By Anvar Mammadov

The World Bank (WB) continues to develop the concept of the third phase of the Azerbaijan Rural Investment Project (AzRIP-3) project, a source in the WB’s Baku office told Trend.

According to the source, presently, the loan amount is being discussed.

“There are several options on the agenda,” the office said. “One of those options implies the allocation of a loan worth $90 million, but this amount may be changed.”

Earlier, Naveed Hassan Naqvi, head of WB Baku office, told Trend that the bank hopes to complete the concept development in early 2018. The amount of the loan will also determine the scope of the project and the Azerbaijani districts it will cover.

Naqvi noted that the cost of the AzRIP-3 could be about $50-100 million.

Implementation of the second phase of the agricultural investment project in Azerbaijan started in 2012. The project’s cost is $53.6 million, and additional $50 million were allocated in 2014 as part of additional financing.

This project was created on the basis of results of the first phase, which increased the income of 600,000 farmers, improved irrigation services for 700,000 people. The project covers five main zones – Shirvan Plain, Mugan-Salyan, Nakhchivan, northern and northwestern zones.

Azerbaijan joined the World Bank Group in 1992.

Now that Trump has been president for almost a year, it’s time the media called his behavior for what it is rather than try to normalize it. Here are the six most misleading media euphemisms for conduct unbecoming a president:

1. Calling Trump’s tweets “presidential “statements” or “press releases.” “The President is the President of the United States, so they’re considered official statements by the President of the United States,” Trump’s first press secretary, Sean Spicer, said last June when asked during his daily briefing how his tweets should be characterized

Wrong. Trump’s tweets are mostly rants off the top of his head – many of them wild, inconsistent, rude, crude, and bizarre.

Normal presidential statements are products of careful thought. Advisers weigh in. Consequences are considered. Alternatives are deliberated. Which is why such statements are considered important indicators of public policy, domestically and internationally.

Trump’s tweet storms are relevant only to judging his mood on a particular day at a particular time.

2. Referring to Mar-A-Lago as “the Winter White House.” The White House says the term is accurate because Trump does official business from there, and, besides, Mar-A-Lago’s former owner wanted the Palm Beach estate to become a presidential retreat.

Rubbish. Unlike the White House and Camp David, the traditional presidential retreat, both of which are owned by taxpayers, Mar-a-Lago is a profit-making business owned by Trump.

The White House is open for public tours; Mar-a-Lago is open only to members who can pay $200,000 to join.

Mar-a-Lago, along with the other Trump resort properties that he visits regularly, constitute a massive conflict of interest. Every visit promotes the Trump resort brand, adding directly to Trump’s wealth.

Normal presidents don’t make money off the presidency. Trump does. His resorts should be called what they are – Trump’s businesses.

3. Calling his lies “false claims” or “comments that have proved to be inaccurate.” Baloney. They’re lies, plain and simple.

Early last year the Wall Street Journal’s editor-in-chief insisted that the Journal wouldn’t label Trump’s false statements as “lies.” Lying, said the editor, requires a deliberate intention to mislead, which couldn’t be proven in Trump’s case.

Last fall, NPR’s then news director, Michael Oreskes defended NPR’s refusal to use the term “liar” when describing Trump, explaining that the word constitutes “an angry tone” of “editorializing” that “confirms opinions.”

In January, Maggie Haberman, a leading Times’ political reporter, claimed that her job was “showing when something untrue is said. Our job is not to say ‘lied.’”

Wrong. Normal presidents may exaggerate; some occasionally lie. But Trump has taken lying to an entirely new level. He lies like other people breath. Almost nothing that comes out of his mouth can assumed to be true.

For Trump, lying is part of his overall strategy, his MO, and his pathology. Not to call them lies, or to deem him a liar, is itself misleading.

4. Referring to Trump’s and his aide’s possible “cooperation” or “coordination” with Russia in the 2016 presidential campaign.

This won’t due. “Cooperation” and “coordination” sound as if Trump and his campaign assistants were merely being polite to the Russians, engaged in a kind of innocent parallel play.

But nothing about what we’ve seen and heard so far suggests politeness or innocence. “Collusion” is the proper word, suggesting complicity in a conspiracy.

If true – if Trump or his aides did collude with the Russians to throw the election his way –  they were engaged in treason, another important word that rarely appears in news reports.

5. Calling Trump’s and Paul Ryan’s next move “welfare reform,” as in “Trump has suggested more than once that welfare reform might be the next big legislative item on his agenda.”

Rubbish. They’re not going after “welfare.” Welfare – federal public assistance to the poor – was gutted in 1996. Trump and Ryan are aiming at Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

Nor are they seeking to “reform” these programs. They want to cut them in order to pay for the huge tax cut they’ve given corporations and the wealthy. “We’re going to have to get back next year at entitlement reform,” Ryan said recently, “which is how you tackle the debt and the deficit.”

So call it what it is: Planned cuts in Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.

6. Describing Trump’s comments as “racially charged.” “Racially charged” sounds like Trump doesn’t intend them to be racist but some people hear them that way. Rubbish.

Trump’s recent harangue against immigrants from “shitholes” in Latin America and Africa comes only weeks after The New York Timesreported that at another Oval Office meeting Trump said Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS” and that Nigerians who visit the US would never “go back to their huts.”

This is the man who built his political career on the racist lie that Barack Obama was born in Africa, who launched his presidential campaign with racist comments about Mexican immigrants, who saw “fine people on both sides” in the Charlottesville march of white supremacists, and who attacked African-American football players for being “unpatriotic” because they kneeled during the National Anthem to protest police discrimination.

This is the same man who in 1989 took out full page ads in New York newspapers demanding the return of the death penalty so it could be applied to five black and Latino teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park – and who still refuses to admit his error even though they were exonerated by DNA evidence.

Stop using terms like “racially charged” to describe his statements. Face it. Trump is a racist, and his comments are racist.

Words matter. It’s important to describe Trump accurately. Every American must understand who we have as president.

Two days ago, a St. Petersburg court agreed to requests from prosecutors and banned the Inter-Regional Trade Union, the Worker Association, which unites employees in 16 automobile factories and their subsidiaries in 40 regions. The ostensible reason given was that the Union has been found to be “’a foreign agent.’”

This represents, Irkutsk journalist Valentina Serova says, the beginning “again” of a Moscow effort to “prohibit trade unions.” Indeed, she suggests, labor unions elsewhere most of which are smaller and only at the first stages of organizing are “hanging by a hair” and may soon be closed as well (babr24.com/?IDE=169467).

It is true that the union gathered signatures to change certain Russian laws, and it is also true, Serova says, that it protested the mistreatment of workers including the failure of firms to pay wages on a timely basis or abide by workplace rules. But it is not the case that it ever hid its links to the international labor movement.

There are currently more than 28,000 unions in Russia of varying size and importance, but all are at risk of being charged with crimes that will allow the authorities to close them down at will, Serova says.

Many say, she points out, that “we are returning to the pre-war years with searches for ‘enemies of the people,’ opposing ‘the treacherous plans of the West,’ and all-people vigilance to identify its agents.” All these things are true, Serova continues; but in fact, the situation is even worse: Russia under Putin is returning to the pre-Soviet past as well.

Banning trade unions as the tsars did is one sign of this, but there are many others, she says.argues. “It is hardly surprising that this is the case especially after we found out about the creation of an all-powerful and all-embracing de facto personal guard of ‘the first person of the country” and “the whitewashing” of dictators like Ivan the Terrible.

The only thing that may surprise, Serova concludes, is that this didn’t happen in 2011-2012 when Putin made his turn to real authoritarianism. But that is the way things apparently are fated to work in Russia today.

By Sven Milekic

China’s Road and Bridge Corporation will build the controversial Peljesac Bridge in southern Croatia, designed to link Dubrovnik to the rest of the country and bypass the Bosnian coast, it was announced on Friday.

Croatia’s state roads company, Croatian Roads, announced on Friday that the China Road and Bridge Corporation is to build the Peljesac Bridge, the biggest infrastructural project in the country.

The offer from the Chinese state-owned construction company was cheaper than that of Austria’s Strabag – 279 million euros in comparison to 351 million euros.

An Italian-Turkish consortium also competed for the tender but was rejected due to an invalid bank guarantee.

The tender was opened in last September and companies had four months to present their offers.

The bridge connecting the Croatian coast with the southern Peljesac peninsula is important because it bypasses a short strip of the Bosnian coast that interrupts the continuity of Croatian and EU territory.

For this reason, the European Commission last June offered to supply up to 85 per cent of funds for construction of the bridge.

Bosnian politicians have often opposed the bridge project, claiming it will limit larger ships from coming to the Bosnian port of Neum.

China has made few big investments in Croatia so far, but Chinese companies are becoming more and more present in the rest of the Balkans.

A report by Britain’s House of Lords on UK ties to the Western Balkans published on Wednesday noted increased Chinese investments in the region.

Most Americans recognize that while the American Founders established a constitutionally limited government of enumerated powers, twenty-first century American government has expanded well beyond the boundaries our Founders designed. Some are unhappy about this; others believe it is entirely appropriate, thinking that our advanced post-industrial society needs much more government involvement than the mostly-agrarian nation did when it was founded.

Regardless of whether one favors or opposes the massive expansion in the size and scope of government, the reason government has been able to escape the bounds of the constitutional constraints designed by the Founders is the acceptance of the ideology of Progressive Democracy.

Progressivism says that one role of government is to further people’s economic well-being, even if it imposes costs on some for the benefit of others, while Democracy validates the actions of government by asserting that it is carrying out the will of the people as revealed through the democratic political process.

The role of government, as the Founders saw it, was to protect the rights of individuals. The Declaration of Independence is, in large part, a list of grievances against the King of England. The Founders said that because the King has violated their rights, they have the right to establish their own government to protect their rights. The Declaration of Independence also shows that the Founders viewed government as the biggest threat to their rights, which is why they created a government of limited and enumerated powers.

The ideology of Progressivism views the role of government not only as protecting people’s rights but also looking out for their economic well-being. The Progressive movement, begun in the late 1800s, was a reaction against the industrializing economy that had produced a few individuals with substantial wealth and economic power. Progressivism was designed to protect the economic interests of farmers, small shopkeepers, and others with limited economic power from being exploited by those with concentrated economic power.

While the Progressive ideology views one role of government as looking out for people’s economic well-being, it also was explicitly redistributive from its beginning. Its intention was to improve the economic well-being of some people by imposing costs on others. When the Progressive movement began, those others who would bear the cost were the industrialists, financiers, and others with concentrated economic power.

Twenty-first century Progressivism is even more redistributive, with its progressive income taxation and welfare programs to help the poor, the elderly, farmers, and others who have sufficient political power to get government to design government programs for their benefit.

When nineteenth-century Progressivism was designed to impose costs on some, the thought was that those who bore the costs should bear them because they were unfairly using their economic power to take advantage of others. Twenty-first century Progressivism imposes costs on some not necessarily because they deserve to bear them, but just because that is how government finances the benefits it gives to others.

Progressivism embraces the idea that the general welfare can be improved by imposing costs on some for the benefit of others.

The ideology of Democracy combines with the ideology of Progressivism to foster the expansion of government. One way to think about democracy is that it is a method of choosing who exercises the powers of government. The twenty-first century ideology of Democracy goes beyond that, and views the role of government as carrying out the will of the people, as revealed through democratic elections. The ideology of Democracy legitimizes the actions of democratic government by validating them as being approved by the people.

The ideology of Progressivism authorizes government to benefit some at the expense of others. The ideology of Democracy asserts that when the government does this, it is carrying out the will of the people. as revealed through the democratic process.

Thus, the ideology of Progressive Democracy has displaced the classical liberal ideology of constitutionally limited government envisioned by America’s Founders, which has allowed the massive expansion in the size and scope of government.

This article was published by The Beacon.

By Samuel Pence

After nearly four years of famine, displacement, and economic disintegration, the civil war in South Sudan remains one of the world’s most vexing geopolitical quandaries. Sparked by a 2013 political dispute between President Salva Kiir and his deputy, Riek Machar, the crisis has since taken on the explosive overtones of ethnic tribalism to morph into a contest between Dinka-dominated government forces and a range of increasingly fragmented ethnic militias. To date, over 60,000 lives have been claimed by the war while four million have been displaced by fighting and famine. Meanwhile, half of those displaced have spilled over South Sudan’s borders into neighboring Uganda, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Sudan, threatening further regional strife. In the wake of the failed 2015 Agreement on the Resolution of the Conflict in the Republic of South Sudan (ARCSS), and in the face of deepening refugee and food security crises, it’s clear that future peacemaking efforts must draw upon the influence of regional and international actors while incorporating incentives for all sides of the conflict to come to the table in search of nonviolent solutions.

According to Payton Knopf of the United States Institute of Peace, there are currently five civil wars unfolding within South Sudan’s broader conflict: (1) a war of resistance against President Kiir’s regime in Juba by the population of the surrounding Greater Equatoria region; (2) a land contest between the Dinka and the Shilluk in the Upper Nile; (3) an intra-Nuer war in Unity State; (4) a drive to establish Dinka primacy in Greater Bahr el Ghazal; and (5) diversionary “crises of convenience” in Lakes and Jonglei that have been exploited by Kiir and his allies. Such varied and widespread conflict, which includes the destruction or takeover of key infrastructure elements, has sent South Sudan into an economic spiral, with hyperinflation, a weak exchange rate, and soaring food prices dimming an already bleak humanitarian picture. Stripped of more conventional means of livelihood, many South Sudanese have turned to petty theft or gang activity to survive. Yet despite a surge in crime, law enforcement salaries have all but ground to a halt, setting off a vicious cycle. Without strong financial incentives for officers to enforce the rule of law – and often without the necessary equipment or fuel needed to do so – a vital civic institution has been compromised, promising a further cascade of criminal activity and fewer means of combating it.

A similarly vicious cycle has emerged in the realm of humanitarian aid. As the most vulnerable areas of the country have been thrown into varying states of lawlessness, humanitarian organizations have begun to reconsider operations in parts of South Sudan. This has been especially true following incidents of violence against aid workers, the most notable of which involved the death of three World Food Programme porters in April 2017. Without the aid and protection provided by such groups, those in the most devastated parts of the country have suffered increasing human rights abuses.

The delivery of consistent and comprehensive aid has also been complicated by the splintering of opposition forces. The World Food Programme’s convoys to the city of Yambio, which once lasted two days but now require 13 separate permissions from armed groups along the route from North Sudan, provide a window into such difficulties.

Meanwhile, a host of competing or inconsistent interests outside of South Sudan have only prolonged the conflict. Some, such as Ugandan president Yoweri Musevni, have sought to profit from the fighting by supplying troops, arms, and other forms of aid to government forces in Juba. Others, including most east African leaders, have called for a recommitment to 2015’s ARCSS peace accord, urging all warring parties to come to the table. Yet many Western donors have frozen their support for the peace process, and a December 2017 ceasefire sponsored by the regional Intergovernmental Authority on Development has been repeatedly violated. For the foreseeable future, while facing little external consensus or pressure, President Kiir’s forces can be expected to continue making significant strides on the battlefield, leaving little incentive to seek peace.

The way forward

While many paths to peace have been suggested, experts caution against some of the most popular strategies. One common appeal involves the holding of general elections this year, a provision contained in 2015’s ARCSS. Such an election would likely end in failure, considering that key metrics of the ARCSS that would ensure the proper institutional foundations required to conduct democratic elections have not been met. Moreover, an election held in South Sudan’s current political climate would almost certainly emerge as a fresh channel of conflict, widening the chasm between the country’s warring factions. A second option calls for the establishment of a “hybrid court,” another ARCSS proviso, in order to investigate and prosecute those involved in the war’s human rights violations. Yet considering that those guilty of war crimes stand to benefit more from victory, entrenchment, or hiding rather than from a cease-fire, the pursuit of justice at this stage of the conflict is seen by most observers as a counterproductive one.

Beyond those already mentioned, a variety of factors currently stand in the way of a successful domestic peacemaking process, or National Dialogue. Most significantly, insufficient trust between the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) – headed by President Kiir – and the Machar-led Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) has kept the conflict’s two primary combatants from entering peace talks despite repeated invitations to the latter. Meanwhile, President Kiir has removed himself as patron of the National Dialogue process, allowing “the South Sudanese people to take the lead.” Yet with so many displaced and starving, and with the country’s vast restrictions to freedom of the press, such a shift is more likely to be a step backward than forward.

With these caveats in mind, experts have urged regional and international actors to pursue a number of concurrent strategies. First, mediators must harness South Sudan’s rich heritage of peacebuilding in the organization of talks and other peace initiatives. Central to this tradition is the establishment of trust between interlocutors, an element which could be incorporated by inviting a broad cross-section of South Sudanese society into the dialogue process. In view of current divisions, it is vital that this cross-section – including tribal elders, local bishops, respected religious groups, and all shades of political opposition – be represented in future talks. The inclusion of women may also be pivotal, a theory supported by an International Peace Institute analysis suggesting that when women are included in peace processes, there is a 20 percent increase in the probability of an agreement lasting at least two years and a 35 percent increase in the probability of one lasting at least 15 years. Such findings are supported by the South Sudanese people’s own history: at the successful Wunlit Dinka-Nuer Peace Conference of 1999, a third of the delegates were women.

Mobilizing young people to join the peacemaking process may also prove worthwhile. One asset furnished by young people, as Catholic bishop Edward Hiiboro Kussala of Tombura-Yambio notes, is a shift in perspective. “Unlike you, we [elders] are entrenched in our old habits, prejudices, hate, injustices, and even pettiness,” Bishop Kussala wrote in a recent statement. “It is not easy to let go of our selfishness, for it is how we have been able to survive and preserve ourselves in these dark times.” Beyond lending this healthier perspective, the bishop’s September 2017 statement called on the young to initiate grassroots peace efforts through social media and other forms of communication, a niche that “your bright creative minds are so agile at” exploiting.

As a third pillar of the peace process, experts have called for the proper application of regional and international pressure on the conflict’s primary drivers. Most urgently, the UN Security Council and the African Union Peace and Security Council must continue striving for a comprehensive arms embargo in South Sudan, the successful imposition of which would outlaw the material support of regional governments and build momentum for a peaceful resolution to the conflict.

Absent immediate multilateral solutions, however, the United States can draw on several forms of financial and diplomatic leverage in order to hamper the Kiir regime. On the question of weapons flows, the United States is in a unique position to alter the shape of South Sudan’s conflict given that Uganda, a main transit point of arms and ammunition to Kiir’s forces, is also the largest recipient of U.S. military assistance in sub-Saharan Africa. Obviously, the United States could threaten to withdraw this support if Uganda continues its attempts to profit from South Sudan’s conflict. Targeting Kiir’s government more directly, the United States could draw on its influence among global financial bodies (such as the IMF and the World Bank) to block South Sudan’s access to channels of international aid. On a more individual level, the U.S. could impose targeted sanctions, asset freezes, or anti-money laundering provisions on top South Sudanese officials who have profited from the conflict.

Finally, the United States has the option of downgrading or severing its diplomatic relationship with South Sudan on the grounds of Kiir’s questionable political legitimacy. As a party to the Geneva Conventions since 2012, South Sudan remains bound to the conventions’ human rights provisions. Yet there is ample evidence to suggest that the current government has perpetrated both war crimes and crimes against humanity, offenses which have delegitimized regimes in the past. As a sitting head of state, President Kiir’s privileges and immunities are likely to absolve him of most wrongdoing over the course of South Sudan’s civil war. But if the United States were to question his government’s validity, thus jeopardizing such immunities, perhaps Kiir would be more receptive to U.S. peace proposals.

An important consideration in the peace process is the uncertain status of the South Sudanese church, perhaps the country’s only remaining institution with the means to broker a dialogue-driven solution to the conflict. In February 2017, a band of government troops ransacked a church bookstore, confiscating titles deemed to be written by government critics. Some months later, Bishop Santo Loku Pio Doggale of Juba received multiple threatening phone calls, including one in which he was told by an anonymous individual that “Your days are numbered.” The Kiir government has been known to falsely accuse the church of working for regime change, and although a Catholic himself, Kiir has called the church “pro-rebel.”

The time for action is now

South Sudan, the world’s youngest country, has shouldered the burden of war for over 60 percent of its short history. Every day, more of its citizens die while fewer devices for breaking the cycle of violence and vengeance remain on the table.

The time for facilitating peace – a mandate of every nation – is now, and not just for humanitarian reasons. As the country’s infrastructure and institutions crumble, instability will inevitably seep into the rest of Africa’s volatile peripheries. Such a development threatens to coincide with the political implosion of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, a perennially conflict-ridden region currently witnessing a face-off between its longtime dictator, Joseph Kabila, and his opponents. If presidential elections are not held by December of this year, the country could suffer its bloodiest bout of violence in decades.

Coupled with impending drama in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the current outpouring of refugees from South Sudan has the potential to spark a larger regional war, as occurred when a broader conflict involving nine African governments erupted in the aftermath of 1994’s Rwandan genocide. The international community has therefore not only a clear moral reason to invest in ending South Sudan’s war, but an urgent security interest in doing so.

A month before leaving office, US president Barack Obama lamented his administration’s insufficient response to South Sudan’s unfolding conflict. Perhaps this administration, in keeping with its commitment to countermand the policies of its predecessor, could consider treading this path to peace before it disappears.

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

The security situation in West Africa and the Sahel remains of grave concern, the United Nations envoy for the region said Thursday, warning that while there had been progress on the political front over the past year, there had also been a worrying upsurge in Boko Haram attacks.

“Following a notable decline in Boko Haram attacks in the first half of the year, there has been an uptick in the number of incidents since September last year, with a peak of 143 civilian casualties alone in November 2017,” said Mohamed Ibn Chambas, Special Representative and Head of the UN Office for West Africa and the Sahel (UNOWAS).

He reported a fivefold increase in the use of children as suicide bombers by Boko Haram, reaching some 135 cases in 2017.

Updating the Council on Mali, he said that terrorists launched a complex attack on the UN Multidimensional Integrated Stabilization Mission’s (MINUSMA) positions in Kidal, which resulted in one peacekeeper’s death, while three Malian soldiers were killed by a landmine and another by terrorists in Niono. Additionally, two separate attacks on security posts were registered in Burkina Faso near the Malian border.

“The attacks in Mali as well as within the Mali-Niger-Burkina Faso tri-border area are mainly attributed to A1-Qaida affiliated groups and the Islamic State in the Greater Sahara,” he stated.

Turning to Niger, he noted that because of an increasing number of security incidents, the government has dedicated 17 per cent of 2018 public expenditure to the security sector – compared to 15 per cent last year.

“This has, however, triggered demonstrations in Niger’s capital given the expected detrimental effects on the delivery of social services,” he asserted.

The UN envoy pointed out that while 700 Boko Haram abductees have recently escaped, the group continues to kidnap people and that, overall, more than two million displaced persons “desperately” await an end to the Lake Chad Basin crisis.

Commending the efforts of the Multinational Joint Task Force operating in the region, he stressed that the comprehensive response of the region to address the Boko Haram threat “must be supported by the international community.”

He explained that in the Sahel, the Group of Five (G5) – Burkina Faso, Chad, Mali, Mauritania and Niger – had made significant progress in operationalizing its Joint Force, including by establishing its military command structure and Force headquarters in Sevarÿ and conducting its first military operation with French troops in late October.

Additionally, in line with Security Council resolution 2391 (2017), consultations among the UN, European Union (EU) and G5 are ongoing regarding the conclusion of a technical agreement on supporting the Joint Force through MINUSMA.

“The past six months have seen substantive progress in the efforts to reinvigorate UNISS,” he said, noting that a support plan would be shared with national, regional and international partners to harmonize approaches and canvass for effective support to the Sahel “in line with national and regional priorities, the UN Agenda 2030 and the AU Agenda 2063.”

Meanwhile, he noted that migration has become one of the most lucrative activities for criminal networks across West Africa and the Sahel.

“Stemming human trafficking must continue to be a top priority in 2018 as recently underscored by Secretary-General Guterres,” he affirmed.

Source: This article was published by Modern Diplomacy

By J C Suresh

One day after the European Union reiterated its commitment to support “the full and effective implementation of the agreement” with Iran, the Trump Administration announced on January 12 that it will continue to waive sanctions on the Islamic Republic in accordance with U.S. commitments under the 2015 nuclear deal.

The agreement between the P5+1 countries (China, France, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and Iran is known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

“The deal is working; it is delivering on its main goal, which means keeping the Iranian nuclear programme in check and under close surveillance,” the European Union High Representative Federica Mogherini said after a meeting with Ministers of Foreign Affairs of E3 countries – France, Jean-Yves Le Drian, Germany, Sigmar Gabriel, and the UK Boris Johnson – and Iranian Foreign Minister Jawad Zarif on January 11 in Brussels.

“Meeting the U.S. obligation to continue sanctions relief is a common-sense decision that helps ensure that the tough restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program and intrusive International Atomic Energy Agency measures will continue to block Iran’s pathways to the bomb for years to come,” said Kelsey Davenport, director for nonproliferation policy at the Arms Control Association.

“The deal dodged a bullet today (January 12), but Trump is setting up the United States to violate it down the road,” warned Davenport. “Threatening to withhold future sanctions waivers in an attempt to force unilateral changes to the deal is dangerous, jeopardizes the future of the agreement, and creates a schism between the United States and its allies,” she added.

“Trump continues to disparage the deal and is pressuring Congress to ‘fix’ what it sees as flaws in the agreement,” noted Davenport. “In the weeks ahead, the administration and the Congress must refrain from imposing new sanctions that violate the JCPOA or seek to unilaterally alter the nuclear restrictions on Iran.”

“For example, legislative efforts by the U.S. Congress that automatically reimpose sanctions if Iran does not indefinitely abide by core nuclear restrictions that the JCPOA phases out over time would violate the accord and are strongly opposed by Washington’s negotiating partners,” she said.

“The vast majority of nonproliferation and security experts agree that the successful implementation of the JCPOA has effectively neutralized the threat of an Iranian nuclear weapons program,” said Thomas Countryman, the chairman of the board of directors of the Arms Control Association and the former U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Nonproliferation.

“It would have been foolish for President Trump to disrupt a successful nonproliferation agreement that blocks the emergence of a significant new nuclear threat in a tension-filled region and contributes to strengthening the global nonproliferation regime,” Countryman argued.

The 28 European Union Member States’ Ministers expressed a clear position on the nuclear deal in October 2017. In a joint statement, the Member States said that the JCPOA – “the culmination of 12 years of diplomacy facilitated by the EU” – was “a key element of the nuclear non-proliferation global architecture and crucial for the security of the region”.

“It is crucial for the security of the region, but also for the security of Europe. It is in our key strategic security interest as Europeans,” the High Representative Mogherini said in Brussels on January 11.

The nuclear agreement with Iran is a multilateral agreement endorsed by UN Security Council Resolution 2231. The International Atomic Energy Agency has confirmed in nine reports that Iran is fully complying with the commitments made under the agreement.

“The unity of the international community is essential to preserve a deal that is working, that is making the world safer and that is preventing a potential nuclear arms race in the region. And we expect all parties to continue to fully implement this agreement,” Mogherini concluded.

The number of Iraqis returning to their area of origin has surpassed those internally displaced for the first time since December 2013, when the country became engulfed in conflict with the Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL/Da’esh), the United Nations migration agency said Friday.

“Iraqis who remain displaced are among the most vulnerable, as they face obstacles to return, including damage or destruction of their home and local infrastructure, financial limitations and other constraints,” said Gerard Waite, chief of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) mission in Iraq.

Over the past four years, the country has been deeply affected by the conflict with Iraq’s victory over the ISIL, which led to the displacement of nearly six million people, IOM stated.

On 9 December, Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced Iraq’s victory over ISIL and by the end of the year, IOM had identified 3.2 million people who had returned back to their place of origin – while a staggering 2.6 million remained displaced.

Following improved security in retaken areas, a sizable number of internally displaced people (IDPs) have returned home to mainly the three governorates worst affected by ISIL’s occupation, accounting for 86 per cent of displaced Iraqis. More than 1.2 million people returned to the governorate of Anbar; nearly 975,000 to Ninewa; and close to 460,000 to Salah al-Din.

Shortly after the operation to retake Mosul was launched in October 2016, IOM constructed two emergency displacement sites, one in Haj Ali and one in Qayara.

With a combined capacity to shelter 110,000 IDPs, these sites were constructed in partnership with Iraq’s Ministry of Migration and Displacement in the southeast of Ninewa governorate. The more than 71,000 internally displaced persons remaining there receive relief kits, medical services and psychosocial support from IOM, and other services from humanitarian partners.

IOM pointed out that 57 per cent of IDPs are currently in Ninewa, which has an intra-governorate IDP people population of 97 per cent.

Intra-governorate returns account for 55 per cent of returnees, a common trend across the most-affected governorates that is likely to continue.

By Greg Smith*

During the early days of the Second World War, Britain faced the dire threat of invasion from Nazi Germany and the conquest of its global empire. However, such an existential danger to Britain and its colonies was not new in the country’s history. Despite its relatively small geographic size, the island-nation had historically faced and overcame frequent threats from invading great European powers. Due to centuries of surviving existential threats in a dangerous geo-political neighbourhood, along with defending its colonies, Britain developed a pragmatic and experienced strategic culture that would guide its Second World War actions against the Axis powers.

Strategic culture is an important aspect of national security, and it is critical to understanding how nations view, consider, and react to national security threats. Embedded in the national psyche, this broad strategic concept guides the considerations and decisions of national security professionals and senior military officers. This was particularly true of General Sir Alan Brooke, Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, one of Britain’s foremost military leaders during the Second World War. His decisions during this epic conflict, although shaped by his personal experience and education, were a product of Britain’s strategic culture, and those decisions impacted enormously upon British and Allied actions.

This article will examine the critical role of Britain’s strategic culture upon the Allied Second World War. Following a short examination of this concept, Britain’s historic strategic culture will be reviewed, including the broad traditions of the “maritime school” and the “continental school.” This analysis will allow the reader to subsequently view General Brooke’s actions during the war as a product of his country’s strategic traditions. Although focused upon Britain’s national strategic culture, ultimately, this examination allows Canadian national security professionals to reflect upon Canada’s own strategic traditions.

Strategic Culture

The term strategic culture and its study originated in the 1970s with American political scientist Jack Snyder of the RAND Corporation attempting to understand and explain Soviet behaviour in comparison with a rational choice theory.1 Researching the differences between Soviet and American security beliefs, practices, and resultant nuclear strategy, Snyder’s efforts intersected with military historians’ earlier research with respect to national ways of warfare.2 Strategic culture studies were born from this complimentary analysis.3

A state’s strategic culture manifests from numerous diverse national characteristics. Although multiple authors describe these components, noted British-American strategic thinker Professor Colin S. Gray illuminates the contributors to strategic culture most logically by organizing them into six categories: nationality; geography; service, branch, weapons, and functions; simplicity-complexity; generation; and grand strategy.4 First, nationality refers to the effect of the distinctive strategic cultural lens created by national historical experience. Second, not dissimilar to a country’s heritage, the physical geography of a state—its size, shape, and natural resources—has an impact upon a security community’s perception.5

Third, and more tactically, within a state’s armed forces, there are distinct cultures based upon service, branch, weapons, and functions, since professional orientation affects cultural perspective.6 Further, strategic cultures may be categorized, based upon a group’s attitude towards simplicity and complexity, whereby some groups embrace holistic analysis, and others more discrete, sequential evaluation.7 Fifth, strategic culture evolves as each generation interprets their context, based upon their historical experience. Thus, to Gray: “… a dominant strategic culture will be reintegrated by each generation in the light of its own distinct experience.”8 Finally, a state’s grand strategic orientation impacts its culture as security communities become habituated to certain policy instruments.9

Based upon such broad and diverse factors contributing to strategic culture, the potential for highly differentiated security world views or Weltanschauung is understandable.10 Indeed, as suggested by Victoria University’s Edward Lock, a community or state “naturally possesses a unique strategic culture.”11 However, before defining this concept, a closer examination of the term culture itself is necessary. MIT’s Edgar Schein, in his seminal work, Organizational Culture and Leadership, defines culture,

… as a pattern of shared basic assumptions that was learned by a group as it solved its problems of external adaptation and internal integration, that has worked well enough to consider valid and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to perceive, think, and feel in relation to those problems.12

Therefore, culture can simplistically be understood to refer to the learned norms of a group that are ingrained in thought, emotion, practice, certain collective identities, and world perception. Thus, by extension, strategic culture links culture and a state’s security perceptions. Gray therefore suggests that strategic culture or cultures “… comprise the persisting socially transmitted ideas, attitudes, traditions, habits of mind, and preferred methods of operation that are more or less specific to a particular geographically based security community that has had a unique historical experience.”13 Specifically, strategic culture can be broadly understood to refer to a security community’s common strategic thoughts, understandings, perceptions, beliefs, language, and behavioural defaults, based upon geographic, historic, national, and other experiences. Although somewhat abstract, this concept critically shapes a state’s attitude towards and lens with which it views its national security. For this reason, Professor Theo Farrell of King’s College London notes, “…strategic culture is found in both the thoughts and actions of policy-makers and military officers …,” and its understanding grants an important comprehension of strategic thinking.14 This concept forms a framework for the examination of Britain’s strategic culture, its impact upon the conduct of the Second World War, and ultimately, it enables reflection upon Canada’s contemporary security Weltanschauung.

British National Strategic Culture

Britain’s Second World War strategic culture was a slave to its national experience and characteristics. As a relatively small island nation proximate to larger continental powers, a constitutional monarchy, and a vast maritime-focused trading empire, Britain’s geography, history, political experience, and other national factors shaped its strategic culture. History Professor William S. Maltby of the University of Missouri-St. Louis, summarizes its resultant strategic traditions, and concludes:

Tension between England’s naval and imperial commitments and its periodic need to intervene with land forces on the European continent has characterized the making of strategy from the Elizabethan era to the present. This tension arises naturally from the three primary strategic objectives that the makers of English strategy pursued at the beginning of the early modern period. The most immediate was to prevent invasion by maintaining naval control of the Channel. The second was to protect England’s overseas trade and to encourage the development of colonies, while the third, which sometimes took precedence over the second, was to prevent any European power from achieving hegemony on the continent.15

These conflicting goals resulted in a bifurcated strategic culture that balanced what Churchill scholar Tuvia Ben-Moshe describes as the “maritime school,” which sought naval supremacy to seclude Britain from European calamity, and the “continental school,” which strove to fight alongside its allies in Europe and therefore balance the strongest powers on the continent.16 The examination of these two approaches reveals important aspects of Britain’s strategic culture.

The British “maritime school” aimed to command the sea. Through dominance of the maritime commons, London could protect its own territory, maintain access to foreign commerce and its colonies, and retain the initiative over its rivals.17 Oxford’s Professor Norman Gibbs expressed this predominant strategic view:

… British strategy in modern times … has been to command the sea. The successful establishment of that command rested upon a combination of two main factors: the maintenance of a powerful navy, often conforming to a ‘two-power standard’; and the deployment of that navy in positions to control the sea-ways in and out of Europe …. Thus deployed, the Royal Navy could protect Britain herself from invasion, guard British overseas trade, and also exercise a controlling hand over the use of the seas by her enemies.18

Further, this maritime view emphasized the Royal Navy’s role in economic warfare. The distinguished British military historian Sir Basil Liddell Hart, in particular, recognizes the interconnectedness of the British maritime tradition and the economic aspect of conflict:

Our historic practice … was based on economic pressure exercised through sea power. This naval body had two arms; one financial, which embraced the subsidizing and military provisioning of allies; the other military, which embraced sea-borne expeditions against the enemy’s vulnerable extremities.19

This nuanced, bi-faceted naval-economic strategic view saw maritime power able to maintain sea lines of communication, and thereby, resupply and maintain Britain’s allies, and further financially target and damage its opponents’ merchant fleet, its resource-providing colonies, and thus, its economy.20 This “maritime school,” heavily linked to the existential survival of Britain and its global empire, integrates military and economic strategies, and is deeply ingrained in the British security psyche.

However, this emphasis upon maritime power caused an unbalancing effect upon the Britain’s strategic culture – an anti-Army bias. A young Winston Churchill reflects this prejudice: “Only unsurpassed naval strength could safeguard the world trade vital to Britain’s survival. There was no need for a large regular army to defend the British Isles or to make war on continental or European powers.”21 Despite violating this tenet and suffering horrific casualties on the Western Front during the First World War, this naval strategic tradition remained unchanged, as suggested by Gray: “Maritime Britain functioned as a major continental power from 1916 until 1918, but that brief continental performance did not cancel or deny the contrary character of Britain’s dominant strategic culture.”22 Britain’s pre-Second World War strategic culture therefore portrayed an unnaturally dominant pro-Navy, anti-Army belief.23

With the maritime element dominating Britain’s strategic culture, the land component took a secondary role. Nevertheless, the British Army possessed several traditional tasks which formed its own military strategic culture.24 First, despite London’s desire to avoid “…entanglement in European quarrels,” the British Army was prepared to balance dominant land powers on the continent.25 In pursuit of so-called “balancing,” Britain would combine militarily with a continental ally through diplomatic manoeuvring. A more mature Churchill explains this British tradition:

For four hundred years the foreign policy of England has been to oppose the strongest, the most aggressive the most dominating Power on the Continent …. joined with the less strong Powers, made a combination among them, and thus defeated and frustrated the Continental military tyrant …26

Equally, due to its operational proximity, London particularly sought to maintain control of the English Channel ports and the Low Countries.27

he second aspect of balancing represents a further and important facet of British strategic culture. Lacking sufficient land forces, London needed to practice careful statecraft to create alliances and to counteract the dominant European power.28 Britain’s ultimate strategic end—national survival—required a national interest-focused, cold-blooded calculation of balance of power.29 This mature, non-altruistic strategic culture is displayed in an inter-war cabinet discussion with respect to Britain’s obligation to guarantee the German-Belgian and German-French borders. The Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS), Sir George Milne, expressed, “For us … it is only incidentally a question of French security; essentially it is a matter of British security …. The true strategic position of Great Britain is on the Rhine.”30 Critical to national survival, alliances management formed an important aspect of Britain’s strategic culture.

This grand strategic outlook extended to Britain’s empire as it searched for allies to balance the rising power of Germany. As Britain’s empire increasingly waned in the early 20th Century, London attempted to balance its national security with its colonial commitments. Demonstrating a sober statecraft based upon national interest, Britain strategically withdrew its imperial commitments and prepared for the coming storm of the First World War by shaping a future ally:

… Britain had a long history of successfully appeasing challengers as a cost-effective strategy to balance multiple security commitments in Europe and the empire… In 1901, the British government effectively ceded its hegemonic role in North America to the rising United States by signing the Hay-Pauncefote Treaty, granting the United States the sole right to build an isthmian canal and negotiating the Venezuelan and Canadian border agreements. Many scholars point to Britain’s success in the two decades prior to the First World War in retrenching from its empire and concentrating its global resources in its home waters against the primary German threat.31

This case exemplifies the maturity of Britain’s imperial strategic culture. Committed to forming a grand alliance capable of balancing the rising continental power of Germany, London carefully disengaged from its declining empire. This aspect of continental commitment required the harmonizing of ends and means, and a sober and nuanced national strategic culture.32

The second strategic task of the British Army was to police its colonies, and if necessary, to participate in ‘small wars.’33 The need for soldiers to conduct what would contemporaneously be entitled ‘asymmetric warfare’ created a further tension in Britain’s strategic culture:

Whilst the majority of other armies are trained essentially for war, the British Army is primarily a force for policing the Empire. And the Briton abroad, more responsive to traditional instinct than to reason, still finds more comfort in the visible presence of khaki-clad guards scattered around the country than in the potential appearance of armour-clad machines …34

Dr. Frank Ledwidge of the Royal Air Force College agrees with this strategic tradition dichotomy in stating:

Equally, there were constant disagreements within the army as to what exactly it was for: Was it a colonial army-intended to fight ‘limited war’-what might now be termed ‘expeditionary warfare’? Or was the army a force for major warfare against ‘conventional’ enemies who threatened the home islands?”35

With a vast empire to maintain, colonial policing remained a significant although neglected and under-resourced task for the British Army.36 As the land forces conducted ‘small wars’ for centuries throughout the British Empire, it formed an important aspect of Britain’s strategic culture.37

Closely tied to the colonial and trade aspect of its maritime traditions, and the balancing aspect of its continental tradition, Britain’s strategic culture embraced financial strength. Indeed, Norman Gibbs emphasizes the importance of Britain’s economy to its overall military power in stating “The country’s fourth arm of defence was its financial stability which depended upon full industrial recovery and the export trade.”38 Stated more simply by Theo Farrell, who equally returns to the traditional importance of its maritime strength, “The United Kingdom’s empire rested on its financial muscle and ‘global-girdling navy.’”39 Although the country’s financial power and stability were critical for its overall strategic strength, London equally understood its importance for potentially financing its allies and thereby balancing continental threats.40

The use of statecraft and integration of the aforementioned strategic tools required careful coordination. This was because, as the noted British military historian Sir Michael Howard suggests, “Command of the seas and the maintenance of a European balance were in fact, not alternative policies … but interdependent …,” Britain formed a tradition of strategic organizational coordination.41 This culture of strategic integration, which balanced shifting alliances, managed a vast empire, and coordinated maritime and continental commitments, is exemplified by Britain’s pre-First World War strategic, joint, and inter-agency coordination body.42 The Committee of Imperial Defence (CID) brought together military, financial, economic, diplomatic, and governmental perspectives to achieve a coherent and coordinated defence policy.43 In examining this aspect of British strategic culture, Salford University’s Professor Aleric Searle recognizes in the inter-war period: “… elements of national strategic culture and service culture combined to generate a new ‘second tier,’ that of joint, inter-service military culture, for the first time involving army, navy, and air force.”44

With a pro-maritime bias, Britain’s strategic culture prior to the Second World War formed a distinctively anti-continental commitment bias. Although capable of militarily balancing dominant powers in Europe with its own land forces, it preferred to form strong coalitions and conduct periphery operations to defeat its enemies while protecting its lines of communication and empire with naval forces. Finally, having balanced continental powers and conducted joint operations for centuries, Britain faced Nazi Germany with a deep tradition of strategic coordination, and joint and inter-agency cooperation.

General Brooke in the Second World War

Alan Francis Brooke was born in July 1883 in the French Pyrenees to vacationing parents. Of noble Northern Ireland Protestant stock, and trained as an artillery officer, Brooke served with distinction in the First World War on the Western Front, including acting as the chief artillery staff officer to the Canadian Corps.45 Having begun the Second World War as a corps commander, he participated in the British Expeditionary Force and competently evacuated his formation from Dunkirk. Following duty as Commander-in-Chief Home Defence, Prime Minister Churchill appointed Brooke as Chief of the Imperial General Staff (CIGS) on 18 November 1941, and Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff Committee (CCSC) on 9 March 1942, acknowledging his considerable abilities and strategic mind.46

The foremost illustration of the effect of Britain’s strategic culture upon Brooke was the British resistance to an early direct attack upon continental Europe during the Second World War. With the United States declaring war on the Axis Powers in December 1941, the Americans quickly began planning with Great Britain to reconquer Europe. Following the Arcadia Conference, the British strongly resisted the United States’ desire to commence major military operations via a direct assault on continental Europe, instead, advocating an indirect, peripheral attack against the Axis in the Mediterranean.47

The British opposition to the American approach of assaulting Germany early and directly was multifaceted. First, having fought the Germans in the First World War and again in 1940, the British had great respect for the Wehrmacht’s tactical ability, and they preferred to allow a naval blockade, strategic bombing, and the might of the Soviet military time to attrite the Axis forces.48 Despite American enthusiasm, the British also possessed a mature understanding that U.S. forces would need to be blooded before they faced the battle-hardened Germans on the Northern European Plain.49 Similarly, Professor Steven Lobell of the University of Utah illustrates that the deliberate neglect of the British Army until 1938 soberly resigned London to the limitations of their own land forces.50 Finally, with the military situation hanging in the balance in North Africa in the summer of 1942, London could not condone opening another theatre of war at the time.51

To Brooke, a direct attack on Germany was anathema to the British way of war. Indeed, he advocated a peripheral strategy, stating: “I am positive that our policy for the conduct of the war should be to direct both our military and political efforts towards the early conquest of North Africa. From there we shall be able to reopen the Mediterranean and to stage offensive operations against Italy.”52 Brooke’s sponsorship of this indirect North African campaign was symbolic of the traditional British strategic culture of peripheral attacks:

… Brooke was wedded to the traditional British maritime strategy of weakening Continental powers by blockade and peripheral operations, carried out in areas where the enemy found it most difficult to deploy and support large armies. While he accepted the probable need to cross the Channel in strength one day, his personal experiences in 1940 convinced him that this would not be practicable until German resistance was on the point of collapse.53

Although, as suggested by Professor Keith Neilson of the Royal Military College of Canada, the United States possessed the influence to sway Allied strategy, Britain remained faithful to its strategic culture and the defeat of Nazi Germany through naval blockade and strategic bombardment.54

Thus, as the Allied offensive unfolded, Nazi Germany reacted precisely as Brooke and the peripheral strategy sought to exploit. Looking to draw-away the Wehrmacht from other theatres, Brooke’s concept of assaulting indirectly through the Mediterranean appeared quite successful:

Everywhere on the Continent, the effects were being felt of Hitler’s furious reaction to the British strategy of re-opening the Mediterranean and striking across it in order to draw Germany’s troops from France and Russia into Europe’s mountainous southern perimeter. Since the invasion of Sicily in July, more than forty Axis divisions had had to be withdrawn, or were in the process of being withdrawn from other fronts. Already, the number of German divisions in Italy had risen from six to sixteen, and in the Balkans, from twelve to eighteen … and three-quarters of Germany’s air-fighter force was by now concentrated in Western and Southern Europe…55

Concurrently, with pressure being relieved on the Russians and the attrition of the German war machine taking place, the allied forces gained valuable operational fighting experience and learned to strategically function as a coalition.56

The British military’s sound joint, interagency planning and coordination, grounded in its strategic culture, enabled much of this early-coalition success. During the Arcadia Conference, as the Allies coordinated grand strategic objectives, the less experienced Americans quickly recognized the British military’s rich joint culture.57 To a lead American planner: “We were more or less babes in the wood on this planning and joint business with the British. They’d been doing it for years. They were experts at it, and we were just starting. They’d found a way to get along between the services.”58 This aspect of British strategic culture undoubtedly abetted the American agreement to a peripheral strategy while the emerging superpower’s own joint abilities developed. Concurrently, Brooke enforced the British joint strategic tradition as the head of the British Chiefs of Staff Committee. Leading “…the most perfect machine for the higher organization of the war,”59 Brooke initiated, explained, and defended British military policy:

After 1940, almost every major question affecting Britain’s war effort—not only the movements, supply and reinforcement of her fleets, armies and air forces, but the control of manpower, industry, shipping, agriculture and at times even of imperial and foreign policy—was, if it had any bearing on military operations, referred to the [Chiefs of Staff] Committee.60

Although Brooke’s personal strength as primus inter pares [first among equals, Ed.] greatly enabled this grand strategic decision making body, undoubtedly, the inculcation of the joint spirit, based upon Britain’s strategic culture, was an important factor.61

Conclusion

This article was born out of an interest to better understand British martial culture. The author, having been fortunate enough to work and interact with the British military, found it to possess a mature and scrupulous approach towards the utility of force, the diverse tools of the armed services, and their country’s national interests. This mindset, properly labeled military strategic culture, although instructive, was discovered to be derivative of Britain’s national strategic culture.

More broadly, due to its national characteristics and imperial experiences, Britain possessed a rich and mature understanding of grand strategy and statecraft. A relatively small country proximate to historically powerful hostile states, and also the hub of a vast empire, Britain developed a very pragmatic and sober view of national security, strategic survival, and imperial power. This strategic tradition, which is as complex and nuanced as Britain’s historic security situation, includes the use of economic warfare, and a peripheral, indirect approach to warfare that allowed Britain to survive, thrive, and indeed, to establish one of the world’s greatest empires maintain it for several centuries. Meanwhile, this strategic culture saw military responses as the ken, primarily, of maritime forces, delegating the British Army with the residual task of so-called small wars, and potentially, a continental commitment.

More philosophically, such challenges to national existence and the maintenance of a global empire enabled the development of a very judicious strategic culture. Foremost, this mature strategic tradition could be viewed ‘grand strategically.’ Here, a sober analysis of strategic ends and means enabled a gradual withdrawal from empire that consolidated imperial resources for the approaching world conflicts, and equally, positioned the rising American superpower as a close ally. At a lower level, Britain’s abstemious strategic tradition enabled the integrated interaction of the multiple ministries and tools of state to carefully achieve national interests. To Professor Christopher Coker of the London School of Economics, this scrupulous national security culture reflects a deep strategic tradition: “Strategic cultures tend to think strategically: that is their purpose, or should be. In other words, nations have a pretty clear idea of their national interests and how best to advance them.”62

General Brooke, as a commander at the highest levels of Britain’s war effort, was immersed in this strategic tradition. Although equally shaped by his military experiences, Brooke viewed the British approach to the Axis threat through the lens of its strategic culture. Rather than perceiving the road to Berlin as the most direct route from London, he advocated Britain’s traditional imperial peripheral strategy, and thus, an attritional campaign through the Mediterranean while a naval blockade, strategic bombing, and the Russian juggernaut wore down the German war machine. Equally, he understood the importance of mobilizing and shaping allies to balance Britain’s own inadequate forces. Finally, Brooke, as Chairman of the Chiefs of Staff, reflected the well-practiced British strategic tradition of close integration of all arms of government and the military. [Editor’s Note: General Sir Alan Brooke, 1st Viscount Alanbrooke, KG, GCB, OM, GCVO, DSO & Bar, was promoted to Field Marshal in 1944.]

Reflecting upon the strategic culture of one of our mother countries provides an important lens with which to examine our own. Canada, possessing very different geographic characteristics and historical experiences, has therefore developed dissimilar strategic traditions. Nevertheless, the shrewd British understanding of national interests and the alignment of strategic means is a pragmatic principle that should be embraced by Canadian decision makers and military leaders. Similarly, readers, students, and crafters of Canada’s strategic culture would do well to ingrain the traditions of joint, interagency coordination, including a sober appreciation of the importance of economic strength for national security.

About the author:
*Brigadier-General Greg Smith, CD, is an Infantry Officer with deployments in Croatia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. He possesses Masters of Arts in war studies, defence studies, and public administration from RMC. This article is based upon a paper written for the National Security Program at CFC Toronto.

Source:
This article was published by the Canadian Military Journal, Volume 18, Number 1, Page 32.

Notes:

1. Rational Choice Theory states broadly that people, groups or states behave so as to maximize their benefit and minimize their cost. See Michael I. Ogu, “Rational Choice Theory: Assumptions, Strengths, and Greatest Weaknesses in Application Outside the Western Milieu Context,” in Arabian Journal of Business and Management Review (Nigerian Chapter), Vol. 1, No. 3 (2013), p. 90, at http://www.academia.edu/3197007/RATIONAL_CHOICE_THEORY_ASSUMPTIONS_
   STRENGHTS_AND_GREATEST_WEAKNESSES_IN_APPLICATION_OUTSIDE_THE_WESTERN_
   MILIEU_CONTEXT.
2. Colin S. Gray, Nuclear Strategy and National Style (London: Hamilton Press, 1986), pp. 33-34.
3. Lawrence Sondhaus, Strategic Culture and Ways of War (London: Routledge, 2006), p. 1.
4. Gray, Nuclear Strategy, pp. 148-150.
5. To Murray and Grimsley, the impact of geography upon strategic culture may be illustrated by the proximate and miniscule Israel versus the massive and remote United States. Williamson Murray and Mark Grimsley, “Introduction: On strategy,” in The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War, Williamson Murray, MacGregor Know and Alvin Bernstein, (eds.), pp. 1-23 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994), p. 7.
6. Many authors would classify this as effecting military strategic culture or service strategic culture.
7. This abstract concept is summarized more simply by Gray: groups may be categorized based upon holistic, monochromic, one-thing-at-a-time cultures, or polychromic, everything-is-interconnected, Cartesian thinking cultures. See Colin S. Gray, Modern Strategy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 149.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 150. These grand strategic tools could include overt military power, diplomacy, espionage, and covert action, economic sanctions, etc.
10. The Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines Weltanschauung as, “…a comprehensive conception or apprehension of the world especially from a specific standpoint.” See Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Weltanschauung, last accessed 19 May 2014, at http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ weltanschauung.
11. Edward Lock, “Refining strategic culture: return of the second generation,” in Review of International Studies, Vol. 36, Issue 3 (July 2010), pp. 685-708 at https://doi.org/10.1017/S0260210510000276.
12. Edgar H. Schein, Organizational Culture and Leadership, 3^rd edition. (San Francisco: Jossy-Bass, 2004), p. 17.
13. Gray, Modern Strategy, p. 131.
14. Theo Farrell, “Strategic Culture and American Empire,” The SAIS Review of International Affairs, Vol. 25, No. 2 (Summer-Fall 2005), p. 10.
15. William S. Maltby, “The Origins of a Global Strategy: England from 1558 to 1713,” in The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War, pp. 151-177.
16. Tuvia Ben-Moshe, Churchill: Strategy and History (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992), p. 7.
17. The famous naval strategist Julian Corbett quotes Francis Bacon in stating, “…he that commands the sea is at great liberty and may take as much or as little of the war as he will …” Julian Stafford Corbett, The Project Gutenberg eBook, Some Principles of Maritime Strategy, last accessed 07 May 2014, at http://gutenberg.readingroo.ms/1/5/0/7/15076/15076-h/15076-h.htm.
18. Norman Gibbs, “British Strategic Doctrine, 1918-1939,” The Theory and Practice of War: Essays Presented to Captain B.H. Liddell Hart, Michael Howard (ed.), pp.185-212, (London: Cassell and Company, 1965), p.188. The ‘two-power standard’ refers to the Royal Navy’s requirement for greater capability than the next two powers.
19. B.H. Liddell Hart, The British Way in Warfare (London: Faber & Faber, 1932), p. 37. Bryant concurs, stating the British Army developed a corresponding tradition which, “… rested on the history of a sea-based Army which had always had to fight with inadequate resources and which, by using sea-power to hold the enemy with the minimum of force along the widest possible circumference while concentrating striking-strength at the point where it could be most effectively used.” Arthur Bryant, Triumph in the West: Completing the War Diaries of Field Marshal Viscount Alanbrooke (London: The Reprint Society, 1960), p. 32.
20. Sir Basil H. Liddell Hart labeled this disciplined assault on a country’s commerce by the Royal Navy an “essentially businesslike tradition,” and an ‘economy of force.’ Liddell Hart, pp. 37-41.
21. Ben-Moshe, p. 9. This anti-Army attitude received considerable political attention in Britain as a result of the devastating British losses on the Western Front in the First World War, and the writings of the very influential thinker Liddell Hart and his book, The British Way in Warfare. His concepts, however, have, in the last eighty-plus years, been heavily criticized.
22. Of 8,904,467 British Empire soldiers mobilized for “The Great War,” 908,371 were killed, 2,090,212 were wounded and 191 652 became prisoner or were Missing in Action. See PBS, “WWI Casualty and Death Tables,” last accessed 7 May 2014, at http://www.pbs.org/greatwar/resources/casdeath_pop.html. Gray, Modern Strategy, p. 150.
23. Ibid, p. 139. Gray and Hew Strachan agree that resistance to revolutionary change was an element of Britain’s strategic culture or “way of war,” despite the British Army’s struggle to solve the “riddle of the trenches” on the First World War’s Western Front.
24. Britain’s military strategic culture embraced Intelligence, Deception, Science and Technology, and Innovation. David Jablonsky, Churchill and Hitler: Essays on the Political-Military Direction of Total War (Ilford, UK: Frank Cass&Co, 1994), p. 80.
25. Gibbs, p. 187. Gibbs subsequently labels this “Britain’s traditional strategy.” Ibid., p. 190.
26. Steven E. Lobell, “Britain’s Grand Strategy During the 1930s,” in The Challenge of Grand Strategy: The Great Powers and the Broken Balance Between the World Wars, Jeffrey W. Taliaferro, Norrin M. Ripsman and Steven E. Lobell (eds.), pp. 147-170 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
27. Gibbs, p. 189.
28. Crocker explains that statecraft is, “… the smart application of power: when wits, wallets, and muscle all pull together … [it] uses all of the available assets and resources of a society and assures effective coordination between all the arms of foreign policy.” Chester A. Crocker, “The Place of Grand Strategy, Statecraft, and Power in Conflict Management,” in Leashing the Dogs of War: Conflict Management in a Divided World, Chester A. Crocker, Fen Osler Hampson, and Pamela Aall (eds.), pp. 355-367 (Washington, DC: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2007).
29. Donald Nuechterlein describes national interest, “…as the aspirations and goals of sovereign entities in the international arena-perceived needs and desires of one sovereign state in relation to the sovereign states comprising its external environment.” See Don Macnamara, “Canada’s National and International Security Interests,” in Canada’s National Security in the Post-9/11 World: Strategy, Interests, and Threats, David S. McDonough (ed.), pp. 45-56 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2011), p. 48.
30. C.I.D. 195^th Meeting, 13^th February 1925; 196^th Meeting, 19^th February 1925; 200^th Meeting, 22^nd June 1925. Memorandum by CIGS for Cabinet. C.P. 116(25), quoted in Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of the Two World Wars (London: The Ashfield Press, 1989), pp. 93-94. This quote reflects Lord Palmerston’s 1848 statement: “We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Lobell, p. 147.
31. Steven E. Lobell, Jeffrey W. Taliaferro and Norrin M. Ripsman, “Grand Strategy Between the World Wars,” in The Challenge of Grand Strategy, pp. 1-36.
32. Lobell, “Britain’s Grand Strategy during the 1930s,” p. 17.
33. For an excellent overview of imperial policing and British colonial ‘small wars,’ see Lt. Col. Robert M. Cassidy, The U.S. Army, “The British Army and Counterinsurgency: The Salience of Military Culture,” last accessed 2 May 2014, at https://www.army.mil/%20professional
    Writing/volumes/volume3/november_2005/11_05_2.html
34. Liddell Hart, p. 127.
35. Frank Ledwidge, Losing Small Wars: British Military Failure in Iraq and Afghanistan (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2011), p. 152.
36. Sinnreich believed the perpetually under-resourced British Army had a tradition of heroism over intellectual innovation, which formed intellectual complacency. See Richard Hart Sinnreich, “About Turn: British Strategic Transformation from Salisbury to Grey,” in The Shaping of Grand Strategy: Policy, Diplomacy, and War, Williamson Murray, Richard Hart Sinnreich and James Lacey (eds.), pp. 111-146 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2011).
37. Cassidy suggests, “Stability operations have dominated the British Army experience, and it has embraced them as central to the institution.” Cassidy.
38. Gibbs, p. 205. The economy was referred to as “the fourth arm of defence” as Britain’s strong economy and large war chest gave it a financial advantage over its enemies during a long war. See Lobell, “Britain’s Grand Strategy during the 1930s,” p. 167.
39. Farrell, p. 4.
40. Gibbs, p. 191.
41. Michael Howard, The Continental Commitment: The Dilemma of British Defence Policy in the Era of the Two World Wars (London: The Ashfield Press, 1989), p. 52.
42. Here the modern lexicon has been employed thus: Joint and Inter-agency.
43. Williamson Murray, “The Collapse of Empire: British Strategy 1919-1945,” in The Making of Strategy: Rulers, States, and War, Williamson Murray, MacGregor Know and Alvin Bernstein (eds.), pp. 393-427 (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994).
44. Alaric Searle, “Inter-service Debate and the Origins of Strategic Culture: The ‘Principles of War’ in the British Armed Forces, 1919-1939,” in War in History, Vol. 21, No. 1 (2013), pp. 30-31.
45. Andrew Roberts, Masters and Commanders: How Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall and Alanbrooke Won the War in the West (London: Allen Lane, 2008), p. 15. Purportedly, Brooke co-invented the ‘creeping barrage.’
46. Ibid., pp. 56, 102-103. Brooke replaced Admiral Sir Dudley Pound as the Chairman due to the naval fiasco of the escape of the Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Prinz Eugen on 12 February 1942.
47. Charles F. Brower, “The Commander-in-Chief and TORCH,” New York: Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library, 12 November 2002, last accessed 14 October 2009, at http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/cbtorch.html. Bower suggests that Britain and America were heavily influenced by their very different Great War experiences.
48. Leo J. Meyer, “The Decision to Invade North Africa (TORCH),” in Center of Military History Publication 72-7: Command Decisions, Kent Roberts Greenfield (ed.), pp. 173-198 (Washington: US Army Center of Military History, 1960), 175. Indeed, Neilson states Stalin believed that the British would fight to the last drop of Soviet blood. See Keith Neilson, “The British Way in Warfare and Russia,” in The British Way in Warfare: Power and the International System, 1856-1956: Essays in Honour of David French, Keith Neilson and Greg Kennedy (eds.), pp. 7-27 (Farnham, UK: Ashgate, 2010).
49. The disparity between German and Allied forces in early 1942 was six- to- one, but Britain had a healthy respect for the Wehrmacht’s capabilities. Brower.
50. Lobell, “Britain’s Grand Strategy during the 1930s,” p. 165.
51. Meyer, p. 181.
52. Roberts, p. 57.
53. W.G.F. Jackson, “Overlord,” Normandy 1944 (London, 1979), p. 46, quoted in Carlo D’Este, Decision in Normandy: The Unwritten Story of Montgomery and the Allied Campaign (London: Pan Books, 1984), p. 25. Meyer agrees that this style of warfare was an element of Britain’s military tradition: “Such a ‘peripheral strategy’ came naturally to British leaders. They had followed it so often in earlier wars against continental powers that it had become deeply imbedded in England’s military tradition.” Meyer, p. 175.
54. Neilson, p. 23.
55. Bryant, p. 28.
56. See Williamson Murray, Historynet.com, “Operation Torch: Allied Invasion of North Africa,” last accessed 28 Feb 2014, at http://www.historynet.com/operation-torch-allied-invasion-of-north-africa.htm. Bryant explains that Brooke, understood the peripheral strategy was not the main effort itself, “Brooke’s view of the Italian campaign remained what it had always been: that it was not an end in itself but a means to an end.” Bryant, p. 203.
57. Michael Howard, “American and British Strategy. Memorandum by the United States and British Chief of Staff (WWII) at Washington War Conference, December 1941,” Appendix I from Grand Strategy IV August 1942-September 1943, History of the Second World War (London: Her Majesty’s Stationary Office, 1972), p. 597.
58. MHI Handy Interview 1974 section 3, page 42, quoted in Roberts, p. 71.
59. Ibid., p. 104.
60. Bryant, p. 36.
61. ALAB 11/64 quoted in Roberts, p. 104.
62. Christopher Coker, “Between Iraq and a Hard Place: Multinational Co-operation, Afghanistan and Strategic Culture,” in RUSI Journal, Vol. 151, No. 5 (October 2006), p. 18.

India-Israel ties are on course for further expansion under Narendra Modi and Benjamin Netanyahu, who have developed the personal chemistry needed to take it forward.

By Pinak Ranjan Chakravarty

When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visits India this month, he has one person to be thankful to more than anyone else. And that is late former Indian PM Narasimha Rao who took the bold and momentous decision in 1992 to cross the Rubicon, establishing diplomatic relations with Israel. Narasimha Rao was responding to global shifts and his opening to Israel was part of several policy changes that included economic liberalization and the “Look East” policy.

Under PM Atal Bihari Vajpayee, bilateral relations acquired greater heft, leading to expansion of bilateral trade and burgeoning acquisition by India of Israeli civilian and defence technology products. India-Israel bilateral trade has crossed $5 billion and India’s acquisition of Israeli defence products is valued at over $1 billion annually. Around one-third of Israel’s defence production is bought by India. The Indian market is more important for Israel since the US stopped Israel from selling high technology defence products to China.

Destiny and the cycle of history have brought India and Israel closer today than ever before. Israel has come a long way, leaving behind the complicated history of its creation and the turbulent years that followed which saw three Arab-Israeli wars. India too has discarded the baggage of history and the apprehension of vote-bank sensitive Indian politicians seems to have receded, as national interests of India and Israel have steadily converged over the decades.

India-Israel ties are now fully out of the closet. Just over seven months earlier, PM Narendra Modi undertook the historic first visit by an Indian PM to Israel, marking the growing maturity in bilateral ties. There have been several high-level visits. Among them, the visit of Israeli President Reuven Rivlin to India in November 2016, President Pranab Mukherjee’s visit to Israel in October 2015 and visits by external affairs minister Sushma Swaraj and home minister Rajnath Singh. With the blossoming of bilateral ties, there has been an increase in the frequency of high-level visits between the two countries, after PM Modi’s government took office.

The warmth was missing in the aftermath of Israel’s creation. Even the great scientist Albert Einstein failed to persuade Jawaharlal Nehru to recognize Israel in 1948. Nehru demurred and diverted the argument to “realpolitik”. Nehru was guided by Maulana Abul Kalam Azad, who was his close adviser on issues relating to Muslims. India was then grappling with the consequences of Partition and deference to Muslim sentiments trumped the fact that the UN Commission on Palestine had voted to partition the old League of Nations Palestine Mandate territory. India, a member of the UN Commission, had voted against the partition of Palestine into two independent nations of Israel and Palestine. The UK, which had responsibility for the territory, had abdicated its responsibility to the UN, the successor organization of the failed League of Nations after World War II.

In more recent years, India-Israel ties have expanded steadily, encompassing sensitive areas like high technology products, defence equipment, security, intelligence, agriculture, water management, pharmaceuticals, information technology etc. Joint production and development of key defence items has emerged as an important domain of cooperation. Israel is today the third-largest source of key defence equipment for India. Israel has doggedly pursued its courting of India over the years, particularly at times when India needed critical defence supplies during conflicts with Pakistan, when other sources of supplies were not available quickly. Netanyahu’s visit will follow the dropping of a proposal, valued at $500 million, to buy anti-tank Spike missiles. While this decision will disappoint Israel, India has agreed to buy $100 million worth of Barak missiles. The Barak has been used by the Indian Navy for over two decades.

While India-Israel ties have expanded, India has tried to keep these growing ties off the radar. The reasons remain the same—ties with Arab and Islamic countries. Today, however, bilateral ties are no longer hostage to ties with other countries. Ties with Israel have broad bipartisan support in Indian politics. Yet, India faces a dilemma when Israel cracks down on Palestinians. Israel’s iron-fist approach to Palestinian violence and confiscation of their lands promotes sympathy in India and anti-Israel feelings among Indian Muslims who are quick to demonstrate their sympathy for Palestinians.

The burgeoning ties with Israel has not prevented India from reiterating its public support for the state of Palestine and exhorting both sides to negotiate a peaceful settlement, based on a two-state solution and secure borders. While this has remained the official position of every Indian government, there is no hesitation in engaging with Israel publicly.

The recent UN vote on Jerusalem was another opportunity for India to reiterate India’s opposition to US President Donald Trump’s surprising unilateral move to recognize Jerusalem as the official capital of Israel. The UN vote overwhelmingly rejected Trump’s move.

The regional situation in West Asia has been marked by conflict, turmoil and strategic rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Syria and Yemen have been destroyed by civil wars in which proxies of Iraq, Iran, Russia, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey were involved. The rise of the Islamic State (IS) led to an orgy of religious-inspired violence and brutality which has now been quelled. But IS has not been completely liquidated and is re-grouping in various countries. Iran has been convulsed by public demonstrators against the “Mullahcracy” that has retained an iron grip on power since 1979. Saudi Arabia, under the new leadership of Muhammad bin Salman, has taken bold steps to reform Saudi society and also challenged Iran’s influence in a competition with distinct sectarian Sunni-Shia overtones. Strategic rivalry and great power competition has destabilized West Asia.

This has made India’s policy choices easier, as Gulf countries gravitate towards Israel is search of support against Iran. A divided West Asia helps India make independent policy choices that are underpinned by growing economic bonds, India-Israel ties, position on Palestine, ties with Iran and Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Cooperation Council countries, therefore, do not contradict each other but bolster India’s independent relations with different countries of West Asia. India-Israel relations are on course for further expansion under Modi and Netanyahu, who have developed the personal chemistry needed to take it forward.

This article originally appeared in Livemint

By Jeremy Black*

(FPRI) — Culture wars have been more apparent in the United States than the United Kingdom in recent decades, possibly because the nature of class-based politics is more explicit on the Left with the British Labour Party. Moreover, despite the efforts of Margaret Thatcher (1979-90), the Left has long enjoyed a dominant position in the universities, the BBC, the Church of England, and the other bastions of liberal corporatism. This situation led to a presentation of national history in which the traditional approach was alternatively trashed or neglected. Indeed, the prominent Conservative politician Michael Gove wrote in 2007 in response to the film Elizabeth: The Golden Age:

I can’t think of any major motion picture since 1969 (the Battle of Britain) in which this country and those who fight on its behalf were paid the compliment of being depicted as good guys, whom history vindicates. . . . What makes it worth celebrating is that it records England historically, as on the side of liberty. Cate Blanchett is magnificent, and her speech [as Elizabeth I in 1588] when she rallies England’s defenders in the cause of freedom against the looming shadow of the Inquisition is a proper and straight interpretation of our past that accurately captures the ideological attachment to liberty which has been the defining factor in our distinctive progress over time.[1]

Gove was to be repeatedly trashed by the Left when, as Secretary of State for Education, he presided over a very modest redrawing of the “National Curriculum” for History.[2] In part, the critique was an aspect of the broader-ranging attack on the national past that has been especially strong of late, as evinced in particular in the discussion of the British Empire. Winston Churchill has long been a figure of criticism. As a journalist pointed out in response to the new film, Darkest Hour, “There is something about the magnificence of his central achievement at a defining hour in 1940 that seems to drive Britain’s alleged intelligentsia round the bend whenever it reappears as a theme in popular culture.”

This approach draws on a longer critique, as in George Orwell’s The Lion and the Unicorn (1941): “In the general patriotism of the country they form a sort of island of dissident thought. England is perhaps the only great country whose intellectuals are ashamed of their own nationality.” The recent release of films such as Dunkirk and now Darkest Hour, however, suggest a subtle turning of the tide.

Churchill came to the fore in May 1940 because Chamberlain was not acceptable as the head of the coalition government that appeared necessary in the developing international crisis. Churchill was controversial, indeed regarded by many as a dangerous maverick, but he conveyed determination, had war experience, and whatever the reservations of some generals, gave the impression he could do the job. He certainly provided the necessary backbone when the fall of France hit the new government hard, leading to a major crisis of credibility. Churchill was convinced that Hitler was untrustworthy and a mortal threat to Britain and the world. There was to be no alliance of expedience with Germany comparable to the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 or (very differently) American isolationism, which helps explain why the British account of the politics of their war record is justifiably a good one. Instead, Churchill’s determination led him to withstand pressure for negotiation and steadied both government and nation for the challenges of the summer and autumn of 1940, notably the German air-assault. He was able to explain the need to fight on and the purpose of doing so, although, in practice, waiting for something to turn up was important.

Darkest Hour, and, in particular, Gary Oldman’s portrayal of Churchill, have deservedly won some very favorable reviews for their dramatic portrayal of those decisive days. How does it measure up for an historian? Peggy Noonan underlined the importance of this question recently in the Wall Street Journal, where she identified historical inaccuracies in the recent television series, The Crown, and the film The Post, and worried about how dramas that bend historical truth can warp public understanding of history. Her warnings are well taken, and there are indeed a few problems in Darkest Hour, notably the fictitious scene of Churchill taking the “tube” (London Underground railway) and seeking a reassurance he receives from the public about the merit of fighting on. George VI’s doubts about Churchill are also played up for dramatic effect.

Nevertheless, the film captures Churchill’s historical accomplishment in overcoming the British political crisis that continued even after he became Prime Minister. Interest within the government in negotiating peace with Hitler via Mussolini was indeed strong until the latter declared war on Britain and France on June 10. Viscount Halifax, the Foreign Secretary, favored negotiations, while in the Commons, R.A. Butler, the Under Secretary of State in the Foreign Office (a post made more important because Halifax was in the Lords), was willing to consider negotiations and was not moved to a less contentious post until 1941.

The film, however, links Neville Chamberlain and Halifax, and underplays the role of David Lloyd George in the political crisis, which is both too critical of Chamberlain and too charitable to Lloyd George. A Liberal who became Prime Minister in 1916 during the crisis of the First World War, and served until 1922, Lloyd George was initially critical of Hitler, referring to Nazi political and religious repression as “a terrible thing to an old Liberal like myself.”[3] By 1940, however, Lloyd George was convinced that Churchill was a fool to fight on. A turning point for him was a 1936 invitation to Germany from Hitler, who had praised Lloyd George’s wartime leadership in Mein Kampf.  Their final meeting closed with the former Prime Minister urging Hitler, “the greatest German of the age,” to visit Britain, which Hitler wanted to enlist against Communism. In 1940, Lloyd George’s hopes of office after Chamberlain’s resignation were thwarted due to the latter’s opposition, and when, on June 4, he was at last offered a Cabinet post by Churchill, he refused to serve as long as Chamberlain remained in office. Chamberlain saw Lloyd George as a potential Petain, another figure from the previous world war. Regarding Churchill as his junior, he felt he had a better claim to lead the country. That October, Lloyd George said he would enter office when “Winston is bust.”

No longer Prime Minister, Chamberlain had become one of the five on the War Cabinet and served as Lord President of the Council and as leader of the Conservative Party until he resigned on grounds of ill health in September (he died in November). The film thus does not do justice to Chamberlain’s opposition to Lloyd George, or to his refusal to use his position to overthrow Churchill.

What about Mike Huckabee’s tweet comparing Churchill with Trump, and Chamberlain with Obama: “We have a Churchill”? All comparisons are of course problematic, but there are some instructive items. The USA may well be on the eve of more threatening confrontations in East Asia, and may even face an unprovoked assault as in 1941. Britain, in May 1940, constructed an effective coalition government that lasted until after Hitler’s defeat. As well as succeeding Chamberlain as Party leader, Churchill was able to lead a coalition government. I do not assume that Huckabee is predicting such political ambitions (or skills) on the part of Trump. In 1940, Churchill also became Minister of Defense and, albeit to the anger of many military leaders, including the Chiefs of Staff, he acted effectively in this role. Churchill had relevant experience and certainly more than current or recent leaders, American and British.

The film’s focus, however, is on leadership and that can entail a willingness to be unpopular. Though very different characters, both Churchill and Trump show that. Yet, it is also necessary to be able to move forward effectively and to win both domestic and international support to that end. Churchill displayed that skill. Let us hope that America’s leaders, whatever their politics, can do the same.

About the author:
*Jeremy Black’s books include Rethinking World War Two, Air Power, and Combined Operations.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI

Notes:
[1] Michael Gove, “A drum roll, please. Britons are back as heroes at long last,” The Times, November 6, 2007, section 2, p. 8.

[2] For the record, I was a member of the Advisory Committee, and Gove is a friend.

[3] A. Lenton, Lloyd George and the Lost Peace. From Versailles to Hitler, 1919-1940 (Basingstoke, 2001), p. 103.

In 2017 the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman marked himself out as a Middle East leader to be reckoned with. The consolidation of his power was completed with two audacious manoeuvres that saw the removal of the 32 year old’s chief rivals to the throne currently held by his aged and debilitated father King Salman.

In June he forced out the minister of the interior Mohammed bin Nayef. Nayef not only lost the ministry, arguably the most powerful in the kingdom, he was removed as crown prince and that title taken by the ruthlessly ambitious MbS.

Then in November, in a purge presented as an anti-corruption drive, he netted Miteb a son of the late king Abdullah and head of the Saudi Arabia National Guard (SANG), along with dozens of other senior royals and leading businessmen. Miteb, in addition to losing SANG, reportedly handed over $1 billion to secure his release. Others followed suit but the billionaire businessman Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal has thus far refused to buy his way out and is demanding his day in court to refute the corruption allegations. Still, at the end of 2017, Mohammed bin Salman stood alone as the effective ruler of a country he intends to recast in his own expansive image.

Vision 2030, the sweeping plan to revolutionize the Saudi economy by energizing the private sector, empowering women in the workforce and privatizing huge swathes of state-owned enterprises including a 5% IPO for the world’s largest energy corporation Saudi Aramco, is still in its early stages. But if MbS is able to deliver on promises like meaningful jobs and affordable housing, he will hold the support of young Saudis who make up 70% of the population. For now, at least, his grip on the domestic front appears both complete and secure.

But it is in the domain of foreign policy that Mohammed bin Salman will seek in 2018 to reinforce his claim to leadership of the Arab world. And it is here, where the recent past serves as prologue to an uncertain future, that the picture is far less reassuring.

The Yemen war which he and the Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed launched nearly three years ago drags on with no end in sight and with interminable suffering for the Yemeni people.

The feud with fellow GCC member Qatar which exploded in June of last year amidst allegations that the Qataris were terror funders continues, even though Saudi Arabia’s western friends and allies are happy to carry on selling arms and making deals with this alleged “terror state.”

The dangerous game that MbS is playing with the United States and Israel to drive through a Palestine-Israeli peace deal is made all the more dangerous by President Trump’s declaration that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The Palestinians who have been left out in the cold yet again are angry with America. But the anger that cuts deepest is rooted in a sense that the Saudis have betrayed their fellow Arabs and abandoned the cause of Palestine to curry favour with the Israelis and the Americans.

The one place where progress has been made is with Iraq. There, MbS has shown what he is capable of, playing a deft game of diplomacy aimed at weaning Baghdad away from its dependency on Iran.

Iran itself remains a great challenge but joining forces with Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu to sabre rattle will achieve little else but to stiffen Iranian resolve.

If MbS is to finally consolidate his position as a great and a good leader of the Arab world, he will need to find a way out of the quagmire that is Yemen. (A good start would be to declare a unilateral cessation to the air war.) He will need to resolve the GCC feud with Qatar which benefits none but Iran. He will need to bring the Palestinians into meaningful dialogue whilst distancing himself from the Israelis and treating the Americans with a degree of caution that has been lacking since Donald Trump arrived in the White House.

If he chooses to pursue diplomacy in foreign affairs rather than reaching for military action and ill-considered deals than MbS will have gone a long way toward his goal. He is said to be a very intelligent man. It is also true that he is arrogant and impulsive. Thus far it is the arrogant streak that has prevailed and that has led him onto dangerous ground. Is he a leader who learns from his mistakes? Or will 2018 see him repeating them? In a year’s time and perhaps much sooner we will have the answers.

About the author:
*Bill Law has reported extensively from the Middle East for the BBC. In addition to numerous radio documentaries, his films have focussed on the Arab Spring and its aftermath. Before leaving the BBC in 2014, Mr Law was the corporation’s Gulf analyst. He now runs TheGulfMatters.com, providing analysis and journalism about the Gulf States and the wider MENA region. He is a regular contributor to Middle East Eye, Gulf States News, The Independent, the New Arab, BBC and Monocle Radio. @billlaw49

This article was published at Gulf House for Studies and Publishing

(RFE/RL) — Russia has deployed a new unit armed with the advanced S-400 air-defense system in the Ukrainian region of Crimea, which Russia annexed in 2014, Russian media are reporting.

Russian state media reported on January 13 that Moscow had deployed the new division outside the city of Sevastopol, where Russia’s Black Sea Fleet is based.

It is the second S-400-equipped division deployed to Crimea, after Moscow based one near the northern port town of Fedosia in early 2017.

The S-400 is capable of striking airborne targets up to 400 kilometers away and ballistic missiles up to 60 kilometers distant.

Russia annexed the Ukrainian region in March 2014, prompting the United States, the European Union, and others to impose economic sanctions against Moscow.

Al-Qaeda-linked militias are preparing for a major operation to halt the advance of Syrian pro-government forces throughout southwest Aleppo province by making a determined stand at a strategic town in the region, Al-Masdar News says.

As the Syrian Arab Army and allied paramilitary groups sweep across the southwestern countryside of Aleppo province en-route to friendly forces in eastern Idlib encountering little to no resistance (so far), Al-Qaeda-affiliated militants are nonetheless readying for a major engagement in southwest Aleppo at the town of Tal ad-Daman.

Tal ad-Daman is by no means a large town (not even to Syrian rural standards), however it does happen to command all the main roads leading from southwestern Aleppo into eastern Idlib and northeast Hama.

Several days ago, fighters of the Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham (formerly Jabhat al-Nusra, the Syrian branch of Al-Qaeda) militant group filmed themselves inside the town, claiming to have repelled an army advance.

Whilst the claim was an outright lie because the Syrian Army was tens of kilometers away from the Tal ad-Daman at the time, government troops are now in fact closing on the town via the Al-Hass plateau and Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham has made clear its intention to fight for the it.

The end game of Ha’yat Tahrir al-Sham is clear, the militant group wants to hold Tal ad-Daman in order to prevent a secure link-up between Syrian forces in southwest Aleppo and those in eastern Idlib.

If the Syrian Army intends to properly connect the southwest Aleppo front with eastern Idlib, the control of Tal ad-Daman is crucial. By not holding it, Syrian troops leave themselves open to constant counter-attacks by armed rebel groups from the north, who will use the town as a major mobilizing point.

Following the US president’s threat not to waive the anti-Iran sanctions again and his call for amendments to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Iran’s Foreign Ministry made it clear that the nuclear agreement is by no means renegotiable.

In a statement released on Saturday, Iran’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the hostile comments made by US President Donald Trump, who extended the international nuclear accord with Iran for the third time on Friday evening but also laid down conditions for another waiver.

Trump has said he will not grant another reprieve unless changes are made to the JCPOA, the nuclear agreement between Iran and the Group 5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany).

In conjunction with the waivers, the US Treasury Department placed sanctions on 14 people and entities for alleged offenses unrelated to Iran’s nuclear industry. The entities sanctioned include Iranian Judiciary Chief Ayatollah Sadeq Amoli Larijani.

“Despite my strong inclination, I have not yet withdrawn the United States from the Iran nuclear deal,” Trump said in a statement. “Instead, I have outlined two possible paths forward: either fix the deal’s disastrous flaws, or the United States will withdraw.”

In response, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s statement has reiterated that the JCPOA is a valid international document that would not be renegotiated at all.

It also underscored that Iran will not do anything beyond its commitments under the JCPOA, will not agree on any changes in the agreement, and will not allow any links between the JCPOA and any other subject.

Like the other parties to the JCPOA, the US government must honor its commitments to the deal and stop shirking its responsibility under bogus pretexts, the statement added, holding Washington accountable for the consequences of withdrawal from the agreement.

“The internal solidity of and international support for the agreement have blocked attempts by Mr. Trump, the Zionist regime (of Israel), and the ominous alliance of hardline warmongers to terminate this agreement or make changes to it,” the ministry said.

Iranian officials have already warned the US of the heavy price it will have to pay for scrapping the JCPOA, saying Tehran has devised plans to deal with a possible US withdrawal and will take swift measures to restore Iran’s nuclear capabilities.

Since the historic deal was signed in Vienna in July 2015, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has repeatedly confirmed the Islamic Republic’s compliance with its commitments under the JCPOA, but some other parties, especially the US, have failed to live up to their undertakings.

Chelsea Manning, the former US Army soldier who was jailed for passing thousands of government documents to WikiLeaks exposing American military abuses in Iraq and Afghanistan, has filed to run for the US Senate seat in Maryland.

Manning, who had her 35-year sentence commuted by former President Barack Obama in May last year, declared her intention to run with the Federal Election Commission on January 5. She will run as a Democrat.

The 30-year-old Oklahoma native faces a tough primary battle against incumbent Democrat Ben Cardin, the senior senator from Maryland who has held the seat since 2007. Cardin has an approval rate of 50 percent, according to the latest figures cited by the Baltimore Sun, and will face Manning and three other candidates in the upcoming primary.

Prominent critics interpreted Manning’s announcement as some kind of Russian plot designed to overthrow Cardin, the senior Democrat on the Senate foreign relations committee, who has made a number of Russophobic statements in recent times – a theory swiftly slapped down by other media personalities.

Manning was arrested in 2010 after an internal US Army investigation found she had leaked more than 700,000 sensitive documents and videos to news outlets across the world, including WikiLeaks. She was released from military prison at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas last year.

A report by United Nations Special Rapporteur on torture, Juan Mendez, was scathing of the US government’s treatment of Manning while in detention. Mendez told the Guardian in 2012 that the military was at least culpable of cruel and inhumane treatment in keeping Manning locked up for 23 hours a day over an 11-month period.

As recently as January last year, Manning, who came out as transgender the day after she was jailed, was branded an “ungrateful traitor” in a tweet by President Donald Trump after she criticized his predecessor Obama.

Manning took aim back at the president in July after Trump announced his plan to ban transgender people from the military, calling the move “cowardice.”

By Syed Tausief Ausaf

Tough new sanctions imposed by US President Donald Trump on 14 Iranian individuals and organizations are a political blow and a warning to the regime in Tehran, a leading analyst told Arab News on Saturday.

Among those targeted are the powerful politician Ayatollah Sadeq Larijani, the head of Iran’s judiciary and a close ally of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Groups facing sanctions include the cyber unit of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

The US move is a significant move and “a critical victory for human rights defenders and the Iranian people,” said Majid Rafizadeh, a Harvard-educated Iranian-American political scientist.

The sanctions on the IRGC cyber unit were also a step toward peace and stability by combating the Iranian regime’s attempts to hack other governments’ systems and organizations, he said.

Announcing the new action on Friday, Trump said he would continue the suspension of US sanctions on Iran under the 2015 nuclear deal — but only for 120 days. In the intervening time, he has demanded a separate agreement to restrict Iran’s ballistic missile program, which is not explicitly covered by the nuclear deal, and to make the 10-year curb on Iran’s nuclear program permanent. If he sees no progress on such an agreement, the president will withdraw from the nuclear deal.

Trump was sending a message that the Iranian regime “will be monitored not only for its nuclear defiance, development, research and proliferation, but also for its human rights violations,” Rafizadeh said.

Trump, who has sharply criticized the deal reached under Barack Obama’s presidency, had chafed at once again having to waive sanctions on a country he sees as a threat in the Middle East.

“Despite my strong inclination, I have not yet withdrawn the United States from the Iran nuclear deal,” he said on Friday. The options were to fix “the deal’s disastrous flaws, or the United States will withdraw. This is a last chance.”

Contrary to the view of his critics, Rafizadeh said, Trump had used diplomacy to address the loopholes in the nuclear deal. “This will give the administration a more robust platform to persuade the EU nations to fix the nuclear agreement or to abandon it.

“If other parties do not take necessary and adequate action to address the shortcomings of the nuclear agreement, Trump has buttressed his position and laid out the groundwork to reimpose sanctions, as well as withdrawing from the deal.”

Trump is also giving the US Congress additional time to work on legislation to fix loopholes in the deal, such as requiring Iran to allow its military sites be inspected for nuclear development, research, weaponization and proliferation, Rafizadeh said.

“Iran is not adhering to the spirit of the nuclear deal due to its heightened interventionist and expansionist policies in the Arab world and to its human rights violations domestically.”

Rafizadeh said the deal had empowered the IRGC and its militias in the region through sanctions relief. This, he said, had further radicalized, militarized and destabilized the region. “Iran continues to ratchet up its antagonistic policy toward Arab nations, the US, and the West.”

Iran’s Foreign Ministry said sanctions on Larijani were “hostile action” that “crossed all red lines of conduct in the international community and a violation of international law, and will surely be answered by a serious reaction of the Islamic Republic.”
Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the nuclear deal was “not renegotiable” and Trump’s move “amounts to desperate attempts to undermine a solid multilateral agreement.”

James Jeffrey, distinguished fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former US ambassador to Iraq, told Arab News: “Ignore the rhetoric. Zarif is simply reflecting the truth about Iran’s refusal to change the nuclear deal, and all other parties including Europeans agree. But what Trump and his advisers, in background talks with me, seem to be looking for is an agreement with France, Germany and the UK to deal with the problems Trump cites — long-range missiles, inspection flaws and Iranian enrichment breakout after 10 years, without necessarily new negotiations.

“These are real problems that, for example, French President Emmanuel Macron has cited, and do not necessarily require modifying the agreement which, as Zarif says, understandably Iran rejects.

“Missiles and sanctions related to them are not part of the agreement, but a separate Security Council resolution that Iran did not formally agree to.

“Inspection problems involve a mix of the International Atomic Energy Agency not using powers the agreement gives it, and inspection procedures and deals outside of the agreement.

“Unchecked enrichment after 10 years is a serious problem, but could be dealt with through European/US carrots and sticks and cooperation by a future Iranian government, without changing the agreement.”

Speaking by phone to Arab News, Aaron David Miller, vice president for New Initiatives at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars and a former senior US peace negotiator, said that the Trump administration will face “great odds” convincing European signatories of the JCPOA to agree to change the “internal architecture’ of the agreement.

Miller also maintained that despite the strong rhetoric from the Trump administration, he does not see its policy on Iran as fundamentally different from that of his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Nevertheless, when asked whether he had expected the JCPOA to compel Iran to moderate its behavior in the region or whether he expected it to be emboldened, Miller said the JCPOA was not meant to be “transformational. It was transactional.”

By Holly Ashe*

I gave myself a well-earned few days off, turned 30, and then decided to see how the world has changed on Twitter. To my dismay, within 5 minutes of Golden Globes, I realised, that the intersectional feminist movement had made me want to be more of a misogynist every second I scrolled.

The Golden Globes predictably fuelled a pretty pathetic fire and like moths to a flame, any narrow-minded female ‘feminist’ followed idiotically, without research, free thought, or caution. You play with fire, you get burnt. I shudder to think the endgame when this fad will soon tire out, innocent men will get accused, lives will be ruined and the reputation of strong women will once again be tarnished by misandrists and one track liberal lefties.

As “times up” sprawled on the red carpet, and celebrities draped in black to show their solidarity against sexual harassment (the dresses were the best thing about the whole night if I’m absolutely honest, the fashion designer in me leap out in joy seeing my favourite colour finally be worn, and my eyes were able to rest from horrendous pink fluff and green disasters they usually waltz around in) what’s not to love? Well, quite a lot actually. Let me elaborate.

Obviously, like any sane individual, I am absolutely against sexual harassment, abuse, and rape; this should go without saying, but you would be surprised what one gets accused of when your opinion is not the same as Libby Lefty. But the damage this movement is having on not only men’s lives, but on our court systems, our prosecution process and free speech may be irreversible.

Despite the word ‘alleged’ appearing before every accusation, people are instantly taking every headline and every woman’s word as law, no judge or jury, just a public executioner of the accused’s careers, family’s lives and any other part of their life’s that is in reach.

228 years of jurisprudence in America, being thrown out of the window by actors, actresses, singers and keyboard warriors, all for the name of “equality” and “feminism”. This would be laughable if it wasn’t so bloodcurdlingly hurtful. The system isn’t perfect, and of course, I am not stating that people who have committed these crimes do not deserve punishment, but that doesn’t mean there needn’t be a fair trial first.

These accusations could ruin your father, your brother, your partner or your son, without proof, based on sheer hysteria. Not all men are sexual assailants, not all men want to attack you, not all men are guilty, and there’s no systemic sexism or patriarchy, in the West at least. In a day and age where the line has blurred beyond recognition with what constitutes as sexual harassment and assault, the rich and famous are virtue signalling to gain more attention, and feminists are using it to support a cause that is only followed by misinformed sheep.

Americans and Brits are a fundamentally unserious bunch. Now that Oprah Winfrey should run for president in 2020 after her “incredible” speech at an award ceremony, the seriousness the public are taking these entertainers just highlights how fame obsessed people actually are, just because she’s a woman, despite her horrific past pseudoscientific record.

You know why overwhelming women from Middle America voted for Trump? This is why.

There’s always a disproportionate backlash, and the next one is coming.

About the author:
*Holly Ashe is a London based fashion and culture writer. She was previously published in Vogue International as a fashion designer and a start-up business entrepreneur. Her previous publications can be found here. You can follow her on twitter @hollyroseashe.

Source:
This article was published by Bombs and Dollars.