syrian Kurds, who are fighting successfully against Islamic State. Second, the US has so far refused to extradite Fethullah Gulen, the leader of the rival religious movement whom Erdogan accuses of initiating the abortive coup against him in July 2016. Third, and most embarrassing to Erdogan, is the trial currently under way in New York involving Iranian-Turkish businessman Reza Zarrab.

Zarrab is a key witness in the criminal trial of Turkish banker Mehmet Hakan Atilla. In his testimony Zarrab has implicated Erdogan in an international money laundering scheme that he and the banker ran between 2010 and 2015, which allegedly allowed Iran access to global markets despite UN and US sanctions. He testified that in 2012 he was told by Turkey’s then economy minister that Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time, had instructed Turkish banks to participate in the multi-million dollar scheme.

Erdogan’s most recent threat was to establish a Turkish embassy, accredited to the state of Palestine, in East Jerusalem. Whether making a big stir about the Jerusalem issue will succeed in diverting the world’s attention from other, more embarrassing, matters only time will tell.

By Indra Ekmanis*

(FPRI) — In a rural country school in Latgale, a region in eastern Latvia, breaks between classes are noisy with the sounds of students joking, laughing, and playing. In class, they speak Latvian, and in the hallways, they speak Latvian and Russian, occasionally testing out an English word. These children come from primarily Russian-speaking or ethnically mixed families, but are enrolled in a Latvian education program at a dual-track school, where Latvian and bilingual minority education programs operate simultaneously. These students flow between languages without any problems and without any hostility. One floor above, students in the Russian minority education program don’t often play with the children downstairs; their speech in Latvian is halting, and their class sizes are dwindling.

More and more families in this area are choosing to send their children to the Latvian stream, even if they speak Russian at home, as do more than half of the population in this particular municipality. They see it as a positive for their children to learn in Latvian, the national language. School administrators agree, “We don’t pressure them artificially. We see that it will happen naturally, without any big conflicts.” This unforced shift happening in one of the most Russian regions of Latvia is a clear example of ethnic school integration that’s working.

Improving education and cultivating integration have long been priorities in Latvia, complicated by a large Russian minority school system preserved from the interwar and Soviet periods. Recently, the Ministry of Education put forward a plan to increase instruction in the national language in minority schools. It has been lauded by supporters as a step toward closing the linguistic and educational gap in Latvian society. Opponents argue it impedes minority rights and is detrimental to minority students. But this discussion—and this reform—misses the point. Bilingual education isn’t the problem in Latvia, unofficial school segregation is.

Around 10% of state-funded schools in Latvia are bilingual minority schools. Of these, 90% are Russian-language schools, including nearly 50% of the schools in the capital of Riga. A handful of minority schools are Ukrainian, Polish, Hebrew, Belarusian, Lithuanian, and Estonian. Another 8% are dual track schools, like the school in Latgale, where mainstream and minority programs operate under one roof. Parents can choose whether or not to send their children to minority or mainstream Latvian programs, often taking into account more than heritage, but also quality of education and future opportunities.

Currently, minority programs are obliged to teach 60% of coursework in the national language and 40% in the minority language (whether these requirements are always met—or if some schools use curriculum unofficially supplemented by Russia—remains a source of speculation.). Proposed changes anticipate a shift to 100% of coursework in Latvian for minority high school programs and a shift to 80% for grades 7-9 by the 2021-2022 academic year. Minority school students will still have access to language, literature, culture, and history classes related to their ethnic heritage in their native language. The reform aims to bolster minority school students’ knowledge of Latvian, which would arguably better prepare them for higher education and the job market in Latvia, and serve as a base for social integration.

Naysayers claim that a switch to all-Latvian instruction will negatively impact minority students, who will have a hard time learning in their non-native language. More extreme reactions have likened the law to ethnic discrimination or even a “holocaust of Russian education in Latvia,” which unsurprisingly is a narrative pushed by Russian media. Moderate concerns focus on the impact reform will have on school staffs and the critical lack of qualified Latvian-language teachers. The Ministry of Education intends to allocate 3.3 million euro to retrain around 800 minority school teachers, some of whom do not speak Latvian themselves.

But by only focusing on language, the real problem of integration in Latvia—actual social contact—is overlooked. In fact, increasing Latvian language in minority schools could unintentionally undercut integration goals. In 2004, reforms that mandated the current 60/40 language split also had the effect of decreasing the natural integration of the school system. Most jobs in Latvia require speaking Latvian, so when learning Latvian in minority schools became feasible, there was no longer a pressing need for minority students to switch to mainstream schools to acquire that skill. Bilingual education in Russian and Latvian (which most minority school students receive) can also be more economically useful. Finding a job in Latvia is much more difficult without both Latvian and Russian in one’s skill set, and young Latvians are increasingly bad at Russian. About 91% of ethnic minorities in Latvia already speak Latvian, most at intermediate or advanced levels. Even more minority youth speak Latvian—88% well or very well—but only 2% speak Latvian poorly. Among young people, “Latvian has already become the language of social unity.” In fact, several minority schools consistently rank among the top schools in the country.

Bilingual education is not the issue, though neither is a push to all-Latvian language education. The problem is not that Latvian- and Russian-speakers can’t communicate—it’s that they very often grow up isolated from one another.

Latvia’s proposed reform looks increasingly like an informal version of “separate, but equal” systems. They appear to turn Russian minority schools into de facto Latvian schools, but without any ethnic Latvians in them. Minority students should absolutely have access to heritage cultural classes—legal and cultural rights for minority populations has long been a valued norm in Latvia. But such access should be achieved within mainstream educational facilities, not as a system of separate institutions.

If a switch to a unified system is the endgame, reform should not only be a top-down mission starting in in high schools—it has to come from the bottom-up, too. Minister of Education Kārlis Šadurskis has stressed that kindergarteners should also be familiar with Latvian, but no plan to push this type of change is yet in place. Latvia currently faces a woeful shortage of public preschool spots; investing more in Latvian-language preschools and kindergartens would both fix the enrollment problem and allow school integration to progress more naturally. Learning Latvian in preschool not only improves a child’s grasp of the language, but it also offers them—and parents—opportunities to socialize and integrate from their very first days, not after they enter college or the workforce.

This may well be the goal of such reforms in the long-run, as politicians, including Minister Šadurskis, have critiqued the existence of two separate educational spaces. But if so, language politics cannot be the only narrative of reform.

In the hallways of the school in Latgale, language politics is usually far from the kids’ minds. They are more excited about an upcoming field trip to Riga or preparing for concerts and competitions. Being part of Latvia is simple for them—it has more to do with the friends they’ve made and the school they’re in than the language they speak. Schools are critical for this type of civic socialization. Contact between ethnic and non-ethnic Latvians will push integration forward. Relying on an antiquated minority school system and overemphasizing language won’t.

About the author:
*Indra Ekmanis is a Title VIII Research Scholar at the Kennan Institute in the Woodrow Wilson Center.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.

By Richard M. Ebeling*

When Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression first appeared in print in 1963, the economics profession was still completely dominated by the Keynesian Revolution that began in the 1930s. Rothbard, instead, employed the “Austrian” approach to money and the business cycle to explain the causes for the Great Depression, and to analyze the misguided and counterproductive policies that were followed in the early 1930s, which, in fact, only intensified and prolonged the economic downturn.

To many of the economists in the early 1960s, Rothbard’s “Austrian” approach seemed out-of-step with the then generally accepted textbook, macroeconomic approach that focused on a highly “aggregate” analysis of economic changes and fluctuations on general output and employment as a whole. There was also the widely held presumption that governments could easily maintain economy-wide growth and stability through the use of a variety of monetary and fiscal policy tools.

Mises, Hayek and the Austrian Theory of Money and the Business Cycle

However, in the early and middle years of the 1930s, the Austrian explanation of the Great Depression was at the forefront of the theoretical and policy debates of the time. Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973), first developed this “Austrian” theory of the causes of inflations and depressions in his book, The Theory of Money and Credit (1912; 2nd revised ed., 1924) and then in his monograph, Monetary Stabilization and Cyclical Policy (1928).

But its international recognition and role in the business cycle debates and controversies in the 1930s were particularly due to Friedrich A. Hayek’s (1899–1992) version of the theory as presented in his works, Prices and Production (1932) Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle (1933), and Profits, Interest and Investment (1939). A professor of economics at the London School of Economics throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Hayek was, at the time, considered by many to be the main competitor against John Maynard Keynes’s “New Economics” that emerged out of Keynes’s 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money.

Ludwig von Mises had restated and refined his version of the Austrian theory of the business cycle in his 1949 treatise, Human Action in a way that attempted to respond to many of the criticism made against the theory in the 1930s. But by the end of the 1940s and into the early 1950s, the Austrian theory was soon submerged in the Keynesian tidal wave of macroeconomic aggregates and averages that swept away all alternative understandings of inflations and depressions.

Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression and the Revival of Austrian Economics

This is what especially marks off the significance of Murray Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression: We can now see that it represented the revival of the “Austrian” monetary tradition in the post-World War II period. It is true that the Austrian theory was restated by Rothbard a year earlier, in 1962, in a notable and clearly written chapter in his own major treatise, Man, Economy, and State, and within the wider context of a reformulation of the Austrian theory of capital and interest.  But in America’s Great Depression, Rothbard summarized the Austrian theory of money and the business cycle, and contrasted it to the older quantity theory of money formulated by Yale University economist, Irving Fisher, as well as to Keynes’s macro-theory, and that of Schumpeter’s theory of entrepreneurially driven cycles of market innovation.

Rothbard then proceeded to offer a crisp and highly readable interpretive narrative of how the monetary policy of the American central bank, the Federal Reserve, in the 1920s had brought about an imbalance between savings and investment through its manipulation of the supply of money and credit in the banking system as part of the illusive pursuit of price level stabilization. Rothbard went on to explain how the fiscal and interventionist policies of the Hoover Administration in the early 1930s only succeeded in preventing the necessary microeconomic relative price and wage adjustments, and resource and labor reallocations that would have restored balance and stability in the U.S. economy in a relatively short period of time.

In the process Rothbard made the modern reader of the 1960s aware of a “lost” literature from the 1930s and 1940s that complemented the works by Ludwig von Mises and Friedrich Hayek, and that served as the analytical framework in the context of which Rothbard presented the Austrian theory of the business cycle. Specifically, Rothbard highlighted Gottfried Haberler’s lecture on “Money and the Business Cycle,” (1932), Frederic Benham’s British Monetary Policy (1932), Lionel Robbins’ The Great Depression (1934), and Phillips, McManus, and Nelson’s, Banking and the Business Cycle (1937), Fritz Machlup’s The Stock Market, Credit, and Capital Formation (1940), and Benjamin Anderson’s Economics and the Public Welfare (1946), all of which are carefully referenced by Rothbard in his book.

These works, and many others from the 1930s inspired by Mises’s and Hayek’s analysis, became the starting point for anyone interested in gaining a further and fuller grasp of the Austrian perspective on the Great Depression that Rothbard, himself, had obviously drawn upon in his developing his own understanding of the period between the two World Wars.

This revival in the “Austrian” monetary and business cycle tradition was also stimulated by a series of conferences on Austrian Economics in the middle of the 1970s beginning with a conference in South Royalton, Vermont in June 1974. Since then there has developed a growing literature inspired by and continuing within the “Austrian” monetary framework that tries to address monetary and business cycle problems of our out time, now, in the twenty-first century. (See my article, “The Rebirth of Austrian Economics.”)

The Fundamental Errors in Keynesian Economics

Keynes argued that the economy should be looked at in terms of a series of macroeconomic aggregates: total demand for all output as a whole, total supply of all resources and goods as whole, and the average general levels of all prices and wages for goods and services and resources bought and sold on the overall market.

If, at the prevailing general level of wages, there is not enough aggregate demand for output as a whole to profitably employ all those interested and willing to work, then it is the task of the government and its central bank to ensure that sufficient money spending is injected into the economy. The idea is that at rising prices for final goods and services relative to the general wage level, it will again become profitable for businesses to employ the unemployed until full employment is restored.

Over the decades since Keynes first formulated this idea in his 1936 book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, both his supporters and apparent critics have revised and reformulated parts of his argument and assumptions. But the general macro-aggregate framework and worldview used by economists to analyze problems of less than full employment nonetheless still focus on government policy and formulate it in terms of the levels of output and employment for the economy as a whole and changes in them.

The Fallacy of Macroeconomic Aggregates and Averages

In fact, however, there is no such thing as aggregate demand, or aggregate supply, or output and employment as a whole. They are statistical creations constructed by economists and statisticians, out of what really exists: the demands and supplies of multitudes of individual and distinct goods and services produced, and bought and sold on the various specific markets that make up the economic system of society.

There are specific consumer demands for different kinds and types of hats, shoes, shirts, reading glasses, apples, and books or movies. No one demands just “output,” and no one creates just “employment.”  When we go into the marketplace we are interested in buying the specific goods and services for which we have particular and distinct demands. And businessmen and entrepreneurs find it profitable to hire and employ particular workers with specific skills to assist in the manufacture, production, marketing, and sale of those distinct goods that individual consumers are interested in buying.

In turn, each of these individual and distinct goods and services has its own particular price in the market place, established by the interaction of the individual demanders with the individual suppliers offering them for sale.

The profitable opportunities to bring desired goods to market result in the demand for different resources and raw materials, specific types of machinery and equipment, and different categories of skilled and less-skilled individual workers to participate in the production processes that bring those desired goods into existence. The interactions between the individual businessmen and the individual suppliers of the factors of production generate the prices for their purchase, hire, or employment on, again, multitudes of individual markets in the economic system.

Austrian Microeconomic Market and Monetary Process Analysis

The macroeconomist and his statistician collaborator then add up, sum, and average all these different individual outputs, employments and specific prices and wages into a series of economy-wide measured aggregates.  But it should be fairly clear that in doing so, all the real economic relationships in the market, the actual structure of relative prices and wages, and all the multitude of distinct and interconnected patterns of actual demands and supplies are submerged and lost in the macroeconomic aggregates and totals.

Balanced production and sustainable employments in the economy as a whole clearly require coordination and balance between the demands and supplies of all the particular goods and services in each of the specific markets on which they are bought and sold. And parallel to that, there must be comparable coordination and balance between the businessmen’s demands for resources, capital equipment, and different types of labor in each production sector of the market and those supplying them.

Such coordination, balance, and sustainable employment require adaptation to the every-changing circumstance of market conditions through adjustment of prices and wages, and to shifts in supplies and demands in and between the various parts and sectors of the economy. In other words, it is rightly balanced and coordinated patterns between supplies and demands and their accompanying structures of relative prices and wages that ensure full employment and the efficient and effective use of available resources and capital; through these adaptations and adjustments, entrepreneurs and businessmen are constantly and continually tending to produce the goods we, the consumers, want and desire, and at prices that are covering competitive costs of production.

All that is lost from view when it is reduced to a handful of macro-aggregates of total demand and total supply and a statistical average price level for all goods relative to a statistical average wage level for all workers in the economy. An equally fundamental error and misconception in the macro-aggregate approach is its failure to appreciate and focus on the real impact of changes in the money supply that by necessity result in an unsustainable deviation of prices, profits, and resources and labor uses from a properly balanced coordination, the end result of which is more of the very unemployment that the monetary stimulus was meant to cure.

It is this “Austrian”-based microeconomic dynamic process analysis that serves as the analytical framework in the context of which Murray Rothbard explained how the monetary policies of the U.S. Federal Reserve in the 1920s brought about the imbalances and distortions between savings and investment and misallocations of labor, capital and resources that meant that the economic “boom” before 1929 would result in the economic “bust” and depression of the early 1930s.

But Rothbard’s additional point, using the ideas first formulated by Mises and Hayek, was to show that it was the failure of the American government to allow competitive markets from fully operating without government interference that prevented and delayed an economic recovery that most likely would have happened sooner and without the high unemployment and falling output experienced during the 1930s.

Capitalism the Solution, Government the Stumbling Block

The capitalist system is a great engine of human prosperity. It creates the profit incentives for industry and innovation that just over the last quarter of a century has literally raised hundreds of millions of people out of poverty in what used to be called “the third world” of underdeveloped nations. The competitive process of supply and demand brings the productive activities of tens of thousands of businesses into balance with the demands of all of us as consumers, around the globe.

There is no economic system in all of history that has had the same ability to do so much material and cultural good as the open, competitive free market.  But the capitalist system cannot do its job if government interferes with its operation. Burdensome government taxes, heavy-handed government regulation, misguided government spending, and mismanagement of the monetary system only succeed in gumming up the works like so much sand in the machine.

The best pro-active policy that any government could follow once an economy has fallen into a recession would be to accept and admit that its own past monetary and fiscal policies had caused the economic crisis that is being experienced, and then leave the market alone to rebalance itself and reestablish the basis for sustainable growth and employment.

But, of course, this would require the reversal of the premises, presumptions and political plundering of the modern interventionist-welfare state, and its accompanying system of monetary central planning in the form of the U.S Federal Reserve. It would require a rejection of the collectivist ideological and policy perspectives that did and continue to dominate and direct all that governments do around the world.

However, in the meantime, Murray Rothbard’s insightful and historically important explanation of how government central banking and misguided interventionist policies caused and prolonged America’s Great Depression of the 1930s, now available with this volume in Chinese, offers an opportunity for the people of the world’s rising economic giant to better understand the dangers from trusting too much in the power of government to assure and maintain economic growth and stability. And it may help in better appreciating the importance of competitive free market institutions, even in the banking and financial sectors, to bring about long-run economic betterment for all in society.

About the author:
* Richard M. Ebeling is the BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel.

Source:
This article was published at the MISES Institute. This article is adapted from introduction to a recently published Chinese translation of Murray N. Rothbard’s America’s Great Depression, which is now available in the People’s Republic of China.)

Saudi Arabia’s King Salman met Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas at Al-Yamamah Palace in Riyadh on Wednesday.

During the meeting, the king reaffirmed Saudi Arabia’s longstanding support for the Palestinian cause, and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people to establish an independent state with East Jerusalem as its capital. The two leaders also explored the latest developments in the Palestinian territories.

On Thursday, the 193-member UN General Assembly will hold a rare emergency session, at the request of Arab and Muslim countries, to vote on a draft resolution that was vetoed by the US on Monday in the 15-member Security Council.

The other 14 council members voted in favor of the Egyptian-drafted resolution, which expressed “deep regret at recent decisions concerning the status of Jerusalem.”

Palestinian UN envoy Riyad Mansour said he expected “overwhelming support” for the measure stating that Jerusalem is an issue “to be resolved through negotiations” between Israel and the Palestinians.

“On self-determination I expect we’ll get the support of around 180 countries, on sovereignty the vote will be in the 160 area, and on Jerusalem I expect 170 countries will vote with us in opposition to the US veto,” he told Arab News.

By Jonathan Cook *

It is tempting to interpret the announcement this week of a delay until the new year in US vice-president Mike Pence’s visit to the Middle East as the ultimate travel warning. It follows an eruption of regional unrest over Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

During protests last Friday, Israeli occupation forces killed four Palestinians and injured more than 250.

US officials, however, are not worried about Pence’s safety. In fact, predictions of a third Palestinian uprising in response to Trump’s Jerusalem declaration may be premature.

After decades of flagrant US bias towards Israel, Trump has confirmed to Palestinians only what they already knew. Some even grudgingly welcomed his candor. They hope he has finally silenced US claims to being an “honest broker” in an interminable “peace process” that has simply bought time for Israel to entrench the occupation.

The Palestinians’ anger towards Israel and the US is a slow-burning fuse. It will detonate at a moment of their choosing, not of Trump’s.

Rather, the hesitation in Washington over the vice-president’s visit reflects the messy new diplomatic reality that the White House has unleashed.

Pence was due here to smooth the path to Trump’s long-promised peace plan and to highlight the plight of Christians in the Middle East. The door has now been firmly shut in his face on both counts. Palestinian officials have declared a boycott of him, as have Christian leaders in Palestine and Egypt.

Instead of cancelling Pence’s visit or exploiting the extra breathing space to try to reverse the damage, the bull-headed Trump administration has indicated it is eager to break more of the china.

Denied access to Palestinian officials, his schedule will focus on Israel. Following a diplomatic precedent set by his boss in May, Pence is due to visit the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s occupied Old City and immediately below the Al Aqsa mosque plaza.

His visit, however, has been billed as “official”, not private. And it will be invested with far graver symbolism, given Trump’s designation of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

To add insult to injury, and in contravention of claims that Washington will not pre-determine the borders of a divided Jerusalem before peace talks, an unnamed senior US official gave Pence’s visit an even more troubling context. He noted that there was no scenario in which the US did not see the Western Wall ending up in Israel’s hands.

The US policy change on Jerusalem has been a hammer blow to the three main pillars supporting the cause of Palestinian statehood: the Palestinian Authority, the European Union and the Arab states.

The biggest loser is Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas. Washington stripped him of his emperor’s clothes: he now heads a Palestinian government-in-waiting that is unlikely ever to be attached to a state, viable or otherwise.

The Arab states, which assumed they were the key to a much-touted “outside-in” strategy, creating a regional framework for peace, have been deprived of the single issue – Jerusalem – that matters most to them.

Egypt scrambled to help Abbas at the weekend by drafting a UN security resolution to rescind any change of status for Jerusalem. But an inevitable US veto made the move moot.

And Europe, which has played “good cop” to the bullying US one, has been exposed as complicit in its partner’s rogue behavior.

Europe’s predicament is underscored by its peace-making rhetoric. It has long cried wolf, warning that a moment would soon arrive when a two-state solution was no longer feasible, when a temporary occupation morphed into permanent apartheid.

Now that the heart of a Palestinian state has been publicly devoured by the wolf, what will Europe and Abbas do?

The signs are that they will pretend nothing has changed – if only out of fear of what might fill the void if peace-making were exposed as a hollow charade.

But it is precisely the pretense of a peace process that has kept Palestinians chained to an illusion. The perpetuation of false hope about statehood does not benefit Palestinians; it preserves a calm that aids Israel.

That was why the White House accused Abbas of walking away from dialogue last week. But only a fool keeps on appealing to the better nature of a deaf thug.

The burden now falls on the PA, the Arab states and Europe to accept the new reality, and assert a policy independent of the US.

Some Palestinian leaders, like Hanan Ashrawi, already understand this. “Trump’s move is a new era,” she said last week. “There’s no going back.”

Palestinian goals and strategies must be reassessed. Nonetheless, the pressures for a return to the “peace” business as usual will be intense.

Ordinary Palestinians in Jerusalem may be the first to signal the new direction of struggle – one that recognizes that a Palestinian state is dead and buried.

In recent years, growing numbers have started applying, as Israeli law entitles them to, for Israeli citizenship. Israel has twisted and turned to delay honoring its commitment, even as it calls Jerusalem its “united capital”.

Palestinians will have to shame Israel, the US and the watching world by adopting the tools of an anti-apartheid struggle – of non-violent resistance and civil disobedience – to gain equal rights in a single state.

At the moment, the undercurrents of Palestinian rage chiefly swirl below the surface. But they will rise in time, and the consequences of Trump’s deed will become all too apparent.

(A version of this article first appeared in the National, Abu Dhabi.)

* Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include “Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East” (Pluto Press) and “Disappearing Palestine: Israel’s Experiments in Human Despair” (Zed Books). He contributed this article to PalestineChronicle.com. Visit his website: www.jonathan-cook.net.

There is a Big Lie underlying the $1.5-trillion Trump/Republican Congressional tax bill. That lie — the kind that is so brazen its purveyors hope it will simply be accepted as truth — is that when corporations get their big tax break, they will pass much of it on to workers in the form of higher wages, and perhaps to consumers in the form of lower prices.

How do I know it’s a Big Lie?  Basic economics and history.

Let’s take care of the consumer economics argument first.  Prices in the US, at least in those parts of the economy that are still competitive, are based on the law of supply and demand. Anyone selling a product or service will charge a price that maximizes profits, and that price is determined by buyer demand. Up and down the chain from suppliers to manufacturers to distributors to retailers, this system works itself into the final product offered to consumers. At no point in that chain does management say, “Hey, we’re paying lower taxes this year. We should cut the price on our widgets and pass the benefits along.”  Why would they? They’ve already learned what customers are willing to pay for their widgets, and know the magic point where a higher price starts to reduce demand to the point that it is counter-productive, and they’ve also learned how much cutting the price will increase sales and where further cuts just mean selling the same number of widgets but at a lower price. And those two boundary points don’t change just because taxes — a cost of doing business — get lower. Far better to pocket that extra money for the benefit of management or for the shareholders.

But what about wages?  There’s this faery tale being told by Republicans and by President Trump (a businessman known for being tight-assed when it comes to paying staff, and even for stiffing people whenever possible, besides for grabbing pussy when available) that if businesses got a big tax break, they’d use at least some of it to offer their employees higher wages.

Does anyone really believe that? If that were the case, why would the corporate world and outfits like the US Chamber of Commerce be fighting tooth and nail as they have been against every effort in cities and states across the country, and in Congress, to raise in the pathetic $7.25/hour minimum wage (a wage that has not gone up since back in 2009 at the depths of the Great Recession!)? The truth is corporate America loves the starvation level of the minimum wage because they use various taxpayer-funded welfare programs — Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Food Stamps, WIC and the like — to actually subsidize their workforce for them so they don’t need to offer workers a living wage.

But more importantly, if corporate managers and owners really cared about the shamelessly low wages paid to their workers, why would they for the last several decades have been aggressively lobbying to get the federal government to weaken labor laws as they have done so they could essentially crush the US labor movement, which today represents only 6.4% of private sector workers. That unionization rate compares to 35% of workers back in the mid-1950s, at a time when most union jobs were in the private sector — and when blue-collar workers were entering the middle class in droves. Now most remaining union jobs are in the public sector — federal, state and municipal — where the rate of unionization is still 34.4%.  But public sector workers comprise such a small group over all that when combined, the unionization rate of all US workers in 2016 was a record low 10.7%, representing in total 14.6 million workers. And that is a smaller actual number of unionized workers than the number in 1983, the first year comparable data to today’s count was available, when a total of 17.7 million workers were in a union. But note that the total US population today is 27% greater than it was 35 years ago.

A 50-year uninterrupted year-on-year decline in unionization has been proceeding, by the way, despite polls that have consistently shown that most workers, when asked, say they would like to have a union representing them if they could get one. Despite generally negative media coverage of labor unions, even today according to the Gallup organization, 61 percent of Americans say they are in favor of labor unions, compared to 33% who oppose them. Clearly, if  federal and state labor laws were not stacked against workers, who today (thanks to the efforts of both Republicans and Democrats in Congress and statehouses) can easily be fired for union organizing activity with no serious penalties on employers for doing so, unionization rates among American workers would be vastly higher than they are.

Trump, in his Monday speech outlining his National Security Strategy, claimed that his election had returned the governance of America to “the people,” and that it would now be acting in their interest. If that were so, a Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research poll conducted this year which found 54% of workers saying that if they could have a union in their workplace they would want to have one argues he and his Congressional lickspittles should be calling for labor law reform to make it easier to form a union and harder for employers to block organizing or to refuse to bargain.

Unions in the US, while they do engage in politics, exist primarily for one reason: to give workers bargaining power so they can get the boss to pay them better wages. Of course they defend workers against harassment on the job, fight for workplace safety and better working conditions too, but the big thing is using collective power to force employers to part with some of their profits to pay them better.  And that is precisely why capitalists hate unions.

I laughed out loud when I was listening to a report on NPR’s breezy “Marketplace” program host Kai Ryssdal did a piece on the “mystery” of why essentially “full employment” in the US was not leading to a rise in wages. The always cheery Ryssdal said that outgoing Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen and her colleagues professed themselves “puzzled” at this situation.

Really? Why the mystery? If a significant percentage of the workforce no longer are in unions, where is the impetus to compel greedy capitalists to part with any of their record profits to raise wages? The mystery is why anyone would believe that Yellen and her colleagues are genuinely mystified.

And yet, I challenge anyone to find a serious discussion of this in the corporate media, where nobody is pointing out the reality that at no time in history have capitalists willingly parted with any of their profits to raise worker compensation unless forced to by worker demands, and nobody is pointing out that the claim that “tax cuts pay for themselves” was already tried and exposed as a fraud during the Reagan administration when it was known as “supply-side theory.”

So back to the Big Lie in the 2018 Tax Bill.

There is going to be no gain in wages as a result of passage of this outrage of a tax “reform” bill. And that means it’s really all just a big wet-kiss transfer of public funds to the rich and one which, far from “paying for itself through new economic growth” as the Trump claim goes, will just end up adding another $1.5 trillion to the federal deficit, while further widening the nation’s unprecedented income chasm.

The Middle East being the Middle East, everything is interrelated. What happens in the region impacts Yemen and what happens in Yemen impacts the region. The crisis in Yemen, like many conflicts in the Middle East, did not originate with the power struggle between Saudi Arabia and Iran, but inevitably get sucked into it.

Yemen was a Saudi problem long before it took on the mantle of a Saudi-Iranian proxy war and it may be the conflict that is most important and most sensitive for the kingdom. It also may be the proxy war that comes to haunt Saudi Arabia the most. Beyond cross-border tribal relationships, Yemen, a devastated country where recovery and reconstruction is certain to be a slow process, is likely to have a next generation that will be deeply resentful of Saudi Arabia with all the political and security implications that go with that.

More immediately, two recent factors stick out that potentially have significant geopolitical consequences. First, the recent meeting between the crown princes of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, Mohammed bin Salman and Mohammed bin Zayed, with leaders of Yemen’s Islamist Islah party in the wake of the killing of former Yemeni president Ali Abdullah Saleh.  The presence of Mohammed bin Salman at the meeting was far less remarkable than that of Mohammed bin Zayed and it is not clear what it means. It is Mohammed bin Zayed rather than Mohammed bin Salman who is truly uncomfortable with any expression of political Islam and certainly with any link to the Muslim Brotherhood. Islah remains an Islamist party even if it announced in 2013 that it had cut its ties to the Brotherhood.

The question is whether Mohammed bin Zayed, who for the almost three years of the Yemen war opposed Saudi cooperation with Islah, sees an alliance with the party as an opportunistic one-off move or whether it signals a shift in policy that could be repeated elsewhere in the Middle East. If so, that would have consequences for the dispute with Qatar and there is no sign of that. In fact, Saudi Arabia signalled days after the meeting that there was likely to be no quick end to the dispute with Qatar by declaring its closed border crossing with the Gulf state permanently shut. Similarly, recent satellite pictures show that the UAE air force is gearing up for greater military engagement against Islamists in Libya. As a result, the significance of the meeting is likely to be limited to Yemen.

Nonetheless, the way the meeting was arranged is significant and tells a story that goes far beyond Yemen. The crown princes sent a private plane to Istanbul to pick up the Islah party representatives from an Islamic summit called to discuss US President Donald J. Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. It was a summit the two men decided not to attend and at which they were represented by lower officials. The message was: Jerusalem and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was not their priority and their opposition to Mr. Trump’s move was skin deep. Their priority was the war in Yemen and the larger regional battle with Iran for dominance of the region.

In some ways, Saudi Arabia and the UAE’s risky strategy has already backfired. It has given the Brotherhood, violently suppressed in Egypt, outlawed in much of the Gulf and marginalized elsewhere in the region, a new lease on life. Mr. Trump’s decision offered the Brotherhood an issue to rally around in an Arab world intimidated and cowed by the violence, repression, insurgencies and civil wars that have characterized it since the 2011 popular Arab revolts that toppled the leaders of Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and Yemen.

With a long history of opposition to a US-mediated Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the Brotherhood has emerged in the front lines of many of the protests against the president’s recognition of Jerusalem. Muslim Brothers organized the biggest popular protest in Jordan in a decade and demanded the closure of the Israeli embassy in Amman. Beyond leading demonstrations in Kuwait, Brother members of parliament called on the government to review its ties with Washington and disinvest from the United States.

Mr. Trump’s move has also strengthened Brotherhood offshoots like Hamas, the Islamist group that controls the Gaza Strip. Confronted with protests against its inability to break a crippling, economic stranglehold by Egypt, Israel and the Palestine Authority that starved the Strip of electricity and forced government workers to go unpaid for months, Hamas was forced by the UAE and Egypt to enter into a reconciliation agreement with Palestinian President Mahmoud’s Abbas’ Al Fatah movement and entertain an independent governance position for powerful but controversial, Abu Dhabi-backed former Palestinian security chieftain Mohammed Dahlan.

The second factor are Houth ballistic missile strikes, including the firing in November of a projectile at the international airport of the Saudi capital Riyadh, subsequent claims and denials of a Houthi missile fired towards the UAE, the December 2017 targeting of the Al Yamama palace of the Saudi royal court as King Salman and Prince Mohammed were chairing a meeting of the kingdom’s leaders, and the Houthi threat of further attacks. A Saudi military spokesman said the kingdom had intercepted 83 ballistic missiles since the Yemen war started almost three years ago.

There is little doubt that the Saudi-UAE intervention in Yemen has fortified ties between the Houthis and Iran. Yet the recent theatrical display of Houthi missile parts and other weaponry that was made possible by Saudi Arabia and the UAE left their provenance in doubt. There was no smoking gun that established beyond doubt that Iran could be held responsible for the missile strikes. The missiles and other items could well have originated in Iran, they could also have come from elsewhere. Whether supplied by Iran or not, United Nations monitors reported to the Security Council that remnants of ballistic missiles launched into Saudi Arabia by Houthi rebels appeared to have been designed and produced by Iran.

Iran insisted that it had not supplied the missiles, but said it would continue to support the Houthis and other “resistance forces” in the region. “Victory in Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen will continue as long as the resistance coalition defends its achievements. And as long as necessary, we will have a presence in these countries… We must assist these countries and establish a barrier against the American influence,” said Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior aide to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and former foreign minister.

Mr. Velayati’s remarks appeared to contradict Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s denial that Iran had a military presence in Yemen and was assisting the Houthis. So did an earlier admission by Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps commander Mohammad Ali Jafari that Iran was providing the Houthis with “advisory military assistance,” the phrase the Islamic republic used for its support of militias in Syria and Iraq.

Evidence of Iranian military support for the Houthis has been mounting. The Australian government released in January pictures of anti-armour weapons that were seized off the Yemeni coast and had been manufactured in Iran. A report in late 2016 by Conflict Armament Research concluded that a weapons pipeline extended from Iran to Yemen as well as Somalia that involved “transfer, by dhow, of significant quantities of Iranian-manufactured weapons and weapons that plausibly derive from Iranian stockpiles.”

The Houthis, a fiercely independent actor have, irrespective of the degree of Iranian support, repeatedly demonstrated, however, that they do not take orders from Tehran and at times ignore its advice. Iran opposed the Houthi move on the Yemeni capital of Sana’a to no avail and was against a Houthi advance in the south. The Houthis could well against Iran’s will throw another monkey wrench into the fragile Middle East mix if they continue to target Saudi and/or Emirati cities. The attacks would ultimately elicit a harsh response. The question is who would respond and what would the target be.

The answer seems at first glance obvious. It would be a Saudi and/or UAE response and the target would be the Houthis in Yemen. The deployment of a new, American-trained and supplied Saudi National Guard helicopter unit to the kingdom’s border with Yemen suggests an escalation of the Saudi-UAE campaign. The Pentagon said 36 AH-64E Apaches, 36 AH-6i Little Birds, and 72 Sikorsky UH-60M Blackhawks bought from the US at a cost of $25 billion would be used to protect Saudi Arabia’s borders and oil infrastructure. The deployment constitutes the first expansion of the Guard’s mission beyond protecting the ruling Al Saudi family, guarding oil facilities, and providing security for the holy cities of Mecca and Medina since Prince Mutaib bin Abdullah, a son of former King Abdullah, was relieved of his command of the Guard in November and detained  by Prince Mohammed on corruption charges alongside other princes, senior officials and prominent businessmen.

The retaliatory target could, however, also be Iran and the response could be one in which the United States participates. The implications of such an escalation could be massive. “An Iranian missile fired at Riyadh sheds light on an important bottom line dynamic in the region: the Saudis have a far superior air force, defence system and navy than the Iranians. They have a better equipped military intelligence apparatus and far superior munitions… (Iran) has been wreaking havoc in the Middle East on its own terms and drawing on its own strengths. It must realise that such recklessness could cause its regional adversaries to draw on their competitive advantages,” said Middle East analyst Mohammed Alyahya.

A broader regional military altercation would occur at a moment that emotions are raw in the wake of Mr. Trump’s decision on Jerusalem and because protesters are already on the streets of various Middle Eastern cities. A strike against Iran involving the United States could turn fury about Mr. Trump’s Jerusalem decision against Arab leaders who would be seen to be cooperating with the United States and willing to sacrifice Palestinian rights to work with Israel. Soccer fans in Algiers who were protesting against the decision recently provoked Saudi Arabia’s ire by carrying placards depicting Mr. Trump and Saudi King Salman as two sides of the same coin. While the protests in recent week were primarily directed against the United States and Israel, they often had an undertone of criticism of Arab regimes that were seen to be meek in their response to Mr. Trump’s decision or in cahoots with the United States.

Ironically, differences among Arab leaders about how to respond to Trump’s Jerusalem decision may have temporarily prevented the Saudi Crown Prince from adding Palestine to a string of failed foreign policy moves aimed at escalating the kingdom’s proxy war with Iran. Prince Mohammed’s devastating intervention in Yemen, botched effort to force Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri to resign, and hamstrung boycott of Qatar have backfired and only strengthened the Islamic republic’s regional influence.

Inadvertently, Palestinian President Abbas and Jordanian King Abdullah did Prince Mohammed a favour when they reportedly rejected pressure by the prince not to participate in the summit of Islamic countries in Istanbul. Mr. Abbas may have further shielded the Saudi leader when his refusal to further accept the United States as a mediator was adopted by the summit.

The two leaders’ stand, coupled with the summit’s rejection of Trump’s move, make it more difficult for Saudi Arabia and the UAE to endorse any resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict that does not recognize East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. The problem is that the Saudi and UAE crown princes run the risk of misreading or underestimating public anger and frustration in significant parts of the Arab and Muslim world.

The Saudi crown prince responded to the two leaders’ defiance by briefly arresting billionaire Jordanian Palestinians businessman Sabih al-Masri, who also has Saudi citizenship. “The Saudi detention of Masri was a crude but brutal political message to…King Abdullah and…President Mahmoud Abbas on how to behave on the Jerusalem issue and regional alignments. Riyadh wanted to signal to the Jordanian and Palestinian leaderships that it could swiftly cripple their economies and trigger existential crises in which banks would suffer terminal runs, the governments would fail to pay their employees, and the economies would sputter to a halt,” said Middle East scholar and analyst Rami G. Khouri.

Disagreement in the Arab world over how to respond to Mr. Trump’s Jerusalem decision and Mr. Abbas’ defiance has taken on even larger significance with the battle over a United Nations General Assembly vote on the issue. Mr. Abbas instructed his diplomatic representatives to ensure the passing of a resolution that condemns the US move despite a US threat to cut off aid to countries that vote in favour and at the risk of the Trump administration deciding to close the office of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) in Washington.

How Saudi Arabia and the UAE vote could impact relations with the United States and the degree to which they are sensitive to criticism of their conduct of the Yemen war, if they vote in favour of the resolution and Mr. Trump acts on his threat. In another indication of Saudi and UAE priorities, Bahraini Foreign Minister Khaled Ben Ahmed hinted at the Gulf states abstaining in the UN vote in a move that likely would contradict public opinion, Mr. Ben Ahmed, referring to Iran, tweeted that “it’s not helpful to pick a fight with the USA over side issues while we together fight the clear and present danger of The Theo-Fascist Islamic republic.”

Saudi, UAE and Bahraini willingness to break with a long-standing consensus in the Arab and Muslim world would have likely been strengthened with the publication of Mr. Trump’s national security strategy that, like Saudi Arabia and the UAE, prioritizes combating “jihadist terrorists;” preventing the domination of “any power hostile to the United States,” an apparent reference to Iran and Iranian-backed proxies; and ensuring “a stable global energy market.”

The link between Israeli-Palestinian peace making and Iran, and by extension Yemen, is, moreover, likely to become undeniable when Mr. Trump next month must decide whether to uphold the 2015 international agreement with Iran that put severe restrictions on its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of sanctions.

Under US law, Mr. Trump has to certify Iranian compliance every three months. In October, Mr. Trump refused to do so. He threatened to pull out of the agreement if Congress failed to address the accord’s perceived shortcomings within 60 days. Congress has refrained from acting on Mr. Trump’s demand that Congress ensure that Iranian compliance involves accepting restrictions on its ballistic missile program that is primarily designed to counter perceived US and Israeli threats, and support of regional proxies. A study by the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) concluded that to counter challenges posed by regional insurgencies, failing states and extremism, Iran was likely to expand its weapons acquisition program to include surface- and air-to-air missiles, advanced fighter aircraft, tanks, advanced mines, and anti-ship cruise missiles.

Concern that proxies that fought in Syria could turn their attention to Yemen was enhanced by Ali-Reza Tavasol, a founder of the 20,000 man-strong  Fatemiyoun Division, an Iranian-led Afghan Shiite militia group. “Our war is an ideological war and does not recognize geography and borders. Anywhere oppressed people need help, we will be present there and assist them,” Mr. Tavasol said. Mr, Tavasol’s statement echoed earlier remarks by Ismail Ghani, the deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force, who asserted that Fatemiyoun fighters did “not recognize borders to defend Islamic values.” Afghan officials alleged that some Fatemiyoun fighters has already been dispatched to Yemen.

At the end of the day, the Saudi-Iranian rivalry is being fought on the back of the Yemenis who are paying a horrendous price. That is unlikely to change as long as Saudi Arabia sees its struggle with Iran as an existential battle. And to be fair to the Saudis, they have good reason to perceive Iran as an existential threat. Not because Iran engages in asymmetric warfare by using proxies, supporting groups like the Houthis or propping up the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

But because post 1979-Iran, even if t were to only sit back and do nothing, poses an existential threat in much the same way that the popular Arab revolts of 2011 posed an existential threat. Iran experienced, alongside Russia, the 20^th’s century only true revolution in which a regime and a political system was overthrown. It was a revolution that toppled a monarch and an icon of the United States. It was a revolution that introduced an Islamic system of governance that has whatever limited degree of popular sovereignty. That is the threat, it constitutes an alternative to an absolute monarchy that claims religious legitimacy and is seeking to ensure its survival.

And if that were not enough, Iran is one of three Middle Eastern nations, that, irrespective of what state of disrepair they may be in, have the building blocks to be regional powers. The other two are Turkey and Egypt. They have large populations, huge domestic markets, battle-hardened militaries, an industrial base, highly educated populations, geography and a deep sense of identity rooted in empire and/or thousands of years of history. Saudi Arabia has money and Mecca.

If Saudi Arabia and the UAE learnt a lesson during the era of US President Barak Obama, it is that nothing is permanent and that countries need to assert themselves. Yemen is an expression of that lesson. Mr. Trump has given the kingdom and the emirates the umbrella they needed. Saudi regional power is to a large extent dependent on an Iran that is hampered by US-led efforts to contain it. Again, to be fair, the UAE has been better than the Saudis at exploiting the opportunity.

Saudi Arabia has so far ended up with mud in its face. The war in Yemen is backfiring and threatens to create even bigger challenges in the longer term. In a toughening of US criticism of the kingdom’s conduct of the war, Mr. Trump’s nominee for the post of the State Department’s legal counsel, Jennifer Newstead, suggested that Saudi Arabia could be violating U.S. and international law by restricting the flow of humanitarian aid in Yemen. British international development secretary Penny Mordaunt issued a similar warning.  A determination that the kingdom is in violation would, amid widespread international criticism of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen sparked by Saudi military action, put at risk US support for the intervention, involving US assistance in mid-air refuelling of Saudi and Emirati fighter planes, the provision of precision-guided munitions, and the sharing of intelligence.

Moreover, with dissent repressed, it is difficult to gauge what public opinion in the kingdom is. Prince Mohammed has so far delivered long-overdue social changes but has yet to deliver on his economic reform plans. There is good reason to question the degree to which he will be able to deliver, not only because there are legitimate questions about his plans but also because of the way he has gone about implementing them. The recent arrests of scores prominent Saudis under the mum of an anti-corruption campaign and the financial settlements being negotiated for their release raises questions about what kind of checks and balances a new Saudi Arabia would offer and defy the principle of the rule of law.

No doubt, Prince Mohammed is an enormously popular figure. The problem is that he has created enormous expectations that have not been managed. Moreover, 40 years of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism rooted in a history of at least 200 years of ultra-conservative thought cannot be erased with the stroke of a pen. Prince Mohammed’s social changes are as popular as they are controversial.

In a recent survey, young Saudis said they wanted change: they wanted to date women, they wanted to party, they wanted to drive fast cars, and, yes, they wanted good paying jobs. When asked whether they realized that those same rights would apply to their sisters, they pulled back. In a recent illustration of contradictory attitudes, a Saudi beauty queen withdrew from a Miss Arab World contest after being attacked and threatened online. Similarly, Saudis want jobs but are unprepared for a merit-driven labour market rather than one that offers cushy government jobs.

The long and short of all of this is that the war in Yemen cannot be seen independent of the convulsions of change that have enveloped the Middle East in a convoluted and often violent process with no end in sight. The wars in Syria and Iraq are dying down. Yet, without policies that ensure that all groups in society feel that they have a stake in society, the seeds for renewed conflict are being sown. The same is ultimately also true for Yemen. Whatever one thinks of Mr. Obama, he got it right when he told journalist Jeffrey Goldberg that Saudi Arabia will have to learn to share the Middle East with Iran.

Based on remarks at a 19 December 2017 NUS Middle East Institute seminar