Lukasz Niec is a Polish born green card holder and Wisconsin physician. He is now held in immigration detention because of juvenile crimes and adult interactions with police which didn’t result in convictions. Despite the minor nature of his offenses he is deportable. But it must be pointed out that his plight was not caused by Donald Trump.

Bill Clinton is the president most responsible for Dr. Niec’s situation. In 1996 Clinton cut one of many dirty deals with Newt Gingrich and the republicans. The Illegal Immigration Reform and Responsibility Act law made any non-citizen deportable for even minor crimes. Thanks to Clinton and Gingrich bouncing a check is treated as seriously as assault if the perpetrator isn’t a citizen. This draconian rule has led to thousands of deportations over the last twenty years.

Police state actions against immigrants have been in full effect for many years but these stories went under the radar until Donald Trump became president. Every day immigrants are swept up in raids or taken off of buses and trains but these conditions are not new either. The Customs and Border Patrol (CPB) may operate anywhere within 100 miles of the border and the agency has been violating human rights in western New York state and the entire state of Florida for a very long time.

Recent videos of Caribbean immigrants being removed from buses in Florida have been rightly met with outrage. But this columnist wrote about the same CPB abuses taking place in upstate New York in 2010, long before anyone knew that Donald Trump would be president.

It is tempting to blame Trump for all persecutions carried out against immigrants. He did make building a border wall and accelerating deportations a central part of his presidential campaign. But he has built on tools given to him by his predecessors.

As if these tales of modern day bounty hunting aren’t frightening enough, the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)Trump administration has contracted with Vigilant Solutions , a corporation with a database of 2 billion license plate numbers from across the country. The Obama administration declined to carry out this same plan of mass surveillance but Trump has upped the ante.

There is a tendency to dismiss the history of presidential policies and make Trump the focus of every outrageous government action. But there can be no real resistance against him if his predecessors are granted get out of jail free cards.

Barack Obama increased the budget for immigration enforcement by 300% above Bush administration levels. Trump inherited a well-oiled machine, a 48,000 personnel force which was meant to expel as many people as possible. It did just that and a record number of immigrants, 2.5 million, were deported during the Obama administration.

There should be no shrinking from acknowledging these facts. Democratic presidents greased the skids for Trump and the media only now pay attention to activities which they should have reported long before he took office.

The white nationalism which propelled Trump into office is very much in favor of deporting as many people as it can. The term “shithole” nations is a synonym for non-white and millions of white Americans want to send as many brown and black away as they can possible snatch.

Lukasz Niec is collateral damage because the word immigrant has become synonymous with non-white. Newt Gingrich probably didn’t have Poles or any other Europeans in mind when he cooked up his plot for mass deportations. But that is the way America’s racist laws have always worked. There are always a handful of white people who suffer along with the intended black and brown targets.

Trump cannot be opposed on immigration or any other issue without a wholesale rejection of horrific legal precedents which have become acceptable. The sight of Indonesian asylum seekers in New Jersey now seeking shelter in a church tug at the heart strings, so does the Jamaican woman removed from a bus in Florida. But unless there is a willingness to tear apart the law enforcement system in this country republicans and democrats alike will continue to violate human rights.

The resistance has to resist a lot more than Trump. The police state must be rejected entirely. Without it there would be no immigration detention. The idea that some people aren’t welcome in a nation which was created by invaders and usurpers must be rejected too.

The people must be safe from presidential whims. Why does Vigilant Solutions have 2 billion license plates numbers at all? Why is surveillance of every private citizen permissible in a country which allegedly protects its citizens from unreasonable searches?

It is time to say no to the entire rotten structure. Americans accept armed police, mass incarceration and a plethora of corporations with the ability to violate our privacy and our rights. The police state is a danger to everyone’s life and it must be eliminated.

That must be the demand. That is the only resistance worth discussing. Replacing Trump with a new iteration of Clinton or Obama won’t make life safer for immigrants or anyone else. It is time to fight against them all and have true democracy for citizens and immigrants alike.

Most of the information we have about the Milky Way stellar halo comes from its inner region, which we can observe close to the solar neighborhood. However, for the first time the chemical properties of the external regions of the halo of our galaxy were explored with high resolution spectroscopy in the optical of a sample of 28 red giant stars at large distances from the Sun.

The method that was used, i.e. a spectroscopic analysis, consists in separating the light of the stars in its different frequencies in order to obtain information on the star’s chemical composition. The analysis of the chemical properties of the stars can provide information on the characteristics of the environment in which they were born.

“The abundance of some chemical elements in the stars in the external regions of the Milky Way halo,” explained Giuseppina Battaglia, astrophysicist at the IAC and first author of the article,” was found to be surprisingly different from the information we had concerning the inner regions of the halo.”

On the other hand, several similarities were discovered with the chemical composition observed for stars in nearby massive dwarf galaxies, such as Sagittarius and the Large Magellanic Cloud. These signatures tells us that the external regions of the stellar halo might contain the remains of one, or more, massive dwarf galaxy, devoured by the Milky Way.

Stellar haloes are a common component of galaxies like the Milky Way. “The theory explaining the formation of structure and galaxies in the Universe predicts that stellar haloes, and in particular their outer regions, consist mainly of the stellar component of destroyed, smaller galaxies,” G.Battaglia said. “Qualitatively this is in agreement with the observational findings of this study, where we found remnants of cannibalized dwarf galaxies around the Milky Way.”

For this study data from about 100 hours of telescope observing time were used, obtained on facilities in both the Northern and Southern hemisphere. Specifically, the team used the Very Large Telescope “Kueyen” (UT2) of the European Southern Observatory in Paranal and the Magellan telescope Clay in Las Campanas, both in Chile, as well as the Hobby Eberly Telescope, in Texas.

A previously unrecognized source of nitrogen oxide is contributing up to about 40 percent of the NOx emissions in California, according to a study led by the University of California, Davis. The study traces the emissions to fertilized soils in the Central Valley region.

In the study, published January 31 in the journal Science Advances, the authors compared computer models with estimates collected from scientific flights over the San Joaquin Valley. Both the model and flight data suggested that between 25 and 41 percent of NOx emissions comes from soils with heavy nitrogen fertilizer applications.

RURAL SMOG SOURCE

Smog-forming nitrogen oxides, or NOx, are a family of air-polluting chemical compounds. They are central to the formation of ground-level ozone and contribute to adverse health effects, such as heart disease, asthma and other respiratory issues. NOx is a primary component of air pollution, which the World Health Organization estimates causes 1 in 8 deaths worldwide.

Fossil fuels have long been recognized as a major contributor to NOx pollution. Technologies like the catalytic converter have helped greatly reduce NOx emitted from vehicles in urban areas. But some of the state’s worst air quality problems are now in rural areas, particularly the Central Valley region, which is home to some of the poorest communities in California.

MORE FOOD, LESS POLLUTION

The Central Valley is also one of the world’s most highly productive agricultural areas. Roughly half of the fruits and nuts produced in the United States are grown there. This includes nearly all the nation’s almonds, walnuts, raisins, avocados, and tomatoes.

“We need to increase the food we’re making,” said lead author Maya Almaraz, a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow in UC Davis Professor Ben Houlton’s lab. “We need to do it on the land we have. But we need to do it using improved techniques.”

The study suggests potential solutions for reducing NOx soil emissions, primarily through different forms of fertilizer management.

Only about half of the nitrogen fertilizer applied to crops are used by the plant. But slow-release fertilizers that deliver nutrients in a way that more closely mimics nature have been shown to greatly improve nitrogen use efficiency of crops, reducing emissions of nitrogen in the environment.

Healthy soils programs that restore carbon in the soil can also help fight climate change and are likely to increase nutrient retention and cycling to crops.

And precision agriculture practices help improve water and fertilizer efficiencies, particularly in perennial crops, such as almonds.

BUILDING UPON WORK IN MOTION

The state also began a program this year in which growers work in coalitions to gather information on efficient uses of nitrogen so they can evaluate how and where the state needs to manage nitrogen in agricultural areas. This work aims to reduce nitrate in the groundwater but it may have a double benefit in reducing NOx emissions.

“Since this source of NOx can remain local, largely in rural farming communities, we need to develop a kind of ‘catalytic converter’ for soils and farms,” said senior author Houlton, a professor with the UC Davis Department of Land, Air and Water Resources, and director of the John Muir Institute of the Environment. “It’s critical that new policies focus on incentives to bring the latest nutrient management technologies to farms so that growers can produce food more efficiently, increasing their bottom line and improving rural health.”

Archaeologists are a little like forensic investigators: They scour the remains of past societies, looking for clues in pottery, tools and bones about how people lived, and how they died.

And just as detectives might re-create the scene of a crime, University of Washington archaeologists have re-created the weapons used by hunter-gatherers in the post-Ice Age Arctic some 14,000 years ago. Looking for clues as to how those early people advanced their own technology, researchers also considered what that might tell us about human migration, ancient climates and the fate of some animal species.

In an article published Jan. 31 in the Journal of Archaeological Science, Janice Wood, recent UW anthropology graduate, and Ben Fitzhugh, a UW professor of anthropology, show how they reconstructed prehistoric projectiles and points from ancient sites in what is now Alaska and studied the qualities that would make for a lethal hunting weapon.

The UW team chose to study hunting weapons from the time of the earliest archaeological record in Alaska (around 10,000 to 14,000 years ago), a time that is less understood archaeologically, and when different kinds of projectile points were in use. Team members designed a pair of experiments to test the effectiveness of the different point types. By examining and testing different points in this way, the team has come to a new understanding about the technological choices people made in ancient times.

“The hunter-gatherers of 12,000 years ago were more sophisticated than we give them credit for,” Fitzhugh said. “We haven’t thought of hunter-gatherers in the Pleistocene as having that kind of sophistication, but they clearly did for the things that they had to manage in their daily lives, such as hunting game. They had a very comprehensive understanding of different tools, and the best tools for different prey and shot conditions.”

Prior research has focused on the flight ballistics of the hunting weapons in general, and no prior study has looked specifically at the ballistics of tools used in Siberia and the Arctic regions of North America just after the Ice Age. In addition to foraging for plants and berries (when available), nomadic groups hunted caribou, reindeer and other animals for food, typically with spears or darts (thrown from atlatl boards). Without preservation of the wood shafts, these tools are mainly differentiated in the archaeological record by their stone and bone points. But it was not known how effective different kinds of points were in causing lethal injury to prey.

Nor is it known, definitively, whether different types of points were associated with only certain groups of people, or whether with the same groups used certain point types to specialize on particular kinds of game or hunting practices. It is generally accepted that different point types were developed in Africa and Eurasia and brought to Alaska before the end of the Ice Age. These included rudimentary points made of sharpened bone, antler or ivory; more intricate, flaked stone tips popularly familiar as “arrowheads”; and a composite point made of bone or antler with razor blade-like stone microblades embedded around the edges.

The three likely were invented at separate times but remained in use during the same period because each presumably had its own advantages, Wood said. Learning how they functioned informs what we know about prehistoric hunters and the repercussions of their practices.

So Wood traveled to the area around Fairbanks, Alaska, and crafted 30 projectile points, 10 of each kind. She tried to stay as true to the original materials and manufacturing processes as possible, using poplar projectiles, and birch tar as an adhesive to affix the points to the tips of the projectiles. While ancient Alaskans used atlatls (a kind of throwing board), Wood used a maple recurve bow to shoot the arrows for greater control and precision.

• For the bone tip, modeled on a 12,000-year-old ivory point from an Alaskan archaeological site, Wood used a multipurpose tool to grind a commercially purchased cow bone;
• For the stone tip, she used a hammerstone to strike obsidian into flakes, then shaped them into points modeled on those found at another site in Alaska from 13,000 years ago;
• And for the composite microblade tip — modeled microblade technologies seen in Alaska since at least 13,000 years ago and a rare, preserved grooved antler point from a more recent Alaskan site used more than 8,000 years ago — Wood used a saw and sandpaper to grind a caribou antler to a point. She then used the multipurpose tool to gouge out a groove around its perimeter, into which she inserted obsidian microblades.

Wood then tested how well each point could penetrate and damage two different targets: blocks of ballistic gelatin (a clear synthetic gelatin meant to mimic animal muscle tissue) and a fresh reindeer carcass, purchased from a local farm. Wood conducted her trials over seven hours on a December day, with an average outdoor temperature of minus 17 degrees Fahrenheit.

In Wood’s field trial, the composite microblade points were more effective than simple stone or bone on smaller prey, showing the greatest versatility and ability to cause incapacitating damage no matter where they struck the animal’s body. But the stone and bone points had their own strengths: Bone points penetrated deeply but created narrower wounds, suggesting their potential for puncturing and stunning larger prey (such as bison or mammoth); the stone points could have cut wider wounds, especially on large prey (moose or bison), resulting in a quicker kill.

Wood said the findings show that hunters during this period were sophisticated enough to recognize the best point to use, and when. Hunters worked in groups; they needed to complete successful hunts, in the least amount of time, and avoid risk to themselves.

“We have shown how each point has its own performance strengths,” she said. Bone points punctured effectively, flaked stone created a greater incision, and the microblade was best for lacerated wounds. “It has to do with the animal itself; animals react differently to different wounds. And it would have been important to these nomadic hunters to bring the animal down efficiently. They were hunting for food.”

Weapon use can shed light on the movement of people and animals as humans spread across the globe and how ecosystems changed before, during and after the ice ages.

“The findings of our paper have relevance to the understanding of ballistic properties affecting hunting success anywhere in the world people lived during the 99 percent of human history that falls between the invention of stone tools more than 3 million years ago in Africa and the origins of agriculture,” Fitzhugh said.

It could also inform debates on whether human hunting practices directly led to the extinction of some species. The team’s findings and other research show that our ancestors were thinking about effectiveness and efficiency, Wood said, which may have influenced which animals they targeted. An animal that was easier to kill may have been targeted more often, which could, along with changing climates, explain why animals such as the horse disappeared from the Arctic. A shot to the lung was lethal for early equines, Wood said, but a caribou could keep going.

“I see this line of research as looking at the capacity of the human brain to come up with innovations that ultimately changed the course of human history,” she said. “This reveals the human capacity to invent in extreme circumstances, to figure out a need and a way to meet that need that made it easier to eat and minimized the risk.”

Upon completion of the experiment, the bones were sterilized for future study of projectile impact marks.

Politically-motivated Serbian exaggerations and Croatian underestimates of the number of victims at the WWII Croatian fascist concentration camp at Jasenovac do not hold up to scientific scrutiny, research shows.

By Sven Milekic

In the latest spat between Zagreb and Belgrade over the WWII concentration camp at Jasenovac – run by the Croatian fascist Ustasa movement – the death toll at the camp has again been called into question.

For decades, politicians, academics and others in Croatia and Serbia have argued about the number of people who died at the camp – offering figures ranging from as low as 1,500 victims to as high as 1.1 million.

But despite the various differing claims from sources in Croatia and Serbia, there are verified facts, backed up by respected institutions and experts, which give a reliable estimate of the number of the people killed at the camp.

The most recent row saw Croatia protest about an exhibition on Jasenovac that was organised by Serbia at the UN building in New York last Thursday, claiming it was misused for political purposes – to identify Croatia with fascism and tarnish its international image.

Serbian Foreign Minister Ivica Dacic rejected these claims, asking Croatian Prime Minister Andrej Plenkovic to say which ethnic group formed the greatest number of Jasenovac victims and what the exact death toll was.

“Just as Plenkovic goes to Yad Vashem [Holocaust memorial centre in Jerusalem], we expect him to do the same in Croatia and Jasenovac itself and to clearly define and say who the victims are. Were there 50,000, 100,000 or 700,000 [deaths]?” Dacic said on Friday.

Dacic was intimating that Croatian politicians try to downplay the crimes committed at the camp and the death toll. So far, Plenkovic has not responded.

Croatian political analyst Zarko Puhovski suggested the continuing dispute between the two countries about Jasenovac has its roots in the 1990s war.

“Croatia had a position in which it tried to downplay Jasenovac… while Serbia acted as if only Serbs were killed there,” Puhovski said.

Vision of an ethnically pure state

The Ustasa-led Nazi puppet state, the Independent State of Croatia – which included most of present-day Croatia, all Bosnia and Herzegovina and a small part of Serbia – had a population of some six million people, incluing around 3.5 million Croats, 1.8 million Serbs and 700,000 Bosniaks.

In its vision of an ethnically pure state – with Bosniaks considered as Croats of the Muslim faith – the NDH started targeting Serbs and two minorities, Jews and Roma, after it was founded in 1941.

Modelled on Nazi Nuremberg laws, the NDH in April 1941 passed legislation against “non-Aryan” Jews and Roma.

Serbs, who were referred to as “Greek-Easterners” in Ustasa legal documents, were not directly labelled as a “non-Aryan” people, but were persecuted indirectly through other legislation against enemies of the NDH.

The general idea, as expressed by some prominent Ustasa officials, was to kill a third of the Serbs, deport a third and convert the other third from Orthodox Christianity to Catholicism. Around 100,000 Serbs were converted to Catholicism.

Jasenovac, which opened in late August 1941 and operated until late April 1945, was the biggest concentration camp in the Ustasa camp system.

Jasenovac itself was composed of five sub-camps, one of which was Stara Gradiska, an Austro-Hungarian fort used as a prison by many regimes throughout the 19th and 20th centuries.

Listing the victims, one by one

In the 2000s, the Jasenovac Memorial Site started working on a list of all the inmates who were killed or died at the camp, using existing name-by-name lists, documents, confirmations of deaths and verifications by relatives.

The Memorial site has put together the most comprehensive name-by-name list so far, which includes a total of 83,145 victims.

Sorted by ethnicity, the list has 47,627 Serbs, 16,173 Roma and 13,116 Jews, while Croats, Bosniaks and others make up the total number. Those who were not Serbs, Roma or Jews were killed because they were anti-fascists, as well as real or suspected political enemies.

From the total number, 39,570 were adult men, 23,474 were adult women, while 20,101 were children.

While the Memorial Site itself says that the number is not final, as well as admitting the possibility that there are isolated mistakes in its list, it believes that the total death toll is within its estimate of between 80,000 and 100,000 people.

These figures fall inside a range of other estimates made by the Belgrade Museum of Genocide Victims (80,022), the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (between 77,000 and 99,000) and the Simon Wiesenthal Centre (85,000). The latter two institutions do not offer name-by-name lists.

Regarding the number of Jewish victims at Jasenovac, Yad Vashem offers a longer name-by-name list, with 16,196 victims.

Croatian historian Ivo Goldstein wrote in his book Holocaust in Zagreb in 2001 meanwhile that the total number of Jewish victims is probably close to 17,000.

Recently-deceased writer Slavko Goldstein explained in his book Jasenovac: Tragedy, Mythology, Truth that the difference spurs from Yad Vashem including Jews that were baptised into Catholicism – and therefore potentially classifiable as non-Jews – as well as Jews who were refugees from Nazi Germany, and who were not researched extensively.

Numbers game: the inflated Serbian figures

Some Serbian historians offered much larger numbers for the estimated death toll at Jasenovac. While writing the biography of Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito in 1984, one Serbian historian, Vladimir Dedijer, put the number of victims at 700,000.

Bosnian sociologist and historian Radomir Bulatovic has even suggested a death toll of as many as 1.1 million people.

By comparison, some 1.1 million died at Auschwitz, the biggest Nazi death camp – but Jasenovac never had a mechanised extermination system like Auschwitz’s gas chambers, and its inmates were mostly killed by being shot or beaten to death.

Despite this, Serb sources have continued to offer much higher estimates than the Jasenovac Memorial Site.

In 2011, the International Commission for Establishing the Truth About Jasenovac, an NGO based in Bosnia’s Serb-dominated Republika Srpska entity, suggested a figure of over 800,000.

The Donja Gradina Memorial Site in Bosnia, also in Republika Srpska suggested 700,000.

In 1946, the first Yugoslav commission that listed the crimes of the Axis powers and their domestic collaborators estimated that between 500,000 and 600,000 people died in Jasenovac.

The 1960 edition of the Encyclopaedia of Yugoslavia offered the figure of 700,000 people.

However, none of these estimates is based on a name-by-name lists.

Croatian demographer Vladimir Zerjavic estimated the overall death toll in Yugoslavia during WWII as little over one million people.

Using demographic methods, statistics and documents, Zerjavic put the number of victims of Jasenovac between 80,000 and 90,000 people.

Bosnian statistician Bogoljub Kocovic came to a similar death toll as Zerjavic for the whole of Yugoslavia.

In his 1992 book Obsessions and Megalomania over Jasenovac and Bleiburg, Zerjavic explained that the overinflated numbers come from the death toll Yugoslavia reported to the Paris-based international commission for reparations – 1.7 million people – in 1946. This figure was later used as a basis for German reparations to Yugoslavia.

In his academic article On the Number of Victims of the Jasenovac Camp Complex, Ivo Goldstein also claims the same.

Numbers game: the understated Croatian figures

On the Croatian side, there were claims that the death toll is significantly lower than the 83,145 named by the Memorial Site.

In his well-known book Horrors of War: Historical Reality and Philosophy, published in 1989, Croatian 1990s President Franjo Tudjman, who was a historian, suggested that it was between 30,000 and 40,000.

In 1992, during the war, the Croatian parliament formed a commission to investigate all the crimes committed during WWII and the Yugoslav period.

In its report in 1999, the commission established a total death toll of 2,238 people for Jasenovac. Parliament was unsatisfied with the work of the commission and sent the report back for amendment – which was never carried out.

The most recent such estimate came from a Zagreb-based NGO, the Society for Research of the Threefold Jasenovac Camp, which claimed that the Yugoslav Communists established two post-WWII concentration camps on the site of the former Ustasa camp – a claim which is not supported by the vast majority of historical documents and history researchers.

The NGO, which does not have many professional historians, downplays the total WWII death toll, setting it at around 1,500, and saying that the majority died from diseases and maltreatment, not as a result of executions. It received around 5,600 euros for research archive documents from Jasenovac from the Croatian War Veterans’ Ministry in 2017.

The NGO’s profile was raised when controversial film director Jakov Sedlar released a documentary called Jasenovac – The Truth about its work in 2016. It was praised by Croatia’s culture minister at the time, Zlatko Hasanbegovic, but criticised for factual mistakes and for using unreliable documents.

None of the estimates from Croatia, except the one made by the Jasenovac Memorial Site itself, used scientific methods or took all historical sources into consideration.

(Civil.Ge) — The key refinancing rate will remain unchanged at 7.25%, the National Bank of Georgia (NBG) said in its statement on January 31.

According to the NBG, the nominal effective exchange rate “significantly depreciated” by the end of last year, which “increased pressure on inflation” (6.7% in December) and “contributed to increase of inflation expectations.”

The Bank pointed out that despite GEL’s recent appreciation, the effect of its devaluation last year “has not been entirely mitigated.”

The regulator, however, anticipates that the annual inflation rate will decrease in the first months of 2018, and remain close the average target rate during the year.

The key rate remained unchanged at 8% in the first three months of 2016, but went through gradual easing beginning from April and remained unchanged at 6.5% until January, 2017.

The Bank increased the key rate to 6.75% on January 25 and to 7% on May 2, but kept the rate unchanged for three consecutive meetings until increasing it again to 7.25% on December 13.

The Central Bank’s monetary policy committee will hold its next meeting on March 14, 2018.

A comprehensive analysis of policies related to sexual assaults — known as mandatory reporting or compelled disclosure — at 150 universities has raised questions about their effectiveness and their impacts on victims.

In a paper in the journal American Psychologist, UO psychologist Jennifer Freyd of the University of Oregon and two colleagues concluded that some of the reasoning behind the policies is not supported by existing research on sexual assault reporting.

In their paper, the researchers call for survivor-centered reforms and offer four alternative approaches for institutions to consider as they seek to comply with federal laws and guidelines.

“What we show in our study is that we lack evidence that mandatory reporting in safe and effective,” said Freyd, a professor in the UO Department of Psychology. “In fact, the data point in the opposite direction — that many of the policies we that we reviewed are neither safe nor effective.”

Psychologists Kathryn J. Holland, a doctoral student at the University of Michigan at the time of the study and now a professor at the University of Nebraska, and Lilia M. Cortina of the University of Michigan are co-authors on the paper.

Many university policies, while still evolving, require employees who’ve heard a student’s report of a sexual assault to notify university officials and, in some cases, the police — regardless of the wishes of the victim. Interpretations of Title IX and the Clery Act have driven these policies.

Title IX prohibits sex discrimination in educational programs receiving federal dollars and requires prompt and equitable responses by institutions. Under updated federal guidance on this civil rights law, compelled disclosure was introduced for responsible employees, but that designation has been open to interpretation. The Clery Act requires institutions to collect and publish information about the prevalence of sex-related crimes on and near a campus.

For their article, Holland, the study’s lead author, led a comprehensive review of the reporting policies randomly selected to represent 50 large, 50 medium and 50 small four-year not-for-profit colleges and universities, none of which were named. Fifty-two percent were public and 48 percent were private.

Of those, 97 percent had policies mandating that certain employees to report sexual assault disclosed to them by a student. The vast majority of the policies require all, or nearly all, employees to report disclosures, while a few had a more specific and selective list of mandatory reporters.

They found limited research supporting rationales for compelled disclosure. “In fact,” the researchers wrote in their conclusion, “some evidence suggests that these mandates may carry negative consequences: silencing and disempowering survivors, complicating employees’ jobs, and prioritizing legal liability over student welfare.”

The researchers also generated four alternative approaches featuring victim-centered goals that could protect everyone, including the institutions, in sexual assault cases and meet Title IX goals of investigating and prosecuting assaults, assisting survivors, deterring future assaults and enhancing campus security.

“It is really important not to harm abuse victims,” Freyd said. “One way adult victims can get harmed is by taking away their autonomy. Mandatory reporting policies tend to do exactly that and thus are likely to cause harm. There are alternatives that are more consistent with the evidence we do have.”

The UO’s Freyd is a leading voice on issues of sexual harassment. In June, she spoke on “Moving from Institutional Betrayal to Institutional Courage” in a workshop held by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine. She also was a contributor to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault and was present in 2014 when the Obama Administration rolled out proposed guidelines for combating sexual violence.

In one alternative suggested by Freyd and her co-authors, university employees who receive a student’s report of sexual assault would be allowed to respect the victim’s choice on disclosure, and to whom an incident may be reported. Such an approach would allow for a change in action if a victim’s mind later changes.

Freyd initially suggested this alternative in an April 2016 essay for the Huffington Post. The UO revised its reporting policy, effective Sept 15, to reflect this approach.

In a second approach, a student may report an incident and get services, and choose whether an investigation should be launched. A similarly adopted policy by the U.S. Department of Defense, the researchers noted, helped increase reporting and led to more positive experiences by victims.

A third alternative suggests third-party online technologies that allow victims to consider their options for reporting and obtaining services. Such a system, the researchers wrote, would allow for a time-stamped electronic record, including photographic evidence, for use if the student chooses to request an investigation. It also would allow for an automatic trigger for advancing the report if another student later files a report involving the same perpetrator.

The fourth alternative calls for a blended approach of the alternatives, recognizing that institutions may be hesitant to give up compelled disclosure policies in light of federal directives. “The aims could be to decrease involuntary disclosures while increasing voluntary ones,” the researchers wrote.

Together with their colleagues from the Senckenberg Nature Research Society, scientists of the Technical University of Munich (TUM) were able to show that currently widespread insects are threatened with a serious decline in species diversity in the near future.

The research team lists the fragmentation of habitats and the intensification of agriculture as reasons for the decline of these “generalists.” According to the study, published today in the scientific journal Biological Conservation, the genetic diversity among the examined butterfly species is also expected to decline sharply in the future – as a result, the insects will become more sensitive to environmental changes.

The number of insects continues to decrease – in some regions, a dramatic decline by up to 75 percent has been recorded in recent decades.

“Until now, we assumed that it is primarily the specialists among the insects, i.e., animals that depend on a specific habitat, that are threatened with extinction,” explained Professor Dr. Thomas Schmitt, director of the Senckenberg German Entomological Institute in Müncheberg, and he continued, “In our recent study, we were able to show that even so-called “ubiquitous species” will be facing massive threats in the future.”

In its study, the team of scientists explains that species with low habitat requirements depend on the exchange between different populations.

“Our studies clearly show that widespread species have a much more diverse intraspecific gene pool than species that are adapted to a specific habitat,” said Dr. Jan Christian Habel of the Technical University in Munich. “Once these animals – due to the fragmentation of their habitats – lose the opportunity to maintain this genetic diversity by means of exchange, they will no longer be able to adapt to changing environmental conditions in the future.”

The insect researchers from Munich and Müncheberg refer to a “temporal shift in the potential causes for the decline of species.” Initially, it is primarily those insects that specialize in a particular ecosystem, e.g., the Mountain Apollo (Parnassius apollo) butterfly, which will be threatened by the loss of high-quality habitats. But over time and with the further deterioration of habitats as well as the collapse of entire habitat networks, the threat to widespread, “undemanding” species such as the Pearly Heath (Coenonympha arcania) also increases.

“In terms of practical nature conservation, these results signify that in the future it will no longer be sufficient to preserve small, isolated reserves – while these benefit specialized species with a simple genetic structure, the bulk of species that depend on an exchange between local populations will lose out in the medium to long term,” said Schmitt.  “This will lead to a further decline of numerous insect species – with dramatic consequences for entire food webs and ecosystems.”

Washington State University researchers have found a way to more efficiently generate hydrogen from water – an important key to making clean energy more viable.

Using inexpensive nickel and iron, the researchers developed a very simple, five-minute method to create large amounts of a high-quality catalyst required for the chemical reaction to split water.

They describe their method in the February issue of the journal Nano Energy.

Energy conversion and storage is a key to the clean energy economy. Because solar and wind sources produce power only intermittently, there is a critical need for ways to store and save the electricity they create. One of the most promising ideas for storing renewable energy is to use the excess electricity generated from renewables to split water into oxygen and hydrogen. Hydrogen has myriad uses in industry and could be used to power hydrogen fuel-cell cars.

Industries have not widely used the water splitting process, however, because of the prohibitive cost of the precious metal catalysts that are required – usually platinum or ruthenium. Many of the methods to split water also require too much energy, or the required catalyst materials break down too quickly.

In their work, the researchers, led by professor Yuehe Lin in the School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, used two abundantly available and cheap metals to create a porous nanofoam that worked better than most catalysts that currently are used, including those made from the precious metals. The catalyst they created looks like a tiny sponge. With its unique atomic structure and many exposed surfaces throughout the material, the nanofoam can catalyze the important reaction with less energy than other catalysts. The catalyst showed very little loss in activity in a 12-hour stability test.

“We took a very simple approach that could be used easily in large-scale production,” said Shaofang Fu, a WSU Ph.D. student who synthesized the catalyst and did most of the activity testing.

The WSU researchers collaborated on the project with researchers at Advanced Photon Source at Argonne National Laboratory and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

“The advanced materials characterization facility at the national laboratories provided the deep understanding of the composition and structures of the catalysts,” said Junhua Song, another WSU Ph.D. student who worked on the catalyst characterization.

The researchers are now seeking additional support to scale up their work for large-scale testing.

“This is just lab-scale testing, but this is very promising,” said Lin.

(RFE/RL) — A Moscow court has sentenced a prominent associate of opposition politician Aleksei Navalny to eight days in jail on charges of participating in an illegal demonstration.

Ruslan Shaveddinov, who hosts video programs on Navalny’s YouTube channel, was pronounced guilty and sentenced on January 31, one day after he and Navalny’s press secretary, Kira Yarmysh, were detained at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport.

The court’s ruling stressed that Shaveddinov’s violations were committed “with the goal of forming a negative image of one of the registered candidates” for the March 18 presidential election, evidently referring to incumbent President Vladimir Putin.

Yarmysh is facing similar charges and could be sentenced to up to 10 days in jail when her case is heard.

On January 28, Shaveddinov and Yarmysh hosted an Internet broadcast covering a Navalny-organized national protest calling on Russians to boycott the election. The broadcast was produced in the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius.

Navalny, who is barred from participating in the election because of a felony embezzlement conviction that he says is politically motivated, has said the election amounts to “the reappointment” of Putin, who has ruled Russia as either president or prime minister since 2000.

Navalny was himself arrested on his way to the January 28 protest in Moscow and was later released pending a court hearing.

At least 350 people were detained nationwide.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin had a telephone conversation on Wednesday with the President of the Republic of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

According to the Kremlin, the two leaders expressed satisfaction with the results of the January 30 Syrian National Dialogue Congress in Sochi. They pointed out the importance of implementing the agreements reached to promote political settlement in Syria based on UN Security Council Resolution 2254.

The conversation covered the further coordination of efforts by Russia and Turkey to maintain the stable operation of the de-escalation zones, as well as cooperation in the Astana format, according to the Kremlin.

The two presidents also exchanged opinions on the current aspects of the rapidly developing trade and economic cooperation between Russia and Turkey.

A Conversation with IMF Deputy Managing Director Zhang Tao, United Nations Investor Summit on Climate Risk

1. We recently have seen the IMF appearing to step up its work on climate change. Why now?

The Short Answer: This is our response to the threat climate change poses to our planet—and the growing demand from our membership and the international community to respond.

The IMF has been involved in the climate change work for several years. Our recent work reflects compelling evidence that adapting to climate change is one of the most important challenges facing economic policy makers worldwide. The IMF also has an obligation as a member of international community to address the doubts about climate change with fact-based analysis.

The Long Answer: the Fund’s core mandate is to ensure economic stability and resilience. Climate change could prove to be a destabilizing force for the global economy if it is not addressed.

The macroeconomic impact of climate change was illustrated by the especially damaging hurricane season last year in the Caribbean and the U.S. We certainly will see more frequent and more damaging such natural disasters in the future.

So, the key question is what we can do—and do better—in helping policymakers confront the challenges of climate change?

Two key areas of work are: mitigation, which includes helping countries meet their commitments under the Paris Agreement to reduce emissions; and adaptation, which focuses on building resilience to climate change. Our general message to our membership with regard to meeting the goals of the Paris agreement to contain emissions is to “price it right; tax it smart; and do it now.”

2. What are the main findings of your work on climate change? What risks does climate change have on the global economy?

We are deeply concerned about the link between climate change and macroeconomic performance. Global temperatures have increased at an unprecedented rate over the past 40 years, and significant additional warming could occur. All countries will be affected if we don’t reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

Most importantly, increases in global temperature have uneven macroeconomic effects for countries in different income groups. For example, we estimate that the average annual cost of natural disasters in low-income countries is equal to 2 percent of GDP. That is four times the impact on larger economies.

That calls for a clear focus on low income countries, including the small island economies.

Let’s examine this in terms of policies focused on adaptation and mitigation. For adaptation, we find that sound domestic policies and investment in specific strategies can help reduce the adverse consequences of weather shocks.

For example, in Grenada we have encouraged the government to save 40 percent of the revenue from its Citizenship by Investment Program as a buffer against future natural disasters. In addition, Grenada has included a hurricane clause to it debt agreements to defer debt payments if there is by a natural disaster.

For mitigation, our main finding is that carbon pricing is crucial in reducing emissions, and carbon taxes are more effective than other mitigation instruments. There are environmental benefits such as reduced air pollution, and increased government revenues.

3. How does the IMF help its membership in addressing the risks of climate change and which countries/regions are most affected?

We are helping countries through the core operations of the institution, with a focus on low-income countries. This work takes place on several fronts: macroeconomic analysis, policy advice, capacity development, and financial assistance.

We undertake macroeconomic analysis at the country, regional and global levels. The challenge is to understand how policy and environmental objectives interact. In this regard, I would highlight our October 2017 World Economic Outlook , which devotes a chapter to the implications of weather shocks for low-income countries.

We are assessing the emissions prices and other policies countries will need to meet their mitigation pledges. This assessment is key to developing carbon pricing measures and related policies.

We use our analysis to provide the practical policy advice so that countries can better respond to the challenges of climate change.

We tailor our capacity development work to help governments to implement these policies. This includes training and customized advice.

We provide financial assistance to assist the response to climate-related events. For example, during the 2015 Ebola crisis in West Africa, we established a Catastrophe Containment and Relief Trust. This facility provides debt relief to poor countries hit by natural disasters, thus freeing up resources to respond to a crisis.

In addition, beginning in December 2016, the amount that countries can borrow after a large natural disaster was nearly doubled. This will enhance the effectiveness of other forms of support.

4. More specifically, how do you see measures such as energy subsidy reform and carbon taxes addressing risks of climate change?

We see two ways to assess the costs associated with fossil fuels. The first is the failure to fully recover supply costs in subsidized user prices for energy. In 2015, this part of the subsidy amounted to $330 billion worldwide.

The second is a broader measure that also includes undercharging for environmental costs and for general consumer taxes. We estimate this cost at $5.3 trillion—equivalent to about 14 percent of global GDP in 2016.

The Fund takes the view that energy subsidies have negative economic and environmental effects. Several studies have shown that subsidies benefit the wealthiest households and reinforce income inequalities. They also encourage wasteful energy consumption. The IMF is playing its part with assessments of energy subsidies, emissions prices, and other policies.

5. How do you see the private sector role in financing or investing in infrastructure helping to address climate risks?

Addressing climate change can only be successful if there is a partnership among governments, international organizations, and the private sector. The role of business is critical in infrastructure development. The challenge is for countries to create projects that are attractive to investors. Our work in this area aims to create an enabling environment for this investment.

We have launched an infrastructure policy support initiative to help countries meet their infrastructure needs in a way that supports macroeconomic stability and is fiscally sustainable.

We also have developed a model that analyzes the macroeconomic effects of natural disasters. It helps to define the appropriate financing mix to build resilient infrastructure. This is being applied in our policy recommendations in several countries, including the Solomon Islands and the Maldives.

6. What are the future risks of climate change and what’s next for the IMF’s work in this regard?

The science is very clear about the future risks. In our work, we fully accept these scientific facts.

In terms of what’s next, our efforts are focused on developing tools to help countries to take measures to meet their mitigation commitments and to recognize the environmental, economic, and fiscal impact of those policies.

We are also starting to assess the interaction of climate risks and financial stability. For example, we have collaborated with the World Bank and UN Environment on the “roadmap” for green financing.

I would like to emphasize the Fund’s work with small island states—which are most vulnerable to climate change, but least equipped to build resilience.

To attract investors and donors, small islands will need to create a favorable macroeconomic and business environment. This includes assurances that investors will get a fair return and that money will be well spent. The Fund is advising through what we call the Climate Change Policy Assessments for island states.

These assessments take stock of countries’ mitigation and adaptation plans, risk-management strategies, and financing capabilities. They identify areas where countries need investment, policy changes, or capacity-building assistance. For example, we are working to create room in government budgets to enhance preparedness and resilience to natural disasters. This focuses mainly on mobilizing revenue, redirecting spending, and improving public financial management.

This type of assessment should be useful for investors, as it helps to signal which countries have a sustainable climate strategy. The Seychelles offers a model in this regard, linking mitigation and adaptation plans to financial support and risk-management. Their strategy includes financial innovations such as a “blue bonds” to protect marine resources, and debt-for-nature swaps that are attracting foreign investors.

In many ways, the question whether madrassas or religious seminaries contribute to instability in Pakistan and Afghanistan goes far beyond an evaluation of the content of what students are taught and how they are being taught. In fact, it could be argued that the train has left the station and that there are no magic wands or simple administrative and regulatory fixes to address problems associated with madrassas. To make things worse, those problems are not restricted to madrassas; they also are prevalent in the public education system.

Irrespective of which of the spectrum of estimates of the number of madrassas in Pakistan one accepts, fact of the matter is that many, if not the majority, of madrassas do not produce graduates who have learnt to think critically. Rote education produces the opposite in a 21^st century world in which critical thinking is ever more important.

Moreover, generations of graduates coupled with successive governments willing to play politics with religion and debilitating conflict have helped create a significant segment of Pakistani society that is ultra-conservative, intolerant, anti-pluralistic, and often supremacist.

It is a segment that easily can be whipped up to adopt militant causes as recent protests as well as the popularity of militant groups among both Barelvis and Deobandis have demonstrated. Which raises the question of whether madrassas alleged links to militancy is the core issue, or only part of a far more fundamental issue: the fact that madrassas more often than not teach an ultra-conservative worldview that with a solid grounding and resonance in society is being reinforced and reproduced.

What that means is that the problem is far greater than ensuring registration of madrassas or simply ensuring that include modern science alongside religious subjects in their syllabi. The magnitude of the problem is illustrated in a madrassa in the city of Jang that has a state-of-the-art computer lab.

Access to the lab and computer lessons are voluntary, yet only a mere 16 percent of the school’s 300 students are interested or avail themselves of the opportunity in a world in which a baby’s first demand is an iPhone. Visits to other madrassas elsewhere in the country show that at times English lessons that are on the curriculum are just that. They exist on paper rather than in practice. The language classes that do exist often produce anything but English speakers or children with even a rudimentary knowledge of the language.

The question of the context in which madrassas operate is also illustrated by the fact that foreign funding is not what keeps the bulk of the madrassas afloat. Foreign funding is no longer crucial. That is not surprising. Four decades after Gulf states, and to a lesser degree Iraq in the past, and Iran on the other side of the equation, poured huge amounts into ultra-conservative religious education, a world has been created that leads it own life, develops its own resources, and is no longer dependent on external funding and support. It’s the nature of the beast.

Former Federal Secretary Tanseem Noorani asserted as much as recently as last year when he noted that the number of madrassas was increasing faster in rural areas of Pakistan than regular public schools. There is indeed little doubt that madrassas fill a gap in a country with a broken education system as well cater to a demand for a religious education. And there is no doubt that there are inside and outside of government valiant efforts to fix the system. Hundreds of madrassas have been closed because of links to militancy or other irregularities. But there is equally no doubt that inroads made by ultra-conservatism not only in segments of the public but also significant elements of the bureaucracy cast doubt on the degree to which fixing the system can succeed.

There has been much debate and speculation about Saudi funding. The issue of Saudi funding has much to do with the broader issue of ultra-conservatism as a factor that pervades the discussion of madrassas and more broader trends in Pakistani society. Popular perception is that Saudi funding was focused on Wahhabism, the specific strand of Sunni Muslim ultra-conservatism prevalent in the kingdom.

In fact, it was not, despite Saudi links and support to Wahhabi groups like Ahl-e-Hadith in Pakistan. Saudi funding and support focused on ultra-conservatism irrespective of what specific strand of Islam as long as it was anti-Shiite, anti-Ahmadi and anti-Iran. It was that broader focus that allowed the Saudis to, for example, support Deobandis, something that a singular focus on Wahhabism would have precluded.

Not only was Saudi funding broader focused, it also was in a majority of cases hands off. In other words, a majority of Saudi-supported in Pakistan as elsewhere across the globe, were more often than not, not Saudi-managed nor was a Saudi anywhere in sight, even if textbooks, Qur’ans and other materials were Saudi-supplied.

Moreover, official sources will never be comprehensive in documenting funding particularly from foreign sources. That is all the truer in countries where financial controls and their implementation is lax. In the case of Saudi funding of madrassas, this means that money flows are often not transparent and not necessarily recorded and when recorded not made available for scrutiny. As a result, tracking Saudi funding may never produce a comprehensive picture and will often rely on anecdotal evidence or unofficial documentation provided either by the donor or the recipient.

No doubt, far less Saudi funding is available today, but that there is, yet, no indication that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s vague notion of a more moderate Islam means a restructuring of the kingdom’s funding targets.

The effort to rewrite Saudi textbooks that are used in the kingdom itself could indicate that change is coming although the extent of that revision remains to be seen. Recent statements by the World Muslim League, a major vehicle of Saudi funding, about the need for inter-faith dialogue and recognition of the Holocaust point in that direction.

Yet, the record of the first three years of the era of the Salmans, King Salman and his powerful son, Prince Mohammed, also has markers that would suggest the opposite. It may be that funding abroad will be more focused on what serves Saudi efforts to confront Iran, which would put Pakistan, with its borders with Iran and the Islamic world’s largest Shia minority, in the bull’s eye. It would also mean that moderation may be less evident in what the Saudis choose to support.

Over the past two decades, repeated efforts have been made to regulate and reform madrassas even if implementation and impact has been lagging. That lag cannot simply be attributed to a lack of resources and/or capabilities.

Reform depends on political will and is obstructed by resistance from powerful and entrenched ultra-conservative circles whose tentacles reach beyond the ulema and the administrators of madrassas.

With other words, it is the fallout not only of Saudi and Gulf funding but of government and state policies that allowed ultra-conservatism along a broad spectrum to flourish in Pakistan. The issue here is not simply militancy, it is ultra-conservatism that is not by definition or necessarily politically militant.

This is nowhere more evident than in the fact that the problem is not restricted to madrassas but is far more universal. The U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom reported as recently as two years ago that Pakistani public school textbooks contained derogatory references to religious minorities.

The report asserted that “in public school classrooms, Hindu children are forced to read lessons about the conspiracies of Hindus toward Muslims’, and Christian children are taught that ‘Christians learned tolerance and kind-heartedness from Muslims.”

It went on to say that “this represents a public shaming of religious minority children that begins at a very young age, focusing on their religious and cultural identity and their communities’ past history.”

The report noted that a review of the curriculum demonstrated that public school students were being taught that “religious minorities, especially Christians and Hindus, are nefarious, violent, and tyrannical by nature.”

Addressing the issues at the core of Pakistan’s religious and public education system is going to take out-of-the-box thinking that devises ways of drawing in important segments of the ultra-conservative community rather than alienating them. A turn-around will only truly work if it has buy-in rather than projects a sense of imposition.

For that to happen, government policy and the implementing bureaucracy will have to have a broad vision: one that initiates and manages a broad range of policies and processes that seek to foster values that are at odds with ultra-conservatism such as tolerance, pluralism, and freedom of expression rather than just pay lip service to them. It’s not clear that Pakistan has the political will for this, let alone that the building blocks for such policies are in place.

This is an edited version of remarks by James M. Dorsey at the launch in Islamabad on 30 January 2018 of ‘The Role of Madrassas: Assessing Parental Choice, Financial Pipelines and Recent Developments in Religious Education in Pakistan and Afghanistan,’ an extensive study by three Pakistani think tanks backed by the Danish Defense College.

By Rajesh Rajagopalan

At the recently concluded World Economic Forum at Davos, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi decried the international fracture in both politics and commerce.  This followed last year’s address by China’s leader Xi Jinping, who had a similar message but also explicitly sought to position China as the new leader of the liberal international order.  Both followed what is generally presumed to be Washington’s increasing turn inward following the election of Donald Trump as the President in 2016.  Across much of the Western political spectrum, there is increasing worry that America’s global withdrawal – Richard Haas recently called it ‘abdication’ – would put at risk the liberal international order that Washington has nurtured since the end of the Second World War.

President Trump did attend the WEF and put in a surprisingly mellow and even traditionalist speech that sought to smoothen some of his earlier rhetoric about ‘America First’, claiming now that it did not mean ‘America Alone’.  He has gone so far as to say that the US may join the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) if the US could get a “substantially better” deal.  The TPP is set to move forward despite President Trump pulling the US out of it last year, with the remaining members set to sign the trade deal in March.  Though it is unclear if the US is really reconsidering the TPP – President Trump’s words in a press interview are not a sufficiently reliable indicator, unfortunately – there does appear to be some success in the effort by some of the senior US administration officials to convince the President that the US has a lot more to gain from its leadership position and international cooperation than he himself appears to believe.

Irrespective of where this effort goes, the debate about the centrality of the US’s role in maintaining the liberal international order is growing.  In a recent essay in Global Times, historian Niall Ferguson argued that the idea of a liberal international order was ‘a myth’. It was not ‘liberal’, Ferguson writes, because it was devised by (among others) economist John Maynard Keynes who was no free-trader; and it was not ‘truly’ international because the world was divided by the Cold War.  Ferguson suggests that it became a truly liberal international order only in the late 1990s, well after the Soviet collapse.  Most controversially, he argues it will stay as such only with the cooperation of the great powers, especially the US and China.

This has not gone down well.  Aaron Friedberg responded in Foreign Policy that Ferguson was simply parroting China’s view (The essay was originally titled “Niall Ferguson Isn’t a Contrarian. He’s a China Apologist”, though the title has now been changed) because Ferguson suggests that the alternative to such cooperation is the Thucydides Trap, a point that China is also interested in pushing.  Friedberg also rejects Ferguson’s claim that the liberal international order that the US built was an American “empire”.

Still, it is difficult to take the difference between the two very seriously. Ferguson has rejected the idea that he is pushing China’s case, pointing to the many times that he has written to the contrary.  But the argument provides an opportunity to explore the origins of the current but seemingly declining “liberal” international order and what might possibly replace it.

For starters, however, little Liberal international relations scholars might want to acknowledge it, the fact is that the current international order was underwritten by American power.  Indeed, much of the current debate is about the “liberal” international order, but this is limiting because this broadly considers only the US role in generating a freer global trading order, and possibly, on promoting values such as democracy and individual rights.  But American power also underlined at least a partial security order, specifically on nuclear non-proliferation.  In each of these cases, there were alternatives to the normative order that Washington wanted to promote but they rarely succeeded, even when they were backed by significant majorities of the world’s countries.

Think of the various third world proposals for the New International Economic Order (NIEO) or others such as the New International Information Order (NIIO).  These were supported by a significant majority of the world’s countries.  And in some cases, such as the NIEO, the demands may even have had some justification, such as the declining terms of trade for third world commodity exporters.  But numbers meant little: American power and the economic clout that it was based upon ensured that these ideas and proposals had little traction outside the rhetoric in UN conference halls.  In contrast, it was the ideas promoted by the US such as liberal trade that won the normative and policy battles, and this happened even before the end of the Cold War.  Though Ferguson is correct to suggest that it became global only after the collapse of the Soviet Union, it is difficult to see what other normative alternative might have competed more effectively.  Ultimately it was neither the aesthetic of the ideas nor the majorities that supported it that mattered but the material power behind these ideas, and there was little question of how this was arrayed.  Such rule-making, as Michael Mastanduno has pointed out, came with immense benefits to the US.

This was true even when we consider how the international community handled the problem of nuclear weapons.  Between abolition and controlling its spread, there is little doubt that the former was at least as much of an option as the latter. But the global norm that was established was to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons rather than eliminate it.  Once again, it was the US that led the way, though in this case it counted on the support of not only the Soviet Union but also the other nuclear weapon powers.

Will this world order survive without American power to back it?  This partly depends on whether the US is simply abdicating its responsibilities or whether it is no longer capable of backing this order.  If it is the former, as Haas contends, it is quite likely that a change in American disposition may be sufficient, though Haas does appear not to take the question of American (in)capacity too seriously.  Indeed, abdication itself suggests a choice, and thus implicitly, of capacity.  But if the US is no longer capable because of its relative decline, then the global disarray will be unavoidable.  Another power such as China can step into the breech, of course, but to do so they would need to develop something akin to the kind of global power assets that the US has had in the years since 1945, and that is a very high benchmark indeed.

It is also unlikely that a number of powers could come together to pool their capacities and generate a cooperatively built global order, as Ferguson appears to suggest.  And the reason is not just because of Friedberg’s arguments about China’s self-interest, even if it is conceded that this self-interest is much narrower in conception than Washington’s.  But it hints at the problem: not narrow self-interest, but simply the managerial problems associated with such cooperation are so great that it will be unviable.

Gone are the days when Yemen was ruled by the General People’s Congress, one of the oldest political parties in Yemen. Since 2011, Yemen has been politically polarized and its geography is being contested by multiple players.

The GPC has not survived the consequences of the political quagmire and it has fragmented particularly since after the brutal end of former president Ali Saleh. The fragmentation of the party has emerged on the surface. Roughly a month after its founder’s demise, the GPC has appeared lacking in a coherent vision, and its leading members have not been on the same page.

The path to obsolescence

The GPC has three different prime factions nowadays. One is in Sanaa; the other is in Saudi Arabia and third is UAE-based. The Sanaa faction is forcibly supportive of the Houthis. The Riyadh faction is loyal to the legitimate government and the UAE faction is represented by the Saleh’s son, Ahmed Ali, who has been in Abu Dhabi for years. The fragmentation of the party has been evident, and the wounds this party has sustained will not be healed. Instead, the splits are paving the way for its obsolescence.

Last week, the Sanaa-based GPC faction declared a new party head, attempting to fill the vacuum sparked by Saleh’s death. However, the declaration of the new head brought more divisions more than unity amongst the party members. The affiliates of the GPC are not in Sanaa solely, and the recently appointed head of the party does not please, satisfy or win the support of all leading GPC members.

Previous to announcing the new head, hope existed that the GPC would manage to handle its unprecedented plight and unite efforts in the face in this adversity. This has not happened, and the party has fragmented almost one month following the passing of its cunning architect.

One faction says it will persist combating the “aggression” of the Saudi-led coalition, yet the other faction pledges to fight the Houthis and purge Yemen from the “Iran-allied militias.” The gulf between their stands is extremely wide, denoting the fundamental disintegration the GPC is undergoing.

Since the uprising breakout in 2011, Yemen has been embroiled in continuous turmoil.

As the ruling party at the time, the GPC could not rescue the country or realize the magnitude of the crisis. Today, the party is also unable to protect itself against the internal deadly divides.

Beneficiaries of the GPC fragmentation

Though Yemen’s GPC divides complicate the political scene, they have brought some advantages to some political players in the country. Practically, the Houthis have lost the political coverage provided by this party. However, they have tightened their iron grip further, and they do not fear political rivals in areas under their control. Instead, their efforts are fixated on the front lines.

Over the last three years of Houthi-GPC alliance, the two partners could not hide their differences on enormous issues. In November of 2016, the Houthis and the GPC formed what they the national salvation government. As the performance of the government was characterized with infectiveness, the two sides traded the accusation of poor performance. With the GPC is on more part of the Sanaa-based government, the Houthis have loosened up, doing what they want unopposed. This is how the Houthis are a beneficiary of the GPC’s lost leverage. But it should be remembered that the Houthi benefit of killing Saleh will not be a long-term one.

The other beneficiary of the GPC plight is the internationally recognized government. Since the Houthi takeover of Sanaa in September of 2014, the government is pointing the finger at former president Saleh. The late GPC’s head, Saleh, was believed to be the mastermind of the Houthi rapid expansion in diverse parts of Yemen.

The government knew the fact that the GPC has an embedded political presence in the country, and this party’s backing for the Houthis has delayed the victory of the Saudi-backed Yemeni forces. Today, the GPC is no longer an obstacle to the government military progress against the Houthis. Many GPC members have automatically shifted alliance to the legitimate government following the demise of their party leader.

The GPC’s recent divides have been taken as an advantage to intensify the government military advance against Houthi-controlled areas. In cooperation with military units loyal to the GPC, the coalition-backed government forces pushed the Houthis away from multiples areas over the past weeks. This is an example of how the government and the coalition have capitalized on the fury of the pro-GPC forces and supporters, scoring some progress against the Houthi militants on the ground.

Confused followers

Indeed, the GPC enjoys millions of supporters in Yemen. Today, they are torn between allegiance to the Houthis or the Saudi-led coalition. The Houthis killed their icon, and the coalition has left a devastating impact on the country since its military intervention in Yemen. What is the judicious option? And who does merit the support? Such questions are baffling, leaving the GPC followers confused.

Some GPC members continue to call the Arab Coalition as “aggressors,” while others deem them an indispensable force to defeat the Houthis and rid Yemen of the Iranian influence.

The GPC sounds as if it has lost its compass, its irreplaceable head. The leading members and mass supporters are not contented with the paths they are taking, but they have to. The GPC now cannot maneuver to have what it craves, cannot fight alone and cannot survive without support. Recovering from the fallout of this terrible experience is not an effortless task, and this experience could be the ultimate nail in its coffin.

*Khalid Al-Karimi is a reporter from Yemen

By Gagliano Giuseppe

Christian Harbulot, director of the Economic Warfare School in Paris, provides an historical reconstruction of the economic balance of power between states. In this study, he demonstrates that the strategies that states put in place in order to increase their economic power – and their impact on the international balance of power – can only be interpreted through the concept of economic warfare.

According to Harbulot, the true goal of these economic clashes has so far been hidden. Therefore, there is no academic discussion or understanding of this topic that is capable of providing an effective reading of international relations. There are many factors that will potentially trigger tensions between states in the future: the crisis of liberal principles promoting a positive view of economic development and globalization as a tool for establishing peace between nations; gradual resource depletion; energy issues; challenges to the Western economic leadership posed by the process of deindustrialization and the development ambitions of emerging economies.

This perspective sheds light on the importance of recognizing the legitimacy of the concept of economic warfare and lay the theoretical foundations to analyze the economic strategies states adopt to increase their power. In Harbulot’s opinion, the principles of economic warfare can be historically retraced in the fight for survival and for the control of resources and territories. The first example of economic warfare in history is the incursions of the nomad populations aimed at raiding the wealth of sedentary populations. In modern times, the economic warfare increased its spatial scope so that maritime and terrestrial commercial routes became the theater of continuous clashes for the control of some specific resources.

At that time, maritime piracy became an effective tool to exert power. In fact, the British pirates – that were attracted by trade routes between Europe, Africa and America, became the ancestors of the British Royal Navy. Both at sea and on the ground, the economic dimension became a key feature in military and diplomatic operations. By the end of the Middle Age, some kings used the economic power in order to support their military actions. An example of this is the war between the French king Louis XI and Charles I of Bourgogne: the French king commanded his fleet to block corn and herrings supplies to the Flanders (in the kingdom of Bourgogne), convinced the bankers to stop funding his rival and encouraged the hosting of fairs in Lyon in order to reduce the money flux to Geneva, which at the time was the trade hub between Bourgogne, Germany, and Italy.

In the 17th century, the newly created states considered the security of their territory (cities and countryside) as a strategic priority. In this time, the Seven United Provinces of the North created the first model of sanctuary area, meaning the securitization of a given territory from any kind of attack from the enemy. A net of fortresses and natural barriers like rivers was meant to protect the Provinces from the attacks coming from Spain. Similarly, Vauban’s France built up fortifications along the frontiers of the newly acquired territories in the north. This defense system led to the concept of “pré-carré” (squared field) that made reference to the geometric shape coming out from the disposition of these fortifications on the map that looked like a garden, divided in different flowerbeds. From then, this term evolved to nowadays’ meaning of “external sphere of influence” from the diplomatic, military and economic point of view. In order to guarantee their territorial integrity, states also exploited the military capabilities of an allied state in exchange of economic concessions. Portugal, for instance, signed an alliance treaty with the United Kingdom in 1373 in order to get its protection against Spain’s attempt to incorporate it. If at the very beginning this alliance was set up between pairs, later on it became the framework for the establishment of British protectorate over Portugal, so that for centuries the UK offered military protection in return of financial and commercial control over Portugal. Economic warfare has always been a feature of each stage of colonization, from the Roman Empire to the maritime empires established in the 16th century that gradually acquired control of natural resources and trade routes. Human trafficking is the most evident example of how economic interest impacts power relationships. In this regard, the colonization process of North America clearly shows the overlapping of conflicting dynamics of different economic interests.

The exploitation of American settlers in cotton plantations as well as the fiscal policy and the trade restrictions applied, led Great Britain and its colonies to war. Harbulot mentions this historical case to show how the control of trade routes is a key feature of economic clashes between states. In the 16th century, before becoming an Empire built up on its maritime trade power, Great Britain was a poor country with no military power. At that time, Spain and Portugal dominated the sea routes. When the British decided to became a maritime power, they started with piracy actions threatening the superiority of the enemies’ fleets.

Under the reign of Elizabeth I, the British pirates started pillaging Spanish and Portuguese ships carrying precious metals from South America. Afterwards, the British started expanding their trade networks to Turkey, Russia, the Caribbean and Asia. Finally, in 1707 the birth of Great Britain out of the fusion between Reign of Scotland with the Reign of England, led to the creation of one of the greatest free trade area of the time and to the first model of mass consumption in the world. During the 17th century, the British tried to exploit the great trade potential of British territories overseas and established the East India Company that paved the way to the colonization of India.

The colonial aspirations of Great Britain led to a military escalation that was necessary to defeat local sovereigns opposing the British hegemony, and to face the rivalry with other European powers. Great Britain went to war with the Netherlands (1652-1784) to win the control of the main trade routes with their colonies, which was threatened by the dominant position of the Dutch company of East India. Again, the necessity of securing maritime routes, led the British Empire to many other wars like Afghanistan (1839 -1842 and 1878 -1880) in light of contrasting Russia’s expansionism in India; the opium war with Chinese Empire (1839-1842 and 1856-1860) in order to force the Qing dynasty to open up to world trade; the occupation of Egypt in order to control the strategic platform in Cairo; the Boer wars (1880-1881 and 1899-1902) to ensure strategic control over Cape Town. After taking into account the British case as an example of how the ability to control sea routes is a key asset in geostrategic clashes, Harbulot analyzes the overlapping between war and economics that became evident for the first time during the revolutionary and Napoleonic wars (1792 – 1815).

William Pitt – British Prime Minister at the time – tried to preserve Great Britain’s predominant position in international trade. His strategy aimed at controlling the sea routes and establishing an indisputable maritime advantage through the Royal Navy – which was the only British force that could compete with France’s military capacity. The British military fleet was therefore empowered with 105 ships, whereas the French one could count on only 70. While Prussia – Great Britain’s ally – was able to contain France and its allies on the continent, the British fleet weakened France’s economic potential through preventing its access to the sea routes. For the first time in history, the economic warfare became global and delineated two blocks: on the one hand, Great Britain put in place a maritime block against France; on the other hand France locked the access to British exports to Europe.

The original feature of these two blocks consisted in the fact that both states wanted to adopt economic retaliation strategies to win the conflict. For example, Russia’s withdrawal from Napoleon’s continental block triggered Napoleon’s Russian campaign, that had disgraceful consequences for the French Emperor. The overlapping between traditional and economic warfare paved the way to some mechanism for economic warfare that were kept in place even in peacetime. By the end of the 18th century, France’s industry resulted to be significantly weakened by the military efforts carried on during the revolutionary wars. Napoleon then chose the scientist Jean-Antoine Chaptal, to reform the French industry and protect it from Great Britain’s trade threats.

In addition, Napoleon instructed the National Industry Encouragement Society to detect the strength and the weaknesses of the British economy: France was willing to do everything in its power in order to fill the twenty-year gap with the British, even smuggling machineries that were illegally purchased or stolen in Great Britain. In the framework of the continental block imposed by France, Napoleon consolidated this system of economic defense through a militarization of the custom check-points (whose officers in 1815 represented 20% administrative personnel of France besides the army). Despite the costs of the wars with France, Great Britain managed to keep its advantages: the industrial revolution that had started long before compared to the rest of the continent made British products more competitive; British colonies ensured a significant supply of raw materials and British naval supremacy allowed the control of the main sea routes.

It was paramount for London to reduce trade barriers in order to export its products to Europe, therefore the British government adopted the first techniques of economic warfare peacetime. In particular, a commission led by the political economist John Bowring was instructed to negotiate with French authorities for the opening up of trade. What Bowring did in reality, was lobbying for the creation of groups supporting British liberal trade in France and using the local press to influence public opinion that was the main tool to reach this goal. It was only with WWI, though, that the principles of economic warfare were formalized.

Already in 1914, in light of the likely long duration of the conflict, the powers involved elaborated the typical practices of the economic warfare: i.e. reducing the availability of materials for the enemy’s army, and raw materials for its industry – with an extremely negative impact on the population – blocking trade and finance flows that directly hit the enemy’s food supplies. In addition, over the course of the conflict, some specific structures dedicated to the economic warfare were created. In 1915, the French Ministry of War set up a Control Section responsible for collecting necessary information to support economic warfare. Similarly, Great Britain created an independent organization, the War Trade Intelligence Department, attached to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In 1916, Italy set up a special office entrusted with collecting and checking economic news, attached to the Ministry of War.

These structures were coordinated by an Inter-allied office located in Paris. During the conflict, economic warfare actions became more and more targeted against international objectives and supported by military operations, which became more sophisticated thanks to the development of aviation technologies. However, in 1918 there was no general consensus between France, Great Britain and the United States about the goals to reach. Paris wanted to use economic warfare to force Germany to surrender and accept international control on its possession of raw materials, so that France could still have the upper hand. Washington was aware of the leverage the economic warfare could play to stop Germany’s economic expansion and get to a peace treaty, however its main interest was to stress the liberal principles and play a dominant role in international trade; London aligned itself with the United States while keeping its focus on its economic interests. As the conflict ended, the structures dedicated to economic warfare were dismissed but were restored after the break out of WWII. In 1939, Great Britain created an actual Ministry for Economic Warfare, with similar tasks of the dismissed War Trade Intelligence Department.

In June 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill set up a new service called Special Operations Executive – that was basically the offensive component of the Ministry of Economic Warfare – and entrusted it to conduct sabotage operations on the continent and fuel uprisings in the territories occupied by the Germans. At this stage, the interaction between war and economy shed light on the problems related to the economic warfare. However, in the second half of the 20th century, this topic was overshadowed. On the one hand, during the Cold War, Western bloc countries were keen to cover the economic disparities between them and powered their ideological projection against the Soviet bloc. On the other hand, the United States – the new global superpower – elaborated their version of the British strategy of influence and promoted the free trade theories and competition as the main model for the Western world economy.

According to Harbulot, an effective analysis of the economic warfare must consider the evolution of the methods states used to conquer territories, increase their trade and power. Over the 19th century, states preferred to conquer markets (through economic warfare) rather than territories (through traditional warfare) in order to acquire more influence on the international level. Harbulot identifies the cases of Japan and Germany because of the importance these states gave to the seek for a “vital space”, to be conquered through territorial acquisition and trade influence. In 1854 U.S. commodore Matthew Perry forced Japan to open up its ports to Western powers. However, in 1867 Mutsuhito ascended the throne of Japan and decided to reverse the established balance of power. His modernization policies aimed at filling the gap with major Western economies and hinder their leadership.

The Meiji Restoration – whose slogan was “Enrich the country, strengthen the military” – was framed in a policy aimed at acquiring a comprehensive expertise in many fields, following the example of the leading countries in a given sector. Japan also pursued an expansionistic policy through the annexation of Korea and claimed a trade protection on China – that threatened the United States’ interests in developing business ties with the country. Japan’s main goal was to establish a sphere of regional co-prosperity with East Asia countries, occupied by the imperial army. Therefore, the Japanese empire occupied Manchuria and founded the state of Manchukuo, a classic example of the reproduction of military systems invented by the Portuguese and then imitated by the Dutch and the British. The Japanese combined the model of the Company of India with the one of the American railroads to create the Railroad Company of Manchuria. This latter was in charge of the administration of Manchukuo and of the management of the Japanese occupation troops; it possessed its own police forces, a central bank and even a merchant fleet. The State of Manchukuo was test site for the new approach to increase state power through the economy.

The case of Germany is quite different. Over the course of its history, Germany constantly sought to acquire new territories to guarantee food supplies for its population, as German lands were covered with forests and difficult for farming. By the end of the Middle Ages, German settlers started colonizing the lands of East Bavaria. While acquiring new territories was not always a peaceful process because of the resistance of the local population, the expansion via sea was far easier. The creation of the Hanseatic League allowed Germany to peacefully establish its dominion on the Polish shores between 16th and 17th centuries. The battles conducted by the Hohenzollern family completed the creation of a sphere of influence at the eastern borders of Germany. The debate around the strategic advantages of territorial versus trade expansion was very popular in the politics of the Second Reich. The unification of Germany pursued by Otto von Bismarck allowed the country to acquire more influence on the world stage. However, the increasing in its power at the end of 19th century was not only boosted by the changes brought by the industrial era, but also by the geostrategic competition with the British and French Empire: the German strategic core consisted in the “Konzern” (associations of both vertically and horizontally integrated enterprises), in banks and insurance companies that challenged their European competitors.

The debate on how to handle a hypothetical geo-economic success gained momentum at the end of WWI. As a result, in 1915 Samuel Herzog published in Germany “German economic warfare plan”, which could be considered as a draft handbook of economic warfare.

In his book, Herzog listed the economic tools that States could oppose to the Reich’s enemies. Some of them are helpful to influence or control the exports during the economic warfare; some others could ensure Germany’s success against the passive resistance of defeated countries. According to the author, in order to preserve Germany’s economic assets, it is necessary for the state to exercise its control over industries that have kept the upper hand against foreign countries. In addition, the state should protect private initiative in a way that it does not conflict with national economic interests.

Harbulot focuses then on the dissimulation of economic warfare: firstly, the economic dimension acquired a great prominence in the balance of power among individuals, groups and states; secondly, he underlined the high interdependence between the economic strength and the political and military power. Nevertheless, the historic phenomenon of economic warfare has always been denied, because the political justifications for economic expansions have always been perceived as aggressive and illegal.

The negative perception of the economic war as a consequence of cupidity is grounded on Saint Augustine and Thomas Aquinas’ just war theory. According to this theory, States are pushed to hide their war plans for economic purposes and to proclaim their intention to spread religions, to stimulate growth of developing countries and, more recently, to promote democracy. This dissimulation attitude causes the distortion of the balance of power.

It is worth noticing that international military organisations, such as NATO, have not developed a proper economic warfare doctrine yet, because of conflicting interests among member states.

Some examples of the dissimulation of economic warfare are the domination strategies implemented by colonial empires, as well as recovery strategies of countries aiming at avoiding colonisation or at increasing their power.

Firstly, domination was dissimulated by the pretext to conquer and impose one’s religion to colonised people. Secondly, the doctrine of liberalism and the idea of increasing power through trade expansion stimulated free trade and the opening of new markets. All these factors became the justification to the foundation of new empires.

Any commercial achievement could lead into an economic warfare, which could represent a coercive instrument to use against countries that try to close their market. As to some examples, the United Kingdom implemented its “gunboat diplomacy”, in order to export its products in the Middle East and East Asia markets and in 1840-41 the Royal Navy closed the Alexandrian harbour. Moreover, during the Opium Wars, the Western countries forced an “independent country” to participate in the drug trade.

With the Opium Wars, the strategy of “economic aggression” became evident. As a result, countries such as Japan were forced to modify their plan and to implement a significant economic penetration policy (represented by the above-mentioned slogan “enrich the country, strengthen the military”) with the aim of reducing disparities with Western countries. When, a century later, at the end of ‘80s, Japan became the world’s second largest economy, the USA and Europe denounced its expansionism, as well as its economic trade’s strategy. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) even published a report on the “Japanese propaganda” aiming at hiding the protectionist measures taken by the US against other market economies, in violation of the principles of economic liberalism.

As for the recovery strategies, they focus on basic objectives and are strongly linked to geographic and cultural background. Due to its geographical morphology, Japan developed a solid maritime infrastructure, along with an industrial economy and became a model for South Korea, India, Brazil and China. In particular, South Korea opted for shipbuilding and for the creation of large private industrial conglomerates.

On the contrary, India chose to become a world leader in IT sector and pursued an education reform in order to improve science teaching. Moreover, the city of Bangalore, thanks to its favourable weather conditions, was transformed into a high-tech capital.

Brazil instead based its recovery strategy on the energetic sector, with the aim of becoming the regional leader in this field. Besides, Brazil used its soft power to claim the role of world’s sustainable development power due to its wide-scale production of electric power.

Finally, the Chinese recovery strategy was grounded on market opening, with the creation of special economic zones and the implementation of measures to attract foreign investments.

However China, as Japan did, developed an aggressive plan of foreign markets’ penetration, with the strong opposition of the United States. This triggered a debate around economic warfare in the Western world. In particular, China was deemed to become member of “normative” international organisation only in order to impose its own rules. As a matter of fact, reactions caused to a sceptic attitude against China could be considered as economic conflicts. This is true for protectionist measures on photovoltaic technologies taken by the Obama administration, as well as for the decision of the Australian government to refuse the participation of the Chinese company Minmetal in the Australian firm Oz Metal.

The paradigm of economic warfare changed after the Second World War, when the USA became the world geo-political, military and trade leader. Along with coercive methods of colonial empires, the USA expressed their economic power by pursuing a new strategy. In particular, in order to prevail over an allied country in the economic and cultural field, the United States established themselves as a superpower and managed to hold a stronger position in the hierarchy of the values, rules and arbitrages of market economy. As a result, the US imposed in peacetime to Western countries a “silent practice” of economic warfare.

Nevertheless, the availability of new markets after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the aggressive recovery strategies implemented by emerging economies modified the current stability of international economic relations. Furthermore, a growing competition, stemming from the two above-mentioned factors, pushed the USA to take into account the need of a “real” economic war. Asia’s increasing power and the EU internal market, actually undermined the supremacy that the USA had acquired by the end of WWII.

These changes in the balance of power highlight the new paradigm of the economic warfare: the relationship between ally and enemy is replaced by a direct or indirect conflict between two enemies.

Despite the fact that economic warfare was usually characterised by direct conflicts, globalisation has modified the world economic framework, both for emerging economies and developed countries.

States’ strategic interests diverge and become more and more complex. Therefore, a military or geo-political concern could be in contrast with an economic one, and vice versa. As a result, two countries could conclude a military alliance and fight for economic reasons at the same time.

Therefore, these new balances of power among States, where competition and cooperation co-exist, show that the current economic relationships are weaker than in the past. However, these changes do not reduce conflicts among states. During the ‘90s, the USA, as world leader, implemented a policy of economic security, started in the ‘70s with the introduction of Section 301 of the 1974 Trade Act (that enabled the country to oppose trade barriers penalizing its exports) and Section 301 of the 1988 Omnibus Trade and Competitiveness Act (that enabled the country to denounce unfair practices and protect American companies from intellectual property violations).

With the aim of fighting unfair competition, the USA decided to tighten their position on trade. Despite the objections of several states, these unilateral measures are still in force and are used as leverage against the Dispute Settlement Body of the World Trade Organisation. Torricelli’s (1992), Helms-Burton’s (1996) and D’Amato’s (2001) laws implemented these measures and forbade thee WTO membership to the countries that were hostile to the United States. Among the countries affected by these provisions (with the exception of Cuba, covered by a US embargo since 1962), Iraq, Libya, Iran and Nigeria were rich in oil reserves. Moreover, the appointment by the Clinton administration of the National Economic Council in 1993, working jointly with the National Security Council, proved the paramount importance of the national economic security.

The USA represented a model for several countries: France, for instance, appointed a Committee for Competitive Economic Security chaired by the Prime Minister in 1995; over the course of his first mandate. President Putin strengthened the role of some State bodies on the protection of the economic resources in Russia. The economic weakness of Western countries and the increasing power of the emerging ones will probably reinvigorate tensions between developing and industrialized countries, which dominate the world economy. While developing countries are eager to increase their power through massively expanding their trades to foreign markets, Western countries tend to separate power strategies based on military and diplomatic means, from those based on economic warfare.

Moreover, the Western policy of deregulation emphasises this paradox. While European advantages decrease, in fact, emerging countries increase their competitiveness with the financial support from bank authorities, which are directly or indirectly controlled by the state.

Therefore, a competitive imbalance – that is usually strengthened by the substantial role the financial sector plays in the functioning of market economies – weakens industrialized economies. Chinese managers, instead, successfully adapted the Communist dictatorship to the rules of market economy and pursued more ambitious targets than purely making profits.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union – caused by the arms race – China elaborated the idea of “war with no limits”, by combining military and economic instruments. The crisis of colonialism and the growing power of emerging countries undermined the Western notion of ethnocentrism, which the foundation of the theory of Western superiority.

Therefore, in the new global contest, Western countries are weakened by a number of contradictions:

Liberalism and Protectionism

In the United Kingdom and in the United States economic doctrine, liberalism justified the dismantling of protectionist systems in the countries that were their top export destinations. The goal was to an increase their exports and to minimize the impact of the destination countries on international financial markets.

Delocalization vs. National Interest

In the United States there are two conflicting economic trends: one aims at opening the markets and benefiting from delocalisation, the other stresses the importance of protecting American people’s interests.

The European Union’s inability to react to the challenges posed by economic warfare.

In the aftermath of WWII, during negotiations on Marshall Plan, there has been a considerable discussion in France on some U.S. economic needs, such as the obligation to feed animals with American soya and the distribution in the French market of films coming from Hollywood. General De Gaulle, Prime Minister since 1958, pursued an independent policy against the U.S. interests: he created the oil company Elf Aquitaine with the aim of reducing dependency from the seven Anglo-American oil companies; he limited the settlement of American multinational companies; he started casting doubts on the role of dollar as reserve currency. Nevertheless, his vision was defeated by the liberal idea of markets’ openness. Furthermore, the creation of the EU single market marginalised the discussion on the role of the economy in state power strategies. As a result, France dramatically changed some of its economic structures that had previously provided the country with a significant economic power.

In particular, the Commission Permanente de l’Electronique, which in the ‘60s rose awareness on the need of developing the electronics industry, was abolished. At the beginning of 21st century, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin re-launched the debate on the “economic patriotism”, fostered by the drawbacks of emerging countries’ recovery policies. Some of them, in fact, evolved in real “fighter economies”, to fill the development gap with the West. Their offensive strategies integrated the range of techniques already implemented by Western countries in the past: collecting information via Internet, stealing patents, dumping measures, counterfeiting, metal smuggling (especially copper, whose world-wide demand is increasing).

While these unfair measures, which undermine the Western economic leadership, represent an issue for concern in the United States, in the EU they are considered as “exception that proves the rule”. Accordingly, the US adopted coercive instruments against these measures, in order to single hostile countries out. On the contrary, the European Union rarely followed this example. In 1984 the EU adopted a retaliatory measure in accordance with Section 301 of The US Trade Act, even though it was only applied six times in ten years.

In the centralized EU system, since the only competences left for Member States are national defence and public order, the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Germany integrated the economic war paradigm in their modus operandi. France, instead, lobbied for amending the EU Treaties with the aim of improve its room for manoeuvre, but its attempts were not successful. More generally, the EU Member States proved not to be able to set up a shared strategy on this issue. As a result, the EU did not react to Putin’s measures protecting and promoting Russian industries – through state aids, customs duties benefits, and debt cancellation – and not even to the Russian threat of cutting gas supplies to Europe.

In the current international framework, the pacification process favoured by the leadership of the Western countries is weakened by multipolar geo-economic relationships and growing conflicts with emerging countries. As a result, the European Union – that does not consider economic warfare – cannot do much other than following the lead of the United States. Despite its image of cohesion, the EU is fragmented: Germany leads Northern Europe and is engaged both in increasing its power and promoting itself as a peaceful country in open contrast with its past; Southern Europe tries to solve its infrastructural problems, while post-Soviet countries are still under American, German and Russian influence.

To conclude, the economic warfare paradigm shall be taken into account in current international relations. Harbulot imagines a new political economy based on a consistent combination between state power strategies, trade expansion and territorial development. Nevertheless, these dimensions deal with three divergent interests. Therefore, the definition of short, medium and long-term priorities relies in the hands of the political power.

Source: This article was published by Modern Diplomacy.

(EurActiv) — Greece expects to make a clean break with official lenders when its international bailout expires in August and has no reason to seek a precautionary credit line, its finance minister has told Reuters.

Instead, Euclid Tsakalotos said in an interview, the country is building up its own protective buffer that, along with unused European bailout funds, will cover Greece “for well over a year”, if needed.

In coming months, he said, the country would be preparing its own post-bailout plan with an emphasis on reforms, social policies and growth.

He also said discussions would soon commence with euro zone lenders on debt relief along the lines of a French proposal to link the level of debt restructuring to economic performance.

“We feel we have built credibility over the last three years,” Tsakalotos said.

Tsakalotos basically repeated positions expressed by Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras from last October, with more detail.

The position of the lenders is however that Greece needs to remain under post-programme supervision ‘for a long time’.

Greece is close to emerging from a sovereign debt crisis that plunged the economy into its biggest depression in decades, threatening to rupture the euro zone. It has received a record 260 billion euros in repeated bailouts since 2010.

The leftist-led government of Alexis Tsipras has vowed to end the humiliation of austerity imposed on Greece by its international lenders, but the nation still has a debt burden of 178% of economic output and some European policymakers believe Athens cannot go it alone without debt relief and a standby line of credit.

A precautionary credit line, though, would come with yet more conditions attached, so Athens is proposing its own plan. It is also creating a safety net of up to 19 billion euros drawn from leftover, unused bailout funds and from bond issues.

Post-program surveillance schemes were common to other European member states which sought financial aid, Tsakalotos said. But Greece’s own post-bailout plan would be more pro-active.

It would, he said, show lenders and the markets that Greece had ownership over its own program of future reforms and growth strategies, rather than Brussels.

“We are thinking, by Easter, of preparing our own plan .. to show both the institutions but also the markets that it is our program, it has ownership… it hasn’t been imposed, it’s not a matter of compromise,” he said.

No precautionary line needed

Tsipras’ left-led coalition shocked markets and its lenders when it was catapulted to power in 2015 promising to reverse reforms and tear up the country’s bailouts.

But it was later forced to cave into lenders’ demands for more austerity under a new rescue package. That 86-billion euro loan package ends in August.

Tsakalotos said that the economy was turning a corner and the country was ready to stand on its own feet soon.

“We’ve been outperforming our fiscal targets, the economy is returning,” he said. “To those people who think we need something more, like a precautionary credit line or whatever, they are just pushing the key question back and I don’t see any reason for that,” Tsakalotos said.

The International Monetary Fund has not yet decided if it will participate in Greece’s latest bailout program, having repeatedly voiced concern at the sustainability of the country’s debt pile.

“I think their inclination and their strategy is to get a deal that makes the Greek debt sustainable so they can come on board,” he said.

Athens last week concluded a review of its bailout progress and has yet to undergo a final check before its program ends. It hopes to start talks on medium-term debt relief soon, mindful of ballooning debt because of this aid, and now hopes to start talks on medium-term debt relief measures.

Greece and its lenders are expected to flesh out a French proposed mechanism which was presented in June and will link debt relief to Greece’s growth rates. The economy is expected to grow by up to 2.5% this year and in 2019.

“What we will be going over the next month or so is working out the nitty-gritty of it, the mechanism, how it will kick in, when it will kick in,” Tsakalotos said adding that a kind of subcommittee of the Euro working group would handle this.

Details on the cash buffer, the growth mechanism along with the implementation of the measures agreed in June would give investors clarity over Greece’s trajectory, he said.

Greece returned to bond markets in July after three years of market isolation. Another issue would follow “soon”, he said.

“The only outstanding issue is the composition of that buffer, how much will come from Greece’s own funds, and how much will come from the ESM and I‘m looking forward to that debate.”

Toxic loans

Greek banks are saddled with about €100 billion in bad loans (NPLs), after a seven-year depression that cut economic output by a quarter and pushed more than a fifth of the population into unemployment.

The results of stress tests on the banks by euro zone supervisors are expected in May.

“We shall see what the results of the stress tests are,” said Tsakalotos. “I think that a lot of people would want to give banks a chance to see all these bits of the puzzle that we put in to work through, and to address the NPL problem.”

“The good thing is that it’s going to have the same criteria across the European banking system, it’s not like it’s picking Greece as an exceptional case.”

He pondered at a question on the government’s achievements. It was, he said, a mixed picture but the foundations for a sustainable economic recovery had been laid.

“There are the pillars there, and it will be up to our government and if we are elected again, to see whether we can build on that,” he said, referring to elections in 2019.

“… The difference between a happy ending and a sad ending is where you cut the film, yes? We are still on the film.”

By Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova*

(FPRI) — Since its inception in 2012, China’s “16+1” cooperation platform—an initiative aimed at intensifying Beijing’s economic and cultural ties with 16 countries in Central and Eastern Europe—has attracted great speculation about China’s motives and questions about the format’s concrete deliverables. Controversy over Beijing’s proposals to finance critical infrastructure, increase foreign direct investment (FDI), and boost trade has arisen both from within the 16 participating countries and from EU neighbors. In this atmosphere of political ambivalence, however, the Baltic states have succeeded in capitalizing on their relationship with China without antagonizing Brussels. They have increased their visibility in China and boosted people-to-people contacts. Many of China’s European counterparts remain frustrated by the low levels of economic gain, but the Baltic States are satisfied with what they have achieved with China.

The Baltic States and the Beginnings of “16+1”

As the 19^th National Congress of the Communist Party of China concluded in October 2017, onlookers proclaimed Xi Jinping’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era” the conference’s biggest highlight and “Chinese Diplomacy for a New Era” its most significant innovation. While it has only recently gained such a prominent role, the concept has been implemented for nearly five years already. The Baltic states, in particular, proved a testing ground for China’s new diplomatic approach.

China’s new foreign policy concept—“a community with a shared future for mankind”— was enshrined in the Party constitution. The Congress was of major significance also because Xi Jinping’s power over the party state grew yet further, resulting in a power concentration referred to as “the coronation” of Xi. These two factors demonstrate that Xi Jinping will continue to dominate China’s foreign policy for years to come, shaping relations with the Baltic states, among others.

When China first expressed its desire to bring together a diverse set of Balkan, Baltic, and Central European countries in the document “China’s Twelve Measures for Promoting Friendly Cooperation with Central and Eastern European Countries,” many commentators remarked that the only commonalities between the 16 newly proclaimed partners were their socialist pasts and the fact that their cooperation would not antagonize Russia. Concerns about Russia allegedly prevented Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, and Kosovo from being invited.

Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia—while surprised by the size of the format—welcomed this new avenue for cooperation. Officials hoped to decrease their trade deficits with China, attract Chinese FDI, and incorporate their transport infrastructure into the network of roads, railways, and ports used to transport Chinese goods to Europe. Having very limited economic ties with China in the past, the baseline for success in the Baltics was quite low. This set the Baltic countries apart from other “16+1” members such as Hungary, the Czech Republic, Poland, Serbia, and to a lesser extent, Slovakia, which already had an established name in China and a history of cooperation. Hungary, for example, was a regional leader in attracting Chinese capital investment in 2013, thus setting high expectations for the newly established cooperation platform. The Baltic states started without deep relations with China, so any improvement in ties was welcome.

The Baltic States vs. the Visegrad Group: Differences in Perception

As cooperation progressed, several problems transpired, the most visible being political objections from Western European leaders claiming that China seeks to divide the EU. The other main criticism of the format, that China has failed to deliver on its economic promise, grows stronger with each “16+1” summit.

Indeed, the gap between expectations and reality is the largest issue of China’s “16+1” cooperation plan, especially from the perspective of the Visegrad Group—the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia. The disappointment stems from the lack of promised investment flow. The pivotal “16+1” role ascribed to these countries by official Chinese discourse set high expectations.

But unlike other Central European countries, the Baltic States never had unrealistically high expectations. As Estonia’s Ambassador to Latvia H.E. Tonis Nirk put it: “All the 16 countries involved in the Format were primarily interested in two things: access to Chinese market and cooperation in logistics and transport.” Therefore, the biggest risk that Lithuania and Latvia anticipated when joining the format in 2012 was going unnoticed among the many other partners looking to engage with China. The “16+1” countries all had similar sales pitches; they are “gateways between the East and the West” and are “perfect locations for China to enter Western European markets.”

Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia further realized that their shared traits served as obstacles to cooperation with China: their geographic position (unofficially referred to as the “Baltic cul-de-sac” by Chinese partners), the small size of their domestic markets, and their lack of name-recognition in China. When it came to infrastructure development, the availability of EU funds and the incompatibility between Chinese terms and EU legislation presented another impediment. Given such low expectations, every positive development—be it cooperation in logistics, a decrease in the trade deficit with China, or an increase in people-to-people exchanges—had the potential to become a success story. As a result, the Baltic states tend not to share the frustrations of their Central European neighbors regarding the slow pace of cooperation with China—because their expectations were realistic to begin with.

Neither has the “divide and rule” criticism of China’s actions been an issue in the Baltics. The pro-EU Baltic states have not used China as leverage in intra-European bargaining, stating that the “16+1” cooperation platform serves to complement to the joint EU-China dialogue within the Strategic Partnership.

The Outcomes of China’s New Presence

Five years into the “16+1” cooperation format, none of the sixteen partners can demonstrate a dramatic increase in Chinese investment in their respective economies. The Baltic states, however, have accomplished several goals. They have maintained friendly relations with China while upholding the official EU position, for example, when voicing concern about limited access to Chinese markets for EU companies, or during debates about EU statements on human rights in China. Notably, Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania have been requesting the involvement of European institutions and the adherence to EU principles during the “16+1” discussions, notably during the 2016 “16+1” Riga Summit.

On the economic front, they have more than doubled total exports to China, with leading product groups being timber, furniture, machinery and electronics, and mineral products. Latvia exported €117 million of products to China in 2016 compared to 46.6 million in 2012. During the same years, Lithuania’s exports to China increased from €66.6 million to 123.3 million, while Estonia’s grew from €101.2 million to 167.7 million euros. The Baltic states also attracted a record number of Chinese visitors, with tourism from China growing in 2016 by 57.8% in Latvia, 25.3% in Lithuania, and 24.2% in Estonia. They also channeled China’s political desire for cooperation into increasing their visibility in a rising great power. Given their low expectations about relations with China, this represents a real success for Baltic diplomacy.

On the diplomatic level, China has recognized the importance of the Baltic states as interlocutors as Beijing seeks to boost its influence in Europe. For China, working with previously underexplored partners within the EU opens untapped national and regional cooperation opportunities and demonstrates China’s widening outreach. Given China’s interest in deepening relations, the Baltic states will continue to engage in the new cooperation models shaped by China, such as “16+1” and the Belt and Road Initiative. On top of this, Sino-Baltic interaction will be pursued via platforms not devised by China, such as the Nordic Baltic Eight (NB8), a group of eight Nordic and Baltic countries that sent a parliamentary delegation to Beijing in January 2018. Even if the economic substance of China’s new role remains limited, the diplomatic symbolism is sufficient to keep both China and the Baltic states interested in the relationship.

About the author:
*Una Aleksandra Bērziņa-Čerenkova is Head of Riga Stradins University China Studies Centre and Head of the New Silk Road programme at the Latvian Institute of International Affairs.

Source:
This article was published by FPRI.